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On May 19, 1999, Episode I – The Phantom Menace was released to theaters. This was a grand day for Star Wars fans everywhere in the world.

Then, the fallout began. Thoughts of how George Lucas stole their childhood memories of Star Wars and replaced it with this stinking pile of poodoo came across the minds of a lot of people.

I, was not one of those people.

I remember going to the theater with the Bayshore boys and catching this flick and just being amazed at the opening crawl of a new Star Wars film. How was this even possible? How could a film excite me in such a way? Wait…this is a NEW film! All of this excitement lasted the entire movie for me.

I never had a problem with Jar Jar Binks, I never had a problem with how it was a film geared for kids. I mean, what do we expect? I started out watching Star Wars film on MCTV on a Saturday afternoon wondering what the heck this movie was with a guy riding some giant camel in the snow of Kapuskasing? Oh, wait, did he just cut open that thing with a lazer sword? What the heck is this?

Then I remember going to Dad’s friend Ernie’s place and while they partied it up, I sat in the living room and spied a collection of movies and realized that the same lazer sword I spied on television matched the same on the box of this movie. I popped it in and fell in love.

To watch The Phantom Menace over and over and over again, did not bother me one bit. It continued the magic for me. Now, will I admit that there are better Star Wars films than The Phantom Menace? Sure, of course. I definitely enjoyed Eps II and III a lot more. I think George Lucas tweaked the films because of the backlash which made the further prequels better. Without The Phantom Menace, we wouldn’t have the awesomeness which is Episode III.

It’s ten years later…wow, what a ride. Star Wars is bigger than ever, with a new trilogy to watch, an animated series, and a live action TV series coming out. I will admit that the Star Wars bug has left my body after many years and I can go months without thinking about it. I’m not saying that I don’t love everything to do with Star Wars, but at the same time, I have other priorities in my life.

So faithful viewers…thoughts on The Phantom Menace?

After work on Friday I headed out towards Morrisburg with the sun shining down on me.  What a beautiful weekend for a golf tournament!  Unfortunately for me, I was not taking part in the actual tournament this year but nonetheless, I knew there was fun to be found south of Ottawa.

I stopped by Long and McQuade on my way out of town to pick up a new music stand as I was probably going to be playing some guitar and I needed a hefty stand to hold up my monster of a binder.  I then hit the road (ala Bank Street) and enjoyed the scenic drive which brought me to the MacIntosh Inn in Morrisburg where the Gaspe Golf Tournament is held every year.  I say this as I swear Mike assumed I was going to Gaspe for a golf tournament for the second year in a row!

I walked in and everyone had arrived just in time to see that there was a room rented out to celebrate Mom and Dad’s retirement.  Uncle Brent was there as well as he was coming into Ottawa for a conference the next week.  Someone (I believe Lynn and Sue) had ordered some pizza (the pizza at the MacIntosh Inn is amazing) which was a welcome sight after driving so I sat down with Uncle Greg and the parents and chatted for a bit.  Afterward, I went with Uncle Greg to work on the slide show.  Uncle Greg had some great old pictures to show off so I spent the next hour inputting them into a Frankenstein of a presentation that was made from the copy that was from Dad’s work retirement party.

Once that was all said and done I went down to the big room and it was packed to the gills!  I ordered myself a beer ($5.50!  I found out later that if I didn’t order a Keith’s it would have been $4.50.  Insanity!) and asked that some extension cords be brought down.  I set up the laptop, said a few words thanking everyone for being here, let everyone know where the washrooms are and then played the first two slides of the show which were a recap of why Dad doesn’t wear shorts.  We then got a picture of them cutting the cake and then let the slide show run.  There were a few great photos in that lot from yesteryear.

The night proceeded in a manner of interesting conversation and hearing Uncle Johnny’s voice from seven tables over.  I was surprised to hear that Uncle Richard’s team needed a fourth as someone backed out so I decided I would play considering I was originally going to head back home with Vero on the Saturday, but Vero was not around as she was studying for her interview.  We managed to track down some clubs for me and we were all set.

We all piled into Lynn and Sue’s hotel room afterward and I’m amazed that we weren’t thrown out.  Perhaps the entire floor was in there, hence how we were not thrown out due to a noise violation!

