theMediaman.com

There are a lot of little things we left behind in Canada. Daily Internet access, large cars, regular phone calls from the parents, etc.  The one thing I think we really miss so far is a grid pattern for street layout.

In only the first week we’ve gotten lost while driving from point A to point B more times than I can count.  Signage is great, but when it fails it does so spectacularly. A road will fork, and the best indication of which way to go is only to 1) follow the freshest lines on the road or tarmack, 2) follow other cars, or 3) flip a fucking coin.

If our trip were a song, the chorus would be “it’s not on the map!”; Simone’s refrain every couple of minutes as we drive through one-horse towns, that gave no indication where the hell we were.

In spite of this, I’m quite happy I didn’t bother buying a GPS for this trip. While we didn’t necessarily find any points of interest by getting lost, it is still a thrill to see the parts of Portugal not yet sanitized for tourist viewing.

On the way up to Porto, we stayed at a few Pousadas, stopped in Fatima at the site of the Miracle of the Sun, and saw dinosaur footprints; two fascinating places for both the spiritual and scientific sides of my personality.

More details when we get back, as well as many photos. Many, many photos. We’ve been backing them up on the laptop to make sure that we get them back safely, so you can be guarenteed a long, slow slideshow of our two weeks here.

I’m not sure why I tend to get worked up more by the NDP than any other party. Perhaps it’s because I expect more of them, while never having high expectations of the Conservatives nor the Liberals. It could also have to do with the fact that the NDP tend to call during dinner hour with a pre-recorded message (following a 10 second span of silence).

Simone’s got her own stresses to deal with involving the wedding, so she’s taken to tuning me out when I go on a tirade about politics.  Rather than let it simmer, I wrote to my candidate, Peter Ferreira, and the party leader, Jack Layton. 

I also want to note that this is the second time I’ve had to send the NDP such a message.

Do you support the “Do Not Call List”?

“A Prime Minister who puts families first” should not be calling me while I’m having dinner with my family, posting nothing but a pre-recorded message.

Someone for whom “leadership is all about teamwork” should not be obliterating an innovative party’s chance to adequate exposure by blackballing them (in league with Harper) from public debates.  I am not fully in support of the Green Party’s platform. My values are rooted more in Socialism than Conservativism but I can tell you that the Green Party has a hell of a better chance of getting my vote in this election than does the NDP following this action.

If you’re going to put your efforts into excluding a party that doesn’t deserve to be in national debates, get rid of the Bloc.  They have candidates in fewer than one-quarter of the ridings the Green Party does. The Bloc Quebecois have never represented Canadian interests, nor would they even claim to.

If you do win this election, I hope you will enforce a Canadian “Do Not Call List”.  I would like to eat my dinner in peace.

Wow. My brain hurts.

But all that spare time spent learning about DVD capabilites, learning MPEG-2 compression technology, reading Blu-ray engineering whitepapers, and researching specs has paid off.  The crash-course I had today in preparing a DVD would NOT have been productive had I only ever experienced DVD authoring through Encore.

Tomorrow I get to author Blu-ray!

Still, around 3 o’clock I was getting pretty sleepy. It might have been the load of information, or the lunch I had from Burrito Boys…

Oh yeah, and every Wednesday, Juice Productions buys everyone lunch and we just sit around and shoot the shit for half an hour.  Sweet.  It’s a very large group of people who like movies, but I had to hold back on displaying my full wealth of nerdy trivia knowledge in order to keep from sounding like, well, a movie trivia nerd.

Still, I was able to identify Seth Rogen as the actor they were describing, and I also gave a brief outline of a Canadian film based off the same story as “21“… I might have gone overboard with that particular innane piece of trivia.

Tomorrow I get to author Blu-ray!

Dressed in khakis and one of my short-sleeve button-up shirts, I was woefully overdressed.  The only person as dressed up (and only just as “dressed up”) was one of the two partners. The other one - yep, shorts and a t-shirt. Tomorrow I think I’ll wear jeans.  However, I still haven’t gotten my gut down to a point where I feel comfortable in a t-shirt.

All the way to work I was feeling like it was the first day of school.  Simone had to reassure me that the other kids weren’t going to make fun of me.

I’m not kidding. Ask her.

The view is stunning, as it faces the downtown core from Adelaide and Peter with an unobstructed view.  I have to take a photo and post it.  This is definitely my new “favourite view” of Toronto following the obfuscation of my former favourite by all the new condos.

The trip home took 40 minutes. A far cry from the old time of 75-90 minutes. In fact, it takes an hour and a half just to walk the distance from work to my apartment.

Now I need sleep. My brain started slowing down today, and I need to keep my speed up. I have a little over a week before I leave for my honeymoon so I need to soak up as much valuable info as I can.

And tomorrow I get to author Blu-ray!