darrenchartier.ca

today i was supposed to get more work done on my tattoo, unfortunately it’s also flu season. i made it all the way out to the warden station near where Leah Miller runs her tattoo business from her home, only to discover that she, and her whole family, is struck with the seasonal sickness i just got over.

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

i had more work done on my tattoo today, i’m very happy with the results.

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

i’m a bit of a nomad. i think i’ve lived in 15 different apartment since i moved out at 17, and it’s entirely possible i’ve missed one or two places. it should come as no surprise that i’m moving again.

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?

seriously

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

alright, another interview of a local candidate done! check out the post on democraticspace!

things that didn’t make it into my piece there.

1. Andrew had a blog before running as a liberal candidate, but even though he had a bunch of people review it and make sure there wasn’t anything crazy, once the main party saw it they wanted it taken down (to be fair, they didn’t say it was bad, just distracted from his main campaign message). Andrew is a smart cookie though, so he’s recycling some of his old posts into his new and official campaign blog on his site. =D
2. Andrew is a bit of an astronomy buff, which is of course cool to me. he talked about taking an astronomy course in university and how it has influenced his thinking. as a sci-fi nerd and casual astronomy fan myself, i respect that.

i’m hoping to interview the conservative candidate, but i have my doubts that she’ll make herself available. also i want to interview Jack, but i’ll settle for interviewing someone on his staff. but not until after the debates. i think i need to think up something else to blog about until after the debates, any ideas?

i interviewed Sharon Howarth, the green candidate for my riding today, the details are up at democraticspace

a few things that didn’t make it into that post.

1. we ran into the liberal candidate, Andrew Lang, as we walked out to the park bench where we sat and talked. was a funny moment in my mind. Sharon and Andrew seem like they’re on good terms from the .5 second interaction i witnessed

2. Sharon really does believe she can win, which struck me as commendable if unrealistic (would be really cool to be proven wrong on that front)

anywho, check out the post. i’ll be interviewing the Liberals next. i’ve been meaning to get in touch with the conservatives, but Christina Perreault’s website is conspicously missing an email address to contact and the days are too busy for me to find time to call (going to have to make some time i guess). if you’re from the toronto-danforth conservative party please get in touch with me! darrenc (at) gmail (dot) com

i guess i should try to get in touch with the NDP too, but really, what are the chances Jack has time for a little guy like me?

so in a fit of inspiration i answered a call for bloggers to cover our federal election. my first post is up, but i really need new material, the toronto-danforth race isn’t really all that interesting yet. anyone have any juicy inside information from the campaign trail they can send me?

http://www.democraticspace.com/canada2008/2008/09/toronto-danforth-is-there-any-chance-jack-wont-win/

it’s that time of year again, when politicians make promises we all know they won’t keep, but we keep our fingers crossed nonetheless that the promises we care about are the ones that will somehow make it through the grinder of political expediency. yes that’s right, it’s a canadian federal election.

i don’t follow hockey, baseball, nfl, futeball, or any other sports, but i do follow politics. i can’t help it, i was raised anglophone in quebec during multiple referrendums and bill 101. my family is predominately francophone, and if you don’t know, there’s nothing the quebecois like to do more than argue politics. i remember going to a dinner party with my mom and brother prior to the 1988 federal election, standing in the dining room shouting TORY! TORY! TORY! while the kids of the other adults shouted in turn NDP! NDP!! NDP! and LIBERAL! LIBERAL! LIBERAL!   (in my defence, my mom was a conservative supporter because she worked for an agency supported by their platform, shortly after their election victory they decided to cut staff at the agency and my mom was laid off, and ever since then, my enthusiasm for the conservatives has waned)

so, much like my ten year old self, i’m again in a position of trying to figure out who i should be shouting for at the dining room table. i don’t really trust any of them to do anything substantively positive on the files i think are important, however i’ve voted in just about every election i’ve been allowed to vote in, and i’m not going to stop now just because the candidates suck.

ok, to the point, i live in toronto-danforth, i think that jack will have a comfortable enough margin that perhaps i can vote freely without worrying about the strategic implications, here are my options:

• the dude with the mustache
• the “why do conservatives with no hope of winning always look good” candidate
• the required local activist
• and the “exactly what you’d expect a liberal candidate to look like” candidate

i’m sure there are others, but i haven’t voted for a joke party since i was a teenager, so i’ll stick to the big guns. despite my jabs at their physical appearance i assure you i will be voting based on both their stated policy platforms and how well they individually express those policy positions especially in the face of hostile questioning.

ah, i love election season

sometimes really great ideas are the result of just little off-hand comments or jokes… well at least that’s the theory.

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