Category: Journal

LEGO is awesome

In order to celebrate LEGO’s 50th anniversary, [Boing Boing Gadgets](http://gadgets.boingboing.net/lego/) is posting retrospectives on LEGO sets over the years.

I was all about the space and town sets. It looks like Joel was more space and castle. No town stuff, sadly. In his summary of his [nine favourite sets](http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/01/28/50-years-of-lego-nin.html), I absolutely remember building the headlining [Galaxy Explorer](http://guide.lugnet.com/set/497). I didn’t have the [Futuron Monorail](http://peeron.com/inv/sets/6990-1), but I remember wanting it desperately.

So that was a nice reminiscence. But then he posted [The Six Ugliest Space Lego Sets](http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2008/01/29/the-six-ugliest-space-lego-sets/). I looked at it, and it looked like, except for the two robots from the 90s, I had every one of those. I loved the [Robot Command Center](http://guide.lugnet.com/set/6951)! Even as the robot. It had mini-vehicles that fit in the robot’s sides, which is always cool.

On closer inspection, though, I didn’t actually have the 1593 at the end of the article, but the [two](http://guide.lugnet.com/set/6929) [sets](http://guide.lugnet.com/set/6880) it was built from. I think. The vehicle docking thing in the 1593 looks awfully familiar. I know I had all those pieces, though. They were some of the first sets I got. There’s no way I have the boxes or instructions anymore to figure out what I actually had…

New Year’s Eve

I’m throwing my usual New Year’s party tonight. I still have to vaccuum the living room, but I think I’m mostly ready at this point.

I’ve got three screens set up for video games or watching stuff, two tables set up for video games, and a couple more old Commodore monitors and an extra table available for overflow. I’ve got my nacho dip chilling in the fridge and meatballs simmering in the crock pot. The house is cleaner than it’s been all year (I actually ended up cleaning up some stuff left sitting around from *last year’s party*), I’m resplendent in holiday finery (heh) and I think everything’s ready to go. I just have to pick people up coming from out of town, rent some Wii games and wait for people to arrive.

I hope I have enough chairs.

Even though I’m not really a party person per se, I really like *hosting* these things. I get to show off a bit, and it gives me something to do. I do wish Ellen could come, but I’m glad to be surrounded by friends at New Year’s.

One Thing I Miss About Belleville

One thing I sorely miss about Belleville when I’m living in Waterloo has to be municipal sidewalk clearning.

9:30am the morning after a spectacular snowstorm and the sidewalks are clear and easily walkable. All of them. Everywhere.

I know that by the time I’ll have to walk to work in the morning, I’ll still have to trudge across unshoveled sidewalks and risk my back (again) on the ice. It’s awful. There are people who *never* do it. I suppose I could call the by-law enforcement people on them, but honestly, they might be bed-ridden old people for all I know. Yeah, it’s their responsibility, but it’s a shitty system.

I don’t even have a sidewalk in front of my house and I think municipal sidewalk clearing is an absolutely blessing.

Go ahead, raise my taxes!

Posted from the train

I haven’t taken the train in ages. There isn’t an easy train you can get straight from Kitchener to Belleville and back (unless you want to get up very early morning and wait a couple hours in Toronto). It takes about three times as long to get home, taking delays into account, and costs about twice as much as driving (if you don’t take the cost of owning the car into account).

My mom insisted, too. It’s winter, and the weather can get pretty crappy. And since I’m going to be making the same trip back a week from now, it seemed like a good idea.

Before I got a car, I took the train home all the time. I checked my VIA frequent traveller reward thing and apparently I can get a one-way ticked to Kamloops just on points. Not that I would, of course. I’ve done that trip before. Three days on the train is pretty hard on the ass.

Sometime in the last five years, they put WiFi on the trains, and little outlets by all the seats. So I can get online and talk to people and post blog posts and all sorts of stuff. I can’t do that when I’m driving. It’s not the greatest connection, particularly since I’m connected through the VPN to work for safety’s sake, but it works, and I can check RSS feeds and stuff. YouTube eludes me, but I can live without that.

Where are we? I think we’re just leaving Oshawa… I can see the suckers on the 401 from here.

Actually, traffic’s really good.