The next morning I awoke to find out if I was playing golf and I raced over to Tim Horton’s where I met Uncle Greg and then I went back to the hotel looking for a pair of shorts to borrow as it was quite hot outside.  When you’re not prepare to play golf for six hours, the event seems daunting but I thought to myself “How bad can six hours of golf in a cart with a beer be?”

Our team headed over to the Cedar Glen golf course (an excellent golf course by the way) and our team assembled…Uncle Richard, Jacques, Andrew and myself were out to take the cup this year (we didn’t).  At 11:30, we started on Hole 17 and it was just our luck that the beer wagon pulled up before we started.  I had a rough start for the first few holes (this would have been my third time ever playing golf) but with Jacques encouragement, it made the day fun and I didn’t really care.  It was a beautiful day outside and I couldn’t have asked for better company.  I can’t say I’ve mastered how to hit a ball but I will admit that I played a lot better than the last tournament.  I have to realize that I don’t have to put all that much power behind my swing.  It’s all about connecting with the ball.  However, I’m sure there are golfers reading this and are dying to comment on how I can achieve the perfect swing.

After losing 63 golf balls (Jacques’ of course), we hit the last hole (Hey!  Lasthole!  Lasthole!) and headed back to the clubhouse for some dinner.  Some highlights of the day were:

• Helping the blond girl out with her broken down golf cart
• Jacques achieving an excellent shot around the third hole only to realize that he thought the pin was in another direction.
• Constantly losing balls only to find another one.
• Playing against gale-like winds around the 15th hole.
• Hitting the pink ball right into the drink on the first shot.
• Hitting my other ball over the drink and it JUST made it into the mud along the side.  I was lucky with that one.

I believe I must have been doing quite badly on the first nine holes as Andrew never asked me what my score was but in the afternoon I started to have a score which was lower than nine so I felt proud to yell out an eight once in awhile.

The dinner was a success as always.  I got stuck with eating some steak (awww shucks!) and while it was as tough as shoe leather, I had some of Uncle Brent’s chicken and it was amazing.  It was half a chicken!  Dad ended up winning some mixing bowls and Uncle Willy won a seat warmer.  I believe Bobby won an actual golf related prize but I can’t really remember.

We headed back to the hotel where we piled into our room to watch the hockey game.  I had brought my guitar for the weekend but it’s hard to play guitar when people want to chat; especially if we are in a hotel room.  So there was no use of it that weekend, but I’m sure one weekend I’ll haul it out.  We ended up in Uncle Frankie’s room near the end of the night where Aunt Val and Uncle Willy were in good spirits and then we headed to bed.

All in all, a great success of a golf tournament again!  I am glad that I managed to get onto a team this year as it would have been a waste of a great day.

Thursday after class I went home and started packing up the bookshelf in the living room. It was time to prepare for the onslaught which is the laying down of the laminate floor! On Friday after work, Mike and I started moving out all the furniture from the living room. Surprisingly it all fit into the kitchen except for one chair that we simply left in the living room.

We then took the trim off the wall which wasn’t too hard at all (except for the one spot where I ripped some paint off the wall. Argh!) and I’m thinking we can salvage all of it to put back on the wall instead of buying all new trim.

We then went ahead and ripped up the carpet. I was interested to see how carpet was laid down. Essentially, a green foamy underlay is placed onto the subfloor first. Then (in our case), there were strips of wood running along the wall which had little nails sticking out of them. We’re talking thousands of little nails sticking out. When the carpet is laid down, this is what the carpet sticks to. There are different variations on this theme…gluing, stapling, etc.

We went to Home Depot to determine if we could simply leave the green underlay in, but we found out that we should strip it all up and put down the proper underlay (which we did).

Mike and I definitely had a hard time getting the carpet out of the living room as we were trying to keep it in one piece for Mom and Dad to bring down to Gaspe with them. I personally don’t think they will have much luck with that considering it’s the length of two cars, but nonetheless, we managed to stuff it into the garage but now we have to enter the garage from the front of the house as we can’t very well jump over it! We were going to roll it up with our helping hands on Saturday but it was too late by the time we were done.

