What's wrong with my ears?!?

I went out to grab something for lunch today, and on my way past the security desk there was a guy talking to the security guards, and I could have swore I heard him say “I just want to fondle your bum”.

But I probably heard incorrectly. As you know, if we’ve met in person—or as you tell me over and over again, if you’re Andrea—my ears don’t work very well.

P.S. for lunch I grabbed a Montreal smoked meat sandwich from Druxy’s, which turned out to be not very good at all. Which surprised me, because I’ve gone there a couple of times in the past, for the same thing, and it’s always been great. The Rice Krispie Square was good, but let’s face it: it’s not hard to make a decent Rice Krispie Square. (Comparatively speaking, of course).

P.P.S. But if you want a really good Montreal smoked meat sandwich, go to Montreal. (I love to state the obvious...) There is even a specific deli that I would have sent you to, because they had great smoked meat sandwiches there (along with some local Montreal-brewed beer), but it closed down. So, I guess if you do go to Montreal, you should go to Reuben’s. I’ve never actually been, myself, but everyone says that’s the place to go, so you should go. Because everyone said to.

Update

Still sick. Picked up some Fisherman’s Friend lozenges on the way to work, but haven’t taken any yet (as of time of writing), because I’m still drinking my orange juice.

I wish I had something more clever to say, but I don’t.

There is a particular blog that I read almost every day, and the writer of that blog is constantly being interviewed by people. (I know this, because she posts the interviews.) Now, notwithstanding the fact that most of the interviews are really boring, because the interviewers are intimidated by the fact that the interviewee is very cool, so they try and make their questions cool too, and it ends up sounding really stupid... but notwithstanding that, I’m still jealous of the fact that she’s getting interviewed all the time—albeit by idiots, and I can’t get past that point, apparently—whereas I can only get interviewed by myself.

Before you read this, and volunteer to interview me: No, I don’t want to be interviewed. I’m just sayin’, is all.

Formatting Change

I decided that if I’m going to gripe about people who have blogs on Spaces, and have tiny, tiny text that I can barely read, then I should probably increase the text size on my blog, too.

I have now done so. Which means that I’m free to complain about people who have blogs on Spaces, and have tiny, tiny text that I can barely read. Which I will now proceed to do:

People, there must be an option in Spaces somewhere where you can adjust the font size! (Also, you must be able to use the Enter key from time to time, to include multiple paragraphs in your post... They can’t have set Spaces up to force you to enter one long paragraph for every post...)

Editor’s note: Don’t be fooled by the rhetorical devices included here. I know for a fact that you can change the font size, because I have a friend who changed her font size on Spaces. Because of my complaining.

Sick

To celebrate the fact that I’m now using Andrea’s real name, I’d like to mention that I’m sick, and I caught the sickness from her. She’s been banging around the house sick as a dog for the last couple of weeks, telling me that it’s too late for me to get sick, because she’s past the contagious phase—if I was going to catch it from her, I would have caught it by now.

Well... I’ve caught it. It hit me very suddenly, too; I was fine this morning, felt a bit of a throat thing at about 1:00, and it’s been getting steadily worse for the last couple of hours. (I think I have some nose symptoms, and I definitely have a headache now.)

I foresee sick days in my future, because I don’t tend to handle illness very well.

My Wife

My wife took a quick look through my blog the other day, and told me that she doesn’t want to be referred to as “my wife” on here anymore. I told her that this was pretty unavoidable, since I don’t want to use her real name.

So she told me that she would rather I use her name than keep saying “my wife”. So, from now on, I’ll be referring to my wife as Andrea (which is her name).

Dream

I had a dream the other night that I was invited to spend the weekend with a couple of people. The thing is, the people I dreamt I was staying with aren’t people that I actually know—they’re just people who have blogs that I read. Which is weird; I don’t even know these people, but apparently I think about their blogs enough that I actually dream about them. Luckily I don’t tend to put any real details in here about my own life, so complete strangers probably aren’t having dreams that they’re staying over at my house for the weekend.

Oh, and if it matters, the people live in an apartment (according to their blogs), but in the dream they had a really nice house. And I was a good guest, but they were even better hosts—if they ever invite me to stay over for real, I’ll probably go, because I had a really nice time in the dream.

Copying...

I’ve been staring at this for the last hour. Talk about a productive morning! (He said, sarcastically.)

Traffic Updates

If you live in Toronto, and drive a car, you probably listen to 680 News (AM 680) on a regular basis, for their traffic updates. (“Every ten minutes on the ones, at 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, and 51 minutes past each hour...”) But sometimes I’m leaving the office at just the wrong time—it’s 4:43, and I’ve just missed the traffic, and won’t hear it again for 8 more minutes, but I need to decide which highway to take now.

