here’s the meme, with a slight edit:

the rules

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post. (see above)
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post. (see below)
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

i’ll share my facts, but a) i don’t like to peer pressure anyone into a meme and b) honestly (and perhaps most importantly), i don’t really think i have seven friends with blogs (many acquaintences, but really my friends are generally not bloggers).

1) the first concert i ever went to was a grimskunk show, i was fourteen and my good friend Matt (no blog, no internet at home, hardcore anarchist punk social worker) bought me this shirt. i wore it for years until finally letting it go in a purge a couple years ago. also, i can’t believe that grimskunk is still kicking and still selling the same shirt.

2) i have read and re-read the entire chronicles of narnia more times than i can count. i was given the set when i was a child, and ever since i read them when i’m especially tired or sick. my favourite is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

3) i dropped out of high-school missing one OAC credit, but graduated university magna cum laude. i think some of the most important lessons in my life were learned between those two events.

4) i managed to make it through four solid years at york university without a strike. phew.

5) i have an older brother who alternately amuses, aggravates, and challenges me. i love him for all of it (except maybe the aggravating part). assuming he passes the physical, it looks like he’s going to be joining the canadian military soon. i wonder if this will bring out a conservative streak in me?

6) i was the first ever high school co-op student at northern telecom (back when it was still northern telecom). i passed up the chance to work there the summer after my co-op term, instead deciding to work at summer camp (why? short answer: girls). while i don’t waste time on regret i sometimes wonder how my life would gone have had i decided to stick with northern telecom.

7) i am an n-generational north american, meaning i have no idea when my ancestors came to north america. on my mothers side we’re french canadian with deep roots (apparently i’m related fairly closely to the bloc MP for Gatineau) and American going back to early settlement. on my fathers side i’m less sure, but i’m pretty sure it’s all quebecois and franco-ontarian. that makes me decidely a minority in toronto, where almost all of my friends are from one to three generations away from immigration to canada. given the franco roots, it’s a crying shame i can barely speak french.

so that’s it, no tagging of people for me. although if i could i’d tag my best friend Geoff who really should have a blog but i think he’s holding out just to piss me off =P

yes i’m a geek, i make no apologies for horribly bad geek jokes.

while i’m not generally superstitious, i like to think that how i spend my birthday sets the tone for the year to come.  last year, for my 30th, i spent my birthday traveling, en-route between koh tao and chiang mai in thailand as part of a commitment to myself to explore new places and ideas for that year.

today, i intend to spend my day thinking, writing, and being with people who are dear to me. Sameer, always an inspiration, challenged everyone he knows to come up with a word for 2009 to guide them. it’s a good exercise, thinking of a single word to act as a guiding light for a year, i encourage you to give it a try (and let Sameer know in the comments what you choose, it’ll make him smile).

my word for 2009 is open.

open is a good word. if you know me professionally you know that openness is something i’m advocate for in large faceless bureaucracies, and i think this year i’m going to try very hard to push an open agenda.

looking beyond the professional open is a good word to guide me personally. for 2009 i hope to be more open to my friends, family, and myself.

open is both an ethic and a goal for me this year, i hope i can do it justice.

strangely, i’m not really pissed about this. sure i spent a couple hours on transit on a saturday morning where i might have otherwise lain in bed catching up on my rss reader, but really, that’s not a great loss. in fact, it’s probably a good thing that i didn’t spend my day getting tattooed.

first, i’m about to embark on a two week trip through north-eastern north america, which is sure to put a bit of a dent into my bank balance, so not spending $600 on a tattoo appointment is going to help that cause. also, spending so much time in a car and traveling with a freshly tattooed arm was probably not my brightest idea anyways.

second, i’m just getting better from having been sick so perhaps i’m better off letting my body heal itself completely before spending four hours with the incessant buzz and painful sting of the tattoo needle.

and finally, i really need to do some thinking and find some really good source/reference imagery for the next phase of the tattoo.

you see, Leah and i are basically making this up as we go along. Leah’s style really requires freehanded drawing on your body, and she makes some really beautiful tattoos with this method, but it’s important to have some reference material with you when you go in for a session. we started with a great design that Emily drew for me, based on a rather abstract concept that’s been floating around in my head for the better part of a decade or so, but have since tried to expand the design/concept on our own.

so far we’ve been successful, but i know that i need more source material and i’m having a difficult time finding stuff i like. i’m hoping you, my dear three readers, will be able to help me out.

i’m not going to get into a description of the concept that underpins the tattoo, the original email was some obscene amount of words and contained all sorts of unpleasant philosophy jargon, but i don’t think it’s necessary for you to help me out.

