Snow, Snow, and More Snow

Holy crap, will this white stuff ever end? I thought it was over and suddenly today it started coming down again, something like three weeks now, which is insane for the lower mainland… normally we get a day or two of snow, turns to rain the next day and is turned into a grey sludge and is gone the day after, and we get the standard rain, grey, and more rain.

Rain is predicted Monday though, which makes sense as that’s the first day I’m back to work.

Christmas was good, very lazy. In contrast to last year when I had on call and a blackberry to deal with, the new job gives the time between Christmas and new years off, plus a couple of days (cause who is going to go back to work for the one day after new years day before the weekend). I have to admit the the couch now has a far more pronounced dip in it in the shape of my ass.

I have resisted buying a new huge TV, partially cause now I have bills and whatnot paid off and actually have money in the bank, I want to do my best to keep it there. Course, I did buy a new laptop for Andrea and a new camera (Canon G10) for me.

I’m not convinced about the camera yet (pics to be posted soon) because it’s image quality seems to get really full of sensor noise. The DPReview reviews of the G10 compared to the Panasonic LX3 show the LX3 coming out way ahead in terms of lower light shots. The Canon folks seem to call BS on this, saying that the image stabilization will make this less of a big deal, and pointing out that the 5x zoom (vs 2.5x) and viewfinder (vs no viewfinder) trump the LX3. This is of course accurate, but for me the smaller size (potentially fitting in a pocket) lens with wider angle (24mm vs 28mm) and faster aperture (f/2.0-2.8 vs f/2.8-4.5) may trump all.

Course, the LX3 seems to be unavailable anywhere (stores in Vancouver say anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months, amazon won’t ship to Canada, and there may be some available in Bellingham), and I really don’t want to plunk a pile of $$ down on a camera without getting my greasy paws on it in the flesh.

The other issue with the new TV is it’s of course not just the TV….. to take advantage of an HD TV I’d need a blue ray player of some sort, plus the digital HD service, plus a new PVR (or HD PVR card) to get HD stuff played on it. I’m sure it’ll happen at some point though.

Oh! Other big news… after literally months of work I have completed my music library organization. All tracks are rated (or at least, have been gone through and the good ones rated), all tracks have good metadata (through Musicbrainz) and proper genre’s. So now I have:

And yes, I know I have a problem with packrat-itus.

The other thing this has let me do is re-create my old cassette tape mixes. The one thing that just isn’t here anymore is a new/better way to do mix tapes anymore. I guess about the closest would be a CD mix, but who uses CDs anymore? Anyway anyone who drove with me in the 90’s (Brad!) will remember Mix I, Mix II, etc, which are now back with me! Now to back that library file up somewhere…

Course, 99% of the time I’m listening to the Howard Stern show or some random tech podcast…