Luckily, 680 News has introduced a new feature where you can get traffic reports on demand, on your mobile phone. If you text message the word “traffic” to the number 680680, a computer will call you back on your cell phone, and play back a recording of the last traffic report that was given. (For some reason, they will also send you a text message back, to let you know that they’ll be calling you, which is kind of unnecessary. Also, my phone often rings with the call before the text message even arrives, which kind of defeats the purpose.)

If you want to try this feature, keep in mind that it costs fifty cents per call.

New Toy?

I was thinking about my devices over the last couple of days, and I thought that maybe I should change my approach. What I’d been hoping to do was get one device, preferably running the PocketPC (now called Windows Mobile) operating system, that would be both my phone and my PDA. The front-runner was the SMT5600, which is currently being sold by Rogers.



However, I’m now thinking that maybe I should go another route; instead of getting one device, maybe I should just get a really simple phone, but one that has Bluetooth capabilities, and just keep my Axim. (For more information on the Axim, refer back to the “I’m such a nerd” post, here.) Then I can just maintain all of my contacts and stuff on there, and when I want to call someone, I can get the Axim to make my phone dial the number. I’ve never actually tried this, because I don’t have a phone with Bluetooth, so I don’t know how cumbersome that will be.

So, if I do go that route, I think I know what phone I would get. Which would be the Razr, pictured below.

Book Review: The Summer That Never Was

As I mentioned previously, I read a lot of books while I was on vacation. (Just to name a few: Einstein for Dummies, by Carlos I. Calle, which wasn’t bad; The Chancellor Manuscript, by Robert Ludlum, which was also pretty good; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John le Carré, which was up to le Carré’s usual standard of brilliance; Valhalla Rising, by Clive Cussler, which I thought was crap; The Dark Half, by Stephen King, which I liked.) However, I’m not going to bother posting reviews of all of them, because it’s too much work, and I’m a lazy, lazy man.

However, I just finished another book last night, The Summer that Never Was, by Peter Robinson. It’s a mystery novel, apparently one of a series involving Inspector Alan Banks, one of the main characters in the book. (There is a blurb on the front cover, by Stephen King: “The Alan Banks mystery-suspense novels are, simply put, the best series now on the market.... Try one and tell me I’m wrong.”) I thought the book was great; there are actually two mysteries going on at the same time, and I liked the way Robinson cut back and forth between them.

If you’re into mysteries, I highly recommend this one. The writing is good, the plot is good, and the characters are good. What more could you want?

Why serna Is Dumb

Alternate Title: stupidferna

Here is the thought that ran through my head last week: “Huh. It’s snowing. I guess that means it’s time to throw the umbrella into the trunk, and get the ice scraper out. No need for an umbrella when it’s snow season!”

Here is the thought that ran through my head last night, as I left work: “Huh. It’s pouring rain. Boy, I wish I had an umbrella...”

Incidentally, the title of this post is misleading; it doesn’t actually go into any reasons why I’m dumb. A more accurate title would have been “Further Proof That serna Is Dumb” I should have gone with the alternate title...

Election in Canada

Well, the vote of “no-confidence” passed today, which means there will be an election in Canada. They’re saying probably on January the 23^rd, but, when I wrote this, it wasn’t official yet.

Which means that I have to bone up on my Canadian politics; although I’ve been reading The Nation lately—and watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, of course—I haven’t been following Canadian politics as I should. I need to research the issues a bit, and especially who will be running in my particular ward. If you’re Canadian, I also urge you to please—please!—research the issues, and make an informed decision! Don’t just say “I’m a conservative, so I’m going to vote Conservative”, or “I’m a liberal so I’m going to vote Liberal”—that way lies madness!

Well, that’s a bit over the top... But consider this article (American, unfortunately): If asked in a survey, 30% of Americans would call themselves “conservatives”, while only 18% would call themselves “liberals”. However, when asked about actual issues—not just “are you a conservative or a liberal”, but “how do you feel about X”, where X is health insurance, or raising the minimum wage, or protecting the environment, or “do you think the troops should come home from Iraq”—an overwhelming majority of Americans respond in a very “liberal” way. Regardless of what they may call themselves, they are actually responding very “liberally” to the issues.

