Raise you’re hand if you’re a procrastinator. What’s that? You’ll do it later? Yeah, exactly. I used to think that I wasn’t a serious procrastinator, but at the end of a given day when I can’t shut down Firefox on two computers because I have six different site posts started by not finished…I can’t argue with that. One look at my overflowing desk of review items also confirms that I say yes to things but have a hard time meeting my obligation to review them in a timely fashion. Those two particular problems are things I’m constantly working on, but I also have a different type of procrastination issue: not wanting to do tasks that are particularly onerous, whether for reasons of time-consumption or reasons of pain-in-the-butt-ness. Yesterday morning I decided to tackle a couple of the issues that had been sticking in my side for many months…

Selling my time-share in Mont Tremblant, Quebec, to my company: Thoughts Media Inc. is going to use it for a one-week giveaway prize in an upcoming Pocket PC Thoughts contest. Selling it involves paperwork, and I hate paperwork, but yesterday I bit the bullet and started the process. And, in a stunning move, I had the paperwork faxed back to the timeshare company on the same day I received it (thanks to my wife). So, scratch one task I’ve been putting off for, oh, 14 months.

Getting a new microphone clip: this one was more me being stubborn than anything else, because I felt like “the system” beat me and I hate that. I bought a NeXXtech tie clip microphone (not exactly the version I have, but close) that connects to my Canon GL2 camera for use in doing video reviews. When I bought it, the first day I tried to insert the microphone into the clip, the one side of the clamp on the clip snapped off. I was really gentle inserting the microphone, so I was completely baffled. A few weeks later I went back to The Source (formerly known as Radio Shack) and exchanged it - the guy popped open the other package they had in the store and gave me the clip from that one. I went home, gently inserted the microphone into the clip again…and it snapped. I was so incredibly angry that I shoved the whole thing into a corner and ignored it for a few months. I then decided to call NeXXtech support, and they informed me that a new clip would cost $23 CAD including shipping. WHAT?!? Keep in mind the whole microphone is only worth $60, and the part in question probably cost them 10 cents to make.

I declined being ripped off and they told me that the local Source stores provided warranty support so I should go back there. I went back to The Source store I bought it from to see if I could find some sort of satisfaction - I was convinced NeXXtech had released defective clips. The sales drone listened to me explain the problem, went and got a new package from the shelf, and guess what? It had my broken clip in it from months ago. He said he could order one in, but it would take about a month. I declined and went to another Source store, and they didn’t have the product in stock either. The manager on duty listened to me explain my problem, and he said he’d order in the part for me - and was vague on whether or not I’d be charged. I agreed, at this point willing to pay whatever it cost to get the stupid situation resolved, and he said he’d call me when the clip came in. That was back in February. So yesterday, after three months of waiting for the store to call me, I decided to call NeXXtech support and pay the $23. The money isn’t the issue, it’s the fact that I felt like the system beat me. But you know what I’m doing to do? I’m going to take that fresh clip into the Source store, and ask one of the employees (hopefully the manager) to insert the microphone into it for me. That way, if they break it, I’ll hopefully have some recourse. This goes without saying, but the NeXXtech tie clip microphone is a product best avoided.

Replaced a Headlight in my Car: Relatively minor, but it’s awkward and frustrating replacing the headlights on my Mazda Protege 5. I have a long history of headline problems with this car, so again I felt a high level of frustration that I was having to replace it at all (I lose a headlight every 4-6 months). But I gritted my teeth popped the hood, and spent a good 20 minutes fighting with the clamp trying to get it inserted and secured. Turned on the power, tested it - it worked! But my other headlight, which was working perfectly an hour earlier, wasn’t working. @*#&@#&(@*#&(@#(@. I’m convinced there’s an electrical problem with my car, but the only way Mazda will fix it is if I go back to them, let them install two factory headlights, and then I can’t touch it, and we see what happens. This morning I’m booking an appointment with them to get that done - I’m sick of being Mr. One Headlight.

