Peaeater

Some people write newsletters at Christmas. Sometimes I even write newsletters. This year I did not write a newsletter, so now, in that dreadful trough between Xmas and New Years, I will do my best to make up for it. Well, not my best exactly. More along the lines of the comments I used to get in my grade school report cards: "Peter is bright enough but needs to apply himself if he wishes to achieve his full potential in class."

Things I did not do this year, but which will cause mille regrets on my deathbed:

• Write a book. Write a decent short story. Write a coherent sentence.
  
• Go to France. Go to the Okanagan on a wine tour. Go to Calgary on business. Wait, I did that one. Only 99 things left to do before I die.
• Write a rather brilliant app that will sell in such quantity I can retire, except for the bug fixes, upgrades, tech support, OS ports... I guess I'm not too upset about this one.
• Get to know the intimate hopes, fears, dreams, and aspirations of all my friends and family to the point at which blackmail becomes my main source of monthly income.
• Construct any physical thing, with my own hands mind you, that could not be out-engineered by a palsied preschooler who ate his own gluestick.

Things I did do this year, but which still may cause mille regrets:

• Played many a World War II video game.
• Read many a book. On World War II. Re-read point 1, above, for immediate application to my life.
• Supported the endangered comma by sowing it as liberally as possible into every paragraph I could get my hands on. Except this one.
• Contributed to the gradual but unstoppable fattening of the cat by feeding him every he asked, just to shut him up.
• Wondered how to get ahead in life without endangering my carefully constructed and finely tuned leisure infrastructure.
  

Lifehacker.com is a superb site that recommends software downloads and websites that make your life easier. Your computer 'n' gadgets life. Yes, that does too qualify as a life, regardless of what my wife says.

Handy dandy tips like, I don't know, here's a random assortment from trolling their archives:

• Put a PC on a stick. (A USB stick, unlike a corn dog.)
• Let Pandora.com create instant radio stations based on music you like.
• Schedule Skype to call your cell phone with wake-up calls or reminders.
• Search photos by colour with Yotophoto

Stuff like that.

Even better, you can subscribe to the whole thing or just categories that interest you: e.g. Digital Photos?

Lifehacker sez: "don't live to geek, geek to live."

When was the day that geek became an acceptable and widely understood lifestyle? I know it wasn't that long ago because I remember being called a geek in school and it hurt. It hurt mostly because I couldn't think of a suitably biting reply right away: "Shutup, you good-looking, socially successful, good-at-sports upper middle class type person."

None of the insults I carefully manufactured with the aid of a dictionary in the school library were as scathing as one might have hoped either:

 

Me: "Hey Parker, shutup, you paralegal troglodytic asexualite."

Parker: "Shutup, geek."*

Me: "Ow, my emotions."

Years of counseling.

 

* Parker was, as ever, one-upping me by playing on Shakespeare. Rugby star and a classical wit. The dastard.

"Malvolio:...Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd, Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest, And made the most notorious geck and gull That e'er invention play'd on? tell me why.", Twelfth Night, Act IV, Scene III.

At a certain middle school in a certain town, a certain young person has been giving vent to an uncontrollable and secret urge. An urge to deposit... er... deposits upon the tiles of the washroom floor. And in a recent case, within the shoe of a very unlucky student in the boy's change room. Another reason always to use the lockers provided, people. It's one thing to have your things taken - it's quite another to be given something extra you didn't want.

The experts are perplexed and baffled, and more than a little disgusted. This reporter is unable to reveal further details lest his informant become subject to punitive action by the ever thuggish Victoria School Board.

But fear not, because Encyclopedia Brown is on the case. He will sniff out the... no. He will track the... no. Alright, he will dust for... gad, NO.

[Pause.]

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been authorized to say that Encyclopedia Brown has reviewed his case load at the present time and regrets to inform he will be unable to pursue the Case of the Bowel Bandit until such time as someone else solves it. Thank you.