This is especially important for Christians to consider. (I know that most of the people who read my blog are personal friends of mine, meaning that a lot of them are Christians.) It’s very tempting, if you’re a Christian, to just say “well, Christian = conservative”, and vote for a conservative party—whether that’s the Conservatives in Canada, or the Republicans in America. But if you look at the actual issues for which these parties stand—and I mean all of them, not just the ones emphasized when the neocons are talking to church groups—you’ll find that they don’t agree with Christian teachings most of the time. How do you feel about the poor? Well, conservatives aren’t big fans; they’d much prefer that the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. How do you feel about the environment? Well, conservatives would rather loosen environmental laws, because they say that would be good for business, while liberals would prefer to have strong environmental laws, so that people don’t have to live next to un-advertised toxic waste dumps. (I am, of course, very much over-simplifying, to make a point; however, I’m hoping to research the issues more, and post more about them here, and I think you’ll find that it’s true much of the time.)

Unfortunately, when it comes to politics, things aren’t simple. For example, if you’re a Christian, and have really given some thought and analysis to the issues, you probably have certain stances on some things¹. For example:

• You may be against abortion, which would make you a conservative
• You may be in favour of environmental protection, which would make you a liberal
• You may be against gay marriage, which would make you a conservative
• You may feel that the richer you are, the more taxes you should pay, and the poorer you are, the less taxes, which would make you a liberal—conservatives tend to believe in something called “trickle down economics”, also called “supply-side economics” (this is the current trendy term), also called “voodoo economics”, under which they want to make it so that rich people don’t have to pay taxes, because they feel it would be good for business.

These are a few examples; there are others. The point is, there won’t be a political party which matches your beliefs 100%. So you’re going to have to decide what’s important to you, and what you can let slide.

As a Christian, you may be surprised to find that I take a more “liberal” stance, overall. I’d rather feed the poor, and help the hungry, even if it does mean that gay people can get married. It doesn’t mean that I’m for gay marriage; it just means that I care more about the issue of feeding the poor than I do about whether gay people can get married. There is a good portion of the book What’s So Amazing About Grace, by Philip Yancey, that sort of applies:

When I went to the White House to visit President Clinton, I knew well that his reputation among conservative Christians hinged on two issues: abortion and homosexual rights. I agree fully that these are important moral issues which Christians must address. But when I went through the New Testament I could find very little related to either one. Both practices existed then, in a different and more egregious form. Roman citizens did not rely principally on abortion for birth control. The women bore their babies, then abandoned them by the side of the road for wild animals or vultures. Likewise, Romans and Greeks also practiced a form of same-gender sex: older men commonly used young boys as their sex slaves, in pederasty.

Thus in Jesus’ and Paul’s day both these moral issues asserted themselves in ways that today would be criminal in any civilized country on earth[sic]. No country allows a person to kill a full-term, delivered baby. No country legally permits sex with children. Jesus and Paul doubtless knew of these deplorable practices. And yet Jesus said nothing about either one, and Paul made only a few references to cross-gender sex. Both concentrated not on the pagan kingdom around them but on the alternative kingdom of God.

For this reason, I wonder about the enormous energy being devoted these days to restoring morality to the United States. Are we concentrating more on the kingdom of this world than on the kingdom that is not of this world? The public image of the evangelical church today is practically defined by an emphasis on two issues that Jesus did not even mention. How will we feel if historians of the future look back on the evengelical church of the 1990s and declare, “They fought bravely on the moral fronts of abortion and homosexual rights,” while at the same time reporting that we did little to fulfil the Great Commission, and we did little to spread the aroma of grace in the world?

One more thing to think about, for those of us living in Rexdale: In the last election, in Ward 1 (where I live), 140 people voted. One hundred and forty. People always say that their vote doesn’t count, but when your vote is only one in 140, it counts a lot more!

Anyway, I have a lot more to say on the topic, but I’m hoping to do some research on the actual issues, and post some real information here. I’m going to try not to sway you my way, politically, and just present the issues, and where the different parties stand—but we all know that it will be hard for me to do that, and my views will probably come through. So too bad!

¹You may disagree with me on some aspects of this post, by the way. When it comes to politics, things aren’t always as cut and dried as we’d like. There will be some issues where I can take a hard-line stance, and say “if you’re a Christian”, you should believe this, but there are a bunch of other issues where it’s not that simple.

serna vs. Serna

I’ve realized that I’m not always consistent with how I spell my name; sometimes I use a small “s”, as in “serna”, and sometimes I use a big “S”, as in “Serna”. The rule, in my head, is that it should be a small “s”, as in “serna”; any time I write “Serna”, I’m just breaking my own rule.

If I can’t even get my own name right, how will I ever get others’ names right?!?

Deceptively Busy

Don’t be fooled by the number of [useless] posts I’ve put up today; I was actually pretty busy at work. It’s mostly just during the end of the day—when I was waiting for my wife to call, so that I could go home—that I had time to kill for the really useless posts. (I realize that they’re all useless, to one degree or another, but by the end of the day today, I was just getting silly...)

