The Blog of Harald

other than the chest cold :-)

Saturday we arose long before dawn to get the boy up and dressed for his soccer tournament. Dropped him off at the school bus, spun past Tim Hortons, and watched the sun rise somewhere around the QEW and Ford Drive. Fortunately, the day was sunny and warm. The kids played four awesome games, and BVG ended up winning the first ever Under 10 “C” tournament! This was the first year they had enough “C” teams for a tournament; in previous years they’ve had to mix the “C” and “B” teams into a single tournament. Naturally the kids were very excited…

After that, we dropped by the Dyments farm near Dundas to select pumpkins. Of course we had to ride the haywagon, and play in the hay fort, and run through the corn maze… fun was had by all.

As if that wasn’t enough to cram into a single day, we then flew home to Fairview Mall to watch Wallace and Grommit (and yes, the adults laughed at all of the adult-only jokes. “May contain nuts” indeed :-).

Unfortunately, all of that running around left us tired and grumpy, and we had a group fight before bed. Other than that, a perfect day…

Today was pumpkin carving, and a spot of laundry, and lawn mowing, as October continues to be unseasonably warm. And with the time change, I hope we won’t have trouble getting out of bed on Monday, for a change!

So the car wasn’t stolen after all.

The night guy at the parking lot realized that he still had a key and a car, so he locked the key in the little safe in the booth, called his boss, and headed home.

The boss concluded that while nobody was at the lot, Michaela would have arrived at her car, found no key, and headed for home some other way. In an unusual display of customer service, he came downtown, retrieved the car key, and parked our car in an underground lot across the street so that it would not get broken into or stolen. (Oh, the irony :-)

He fetched the car this morning, so when Michaela drove up in her rental car she found our missing car right where she had left it…

It could be argued that the parking attendant should have left a note or something. However, his intentions were good, and apart from some _panic_ on our part, nothing is damaged or broken; all in all, a happy ending.

Apparently we’ve been Noticed.

Last month a bunch of fraudulent charges showed up on my Visa card, and I was forced to replace it.

Last night, one of our cars was stolen from a downtown parking lot.

Where is my herd, and how can I go hide back in the center?

Did you know that in 1977, a U.S. Patent was issued for the combover? Yes, it’s true, “Patent 4,022,227 – Method of concealing partial baldness”:http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,022,227.WKU.&OS=PN/4,022,227&RS=PN/4,022,227 was issued to Frank and Donald Smith, of Orlando, FL.

I read about it at Damien Katz: Combover where there’s also a link to Combover: The Movie…

Who knew that the fortunes and misfortunes of America were directly tied to the television career of David Hasselhoff?

Now you too can read all about it at Damien Katz: Who moved my Hasselhoff?

bq. I’m sure if there’s something out there they’re wise enough to stay away from us.

— Gil Grissom, Las Vegas Crime Lab

bq. Change is mandatory, survival is optional; choose wisely!

atrributed to François Tavenas, but I think it’s actually older…

In a wonderful parody of art, an expert conman has disappeared with more than €5 million by persuading banks that he was a secret service agent investigating terrorist money-laundering:

Banks caught by €5m spy sting

What happened to jack-fm? Since Friday there’s been nothing but music, commercials, and those inane “we play what we want” snips. What happened to the personalities? What happened to the *news, weather, and traffic*, for goodness sake?

Grr.

tremble.com: we clap on the downbeat

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.

Andrei Zmievski: How to Sell a Bulldozer

The upgrade to WordPress 1.5 was painless. I had to:

* backup :-)
* install the new version
* run the database upgrade script
* get a new version of the textile 2 plugin
* copy my old index.php etc. files into a theme directory, edit them, and activate the theme

That last step took most of the time, but it now seems that the old blog and the new blog look the same, so…

tah-dah!

Interesting description of near-future events:

deconsumption: Timeline for Unfolding Crisis of Mankind

via “How to Save the (World”:http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/10/01.html#a1290)