Editing Japan Photos: Getting back from Japan meant returning with over 2000 photos in RAW format, and coming back to thousands of email messages and a pile of work. I got photos from days zero through five processed while I was in Japan, then I hit a wall with over 800 photos from Himeji Castle and couldn’t get through them while on vacation. Then the thought of having to deal with so many photos really put me off dealing with it - Captain Procrastination flies again - so I ignored it for more than a month. Earlier this week I finally blasted my way through them, publishing our day six photos earlier this week. Yesterday, on a roll, I finished our day seven photos as well (I just need to add the comments, then I can publish them). Chaaarge!!!

Now if only I could get through that big pile of technology…I’m going to try and do a couple of unboxing videos today. Here I go!

I was on my friend Vincent’s blog and he linked to a post on another blog that I found quite interesting and worth passing along. The topic? Nuclear power, and the blog post author has a cheeky exchange with himself about the “evils” of nuclear power. Turns out that from 1970 to 1992 there were 32 total deaths related to nuclear power. Deaths related to coal? 6400. Hydroelectric? 4000. Natural gas? 1200 deaths. Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? Nuclear power has a perception problem, and changing people’s perceptions about something is a long and difficult task. Someone has to start doing it though, because nuclear power is the future of electricity generation. Yeah, solar and wind power are nice and all, but they can’t scale properly because they need space (wind) and have high distributed costs (solar panels on every house would be expensive). I’m no environmental expert, but when I look at rising food costs that (apparently) are partially due to farmers selling their crops to be used in bio-fuel, I see a big red flag: it makes no sense to save money on fuel but pay more for food. As a planet we need to rely even more on electricity, and we need to use nuclear power to generate that electricity cheaply and cleanly. Read the article for lots of great reasons why.

I’ve always found tattoos fascinating, and now that I have one I guess I’m part of the minority of people in the world that have been permanently marked with ink. This guy has a tattoo so crazy it’s in a class by itself…

I found these images here.

My buddy Adam sent me this - I don’t know if that’s Japan, Korea, China, or someplace else, but we never saw anything like this in Japan. That’s a good thing too, because if someone started pushing me like that, I’d start throwing some elbows!

It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum - and I’m fresh out of bubble gum. All Thoughts Media sites are back online, and here’s the explanation of what happened.

Since a few people have been asking and must have missed my photo comment with what the tattoo is…it’s the Japanese kanji character for “Samurai”. And if you’re wondering why I got this particular kanji, you don’t know me very well at all.

People who live in Calgary have a saying: if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes, and it will change. Exaggerations aside, it is rather amusing (in a bi-polar kind of way) how quick the weather will change. On February 27th, the weather was clear, sunny, and quite warm (I think around 10 degrees Celsius). There was no snow on the ground in my back yard. The morning of February 28th, I woke up to this:

The above photo was taken at 10 AM. Eight hours later, at 6 PM, here’s what the same scene looked like:

The snow is nearly gone - the temperature was over 10 degrees Celsius and the day was beautiful. I love this city, but the weather is sure bizarre sometimes…

It seemed like I was never going to get my contest launching post done, but I did, and the list of $6500 USD in prizes is up at Digital Home Thoughts. Like prizes? Sure you do. Keep an eye on the site, and enter to win…

Math has never been so beautiful - you can grab 50 flame fractal wallpapers from this site. Unfortunately they want all the pageviews they can get, so there’s no single ZIP file download - you’ll have to grab ‘em all manually like I did.

Some of the regular readers of this blog have been very helpful in giving me suggestions and feedback on my post about us shopping for a new car when we drove a Nissan Altima Coup
and really liked it. One of the comments was from a fellow who goes by the name of Cold Flame and he suggested I look into buying out the lease on Ashley’s Mini Cooper and selling it privately. That had never occurred to me, because prior to financing then buying the Mazda Protégé 5, my previous two cars were leased Chevy Cavaliers - which of course have very poor re-sale value, so I always gave them back to the dealership. I was surprised to learn that our buy-out on Ashley’s Mini Cooper is only $14K, and a quick search of the online Auto Trader tells me that 2004 Mini Coopers with more mileage than hers are selling for $20K to $22K! So this might be a way to make a quick $5-6K, which makes that $37K Nissan Altima Coup a more affordable $31K. I love learning new things, so thanks Cold Flame