Of course, it really sucks that my wife had to work late tonight. Since I was up so early for work this morning—and since I have to be up late tonight, also for work—I was really hoping to go home early today, so that I could at least get some sleep, before I have to get back up. Oh well; c’est la vie.

Of course, the other reason I was able to post so much is that I’ve customized the heck out of my HTML editor, so I can tear these posts off in no time flat.

Minor Formatting Update

I have changed the formatting of links to not be so big. I don’t know why I made them so big in the first place, but whatever the reason, I changed my mind, and made them smaller.

That’s all I have to say. You may now resume your life, which is already in progress.

An Interview With Serna

The editors of this blog would like to present an interview with the creative “man behind the scenes”, sernaferna. All of the posts on this site are written by serna, and self-edited. Um... yes, technically this does mean I’m talking to myself, for this post—but I’m doing it in blog form, which is different. Also, I’m doing it in the third person, so it doesn’t look as weird.

Question: We understand that you’re a nerd; exactly how much of a nerd are you?
Answer: Well, let me give you an example: I have just spent about an hour uploading tiny little images, to Blogger’s image upload tool, to represent a bunch of emoticons I use in MSN Messenger. These aren’t images I would ever use in the blog itself—just for posts where I’m relaying a conversation I had in MSN.

Q:Wow. That is pretty nerdy.
A: Yeah, I told you. But I was bored, waiting for my wife to get off work, so that I could go pick her up, and—

Q: No, I mean that’s really nerdy. Like “you should get some help” kind of nerdy.
A: Yeah, uh... next question please?

Q: Right, right. So where do you get your ideas, when you’re creating a new bl— I’m sorry, I can’t get over this. An hour?!?
A: Uh, yeah, it takes a while to upload them all, and then I had to create a macro in HTML-Kit to insert them into the posts, and—

Q: Sorry, wait... a macro? You created a macro? Uploading the images wasn’t enough, and you had to do some programming, too???
A: Look, the images wouldn’t be much use if there wasn’t an easy way to include them in a post, would they? Are we going to talk about anything else?

Q: Well, I... [checking notes] No, not really. All of my questions are about how nerdy it is to spend so much time on images for posts—
A: MSN Messenger posts, not regular posts.
Q: Yes, MSN Posts. So... I didn’t bring any questions on anything else.
A: Okay, interview over.

And that’s all for today. Tune in for future interviews with the “man behind the blog”, sernaferna.

MSN Emoticons

Since I occasionally post conversations that I’ve had in MSN, and got tired of replacing all of the emoticons with textual descriptions of the emoticons, I decided to upload a bunch of emoticons into Blogger, so that I can use them in my posts. For example:

some person says:
What are you doing?

sernaferna says:
nothing, but I still don't want to talk to you!

some person says:


Of course, I’ll only use emoticons for MSN conversations that I transcribe—I don’t want to start using them in regular posts. It’s just too... I don’t know. Too lazy, to use emoticons in blog entries. (Yes, I realize I probably just insulted all of my friends who have blogs on Spaces...)

Venezuela Pictures

Edited post

Although I tend not to edit posts, once I’ve put them up, this one’s an exception. I’ve modified the links to my photos site.

Probably not that important, but I’m anal-retentive, that way.

I’ve finished making a first pass through the pictures we took in Venezuela, doing whatever cropping or brightness adjustments that needed to be made. (And deleting pictures that were too blurry, or pictures of my feet, or whatever.) Unfortunately, they didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped they would, overall.

When we went to Guyana and Barbados last year, I brought the same camera along, and took almost as many pictures, which came out great. (If you’d like, you can go here and see them, along with any other pictures that I’ve put online for public consumption. There are separate albums for “Guyana” and “Barbados”, and will be soon a third album for “Venezuela”—if it isn’t there already, by the time you go. Actually, because there are so many pictures, I’ve been toying with the idea of making multiple albums, by subject, so we’ll see how the mood takes me...)

So I was expecting similar quality, which, unfortunately, I didn’t get. It just goes to show that you really do need skill to take pictures—you can’t just expect your camera to do all of the work for you, even if it’s a good one.

The only mystery is why last year’s pictures came out so great...

A Revisit of the Olfactory Enhancement Revisit

It happened again. This time it was a man with too much cologne, on the elevator.

I don’t think it’s as bad as last time, though. It’s only been about 5 minutes, and the taste is already leaving my mouth.

GrouchyFerna

You know what I hate? Getting up early in the morning. For example, say around 5:00AM. That’s early—and I hate being up then.

You know what I hate even more? Getting up early in the morning—say 5:00AM or so—for no reason. That’s worse.

On the plus side, I visited a friend’s blog today, that I haven’t been to in a while, and the first thing I saw was a picture of myself. That helped out the ol’ ego.