what i’m looking for right now is an organic element that will sit in contrast to a CPU’ish looking portion of the tattoo already in place. i’m not sure what it should be, i’ve looked at images of seeds, microscopic cellular structures of all sorts, different types of nervous tissues and structures, but I can’t find the image that really gels and that would work for me.

so, if you’ve got any ideas, please hook me up with a link as a comment (or send me an email darrenc at gmail), you never know, something you find might end up being tattooed for all time on my arm =D

it’s still early days but i’m beginning to get an idea of what the complete picture is going to look like.

this post isn’t about moving.

when i get home i always empty my pockets. little bits of paper and coins mostly, and they all get dumped on the nearest available surface. the paper ends up either shredded, filed, or thrown out with my infrequent bouts of tidying, the coins get stashed in the nearest available coin vessel. it started with an old plastic ice cream container, when that filled up i grabbed an old juice jug, which eventually spilled over into other containers over the last decade or so.

today, while packing i drew the line, no more. not again. i would not move those damned coins into yet another apartment.

instead i emptied all the various coin collecting vessels into a fabric shopping bag and realized that i had perhaps waited five years too long to get this done.

I had 40 pounds of pennies, nickles, dimes, some quarters, maybe a couple loonies and toonies.

in my head i always knew i had lots of change lying around, but holy shit batman. how much were they worth?

$258.32

unbelievable! that’s after a 9.8% service charge too.

the responsible thing to do would be to put this money down on my student loans, but a certain friend keeps on telling me that i _need_ to get an xbox 360.

maybe one of the six people who read my blog have suggestions on what i should do with this windfall?

people talk all about the democratizing potential of easy publishing of your thoughts, but heck, sometimes you just don’t have anything interesting to say.

a quick update i guess, got my replacement nano, thinking of buying carbon offsets for the stupid fact that although the apple repair depot is less than 50km’s from my home they decided to ship me a brand new one all the way from china. i guess everything comes from china now, but it makes you feel extra guilty when you see the fedex tracking data on your individual bit of mass manufactured consumerism crossing the world just for you.

looking for a good skin for the nano, i don’t really think i want to have to post about a broken nano twice (and i somehow doubt that apple will replace one again [even though i still think it's a design flaw that a portable device breaks so easily]). any recommendations? so far i haven’t even found any in stores, so if you spot a review for skins for the new nanos i’d appreciate a link in a comment.

oh and just to prove there’s no hard feelings between me and apple, i bought myself a new macbook… you know, just cause i’m nice like that, i didn’t want apple to think i was _really_ mad at them.

sigh – tomorrow it’s off to the apple store to see if they’ll replace this. i measured, it fell all of 2 feet, a portable device should not suffer catastrophic failure from such a relatively minor fall.

i’ll post tomorrow with the results of my beg-a-thon at the apple store

d_c

UPDATE:

i went directly to the apple store today and was unsuccessful in convincing them to help me. i guess i shouldn’t be surprised, the folk at the store aren’t exactly empowered to fix customer relations issues.

i’m on the phone with apple support, the 1st level tech, after seeing this photo, told me “that should not happen with an ipod no matter how far it drops” and i’m currently on hold waiting for the 2nd tier support who has the authority to do something about this. cautiously optimistic that apple will fix this problem.

UPDATE 2:

need to call back tomorrow and get in touch with customer relations. =(

UPDATE 3:

Apple will repair my ipod, but i did have the misfortune of having to talk to the crabbiest person at Apple (Janet from customer relations). they’re going to ship me a box, i’m going to put the nano in it, and at some undetermined point in the future i should get my purple nano back… after which i will go out and buy myself one of those rubberized cases. in the meantime, i’ll use my first gen ipod nano, the one that is damn near indestructible. 

so, consider my story a warning, the new nanos are beautiful but extremely FRAGILE

joking around with a friend after dinner tonight i’ve got a great idea for a stupid little site that should get me using my camera again. just got to setup a domain and do a little wordpress install and customization, hopefully i’ll start posting next week.

what’s the idea you ask? it’s a surprise =P

i don’t want some clunky doodad you attach to your mount (what if i’ve got a flash eh?), nor do i want a camera that tells me how to find the nearest tim hortons, but i do want a camera with the gps receiver built in so that every photo is geotagged. is that too much to ask for?

apparently all the big photo announcements are made in the fall, including new models, i’m keeping my fingers crossed that i’ll have something to spend my money on come christmas time.