We finished stripping the floor of everything by 11PM and we headed to bed. By 7:30AM I was back at it and I started to lay out the underlay and assembling the pieces. Mike joined me shortly after and pointed out that I had started out the first two rows the wrong way as it was supposed to flow from left to right and not the other way around! Not a big deal,we disassembled them and laid them out again and it was definitely easier! We were definitely having some problems with the first three rows and having them fit snugly and it wasn’t until later that we realized that if it wasn’t fitting properly, chances are there was something caught between the tongue and groove that we had to remove. We also found the secret of hitting the new row with a hammer to ensure a good seal between the two rows. I had bought a great kit that Rob’s dad had recommended which helped us immensely. It had spacers, a block to hammer with and a pull bar. Well worth the $21.

Vero and Duncan came over later with some muffins in tow and Vero went back out to pick up a few things. Vero was definitely an appreciated resource during the day as she was helping out with both the laying of the floor as well as keeping us well fed throughout the day. After they arrived, things seemed to pick up in pace until we hit the hallway and the better part of the day was spent cutting out notches around columns, cursing the gaps and general meandering around while careful calculations were performed. Mike had the hardest piece to calculate at one point with an angled wall falling into the equation and we were quite impressed when the piece fit after one cut!

By the time 8PM rolled in, we sat down for some good chicken supper and a beer and Mike had to get ready to go to a party so Duncan and I continued the quest to get it done. The hallway was done so we only had four more rows to lay out.

By 10PM we were outside in the driveway ripping panels to get a 2″ panel to run alongside the wall. We must have been quite the sight. Both of us wearing sunglasses as I didn’t know where the safety glasses were (as it was hard to get through the garage with the carpet in there), Duncan holding the flashlight above the saw so I could see where I was going, and a racket that would make a banshee ashamed. We did manage to put the last piece in around 10:30PM so all in all, it was a 15 hour job that entire day along with the hours of prep work from the Friday. Duncan, Vero and I sat down for a few beer and then headed to bed.

I now am fairly confident in laying down laminate. My brain works a little slower on the calcuation side of things in comparison to Duncan and Mike so all in all, we made a great team and even though we were sore all over the next day, I think we all had some fun during the day. I must admit that I feel the room is less cozy without the carpet and I swear on Sunday night while I was reading comics, it seemed a little cooler in the house. I am liking the look of it though and now I just have to get over the inherent fear of scratching the floor!

Next steps are to wait until Dad gets into town when he can help me put the trim back on. We also have to think about transition pieces as well as how to do the steps. Someone told me it took him 2 hours to lay out his living room and eight hours to handle one step! I think Dad loves to have little projects to do around my place so I’m glad that I can accommodate him!

For historical purposes, here’s some approximate pricing:
400 sq feet = $400 (plus tax) and I had 1.5 packs left over.
4 rolls of underlay = $100
1 accessory kit = $21
Total (not including all the beer and food) = $521 to do the entire living room and hallway.

Update! – June 11

Laying of the laminate floor is most definitely not over!  On June 8-9, Mom, Dad, and Uncle Brent worked on laying out the trim around the floor.  I helped them out on the Tuesday and let me tell you, I hate the finishing touches on things.  It is a pain in the ass.  Painting, bah.  Filling in holes, bah.  Mom and Vero graciously painted the pieces of trim on Monday night and we went ahead and rented an air nailer on Tuesday morning to put them in.  An air nailer is a MUST HAVE when nailing the trim.  I think if I only had a hammer and nails, I would have added ten hours to this job.

Dad said cutting the quarter round was a pain as it’s hard to figure out the angles.  Mom and I spent the afternoon putting DAP (some type of putty) into all the nail holes and around the casings of the door.  This was painful as I realized I will probably have to repaint my hallway after seeing what ripping off the casings did to my walls.

In the end, we managed to get 99% of the trim up along with the quarter round and all I need to do is to repaint all the DAPped spots.  In terms of what needs to be done with the laminate itself, we need to lay the laminate on the step up into the hallway which may be prove to be a pain.  I will see how painful that will be.  Then I will put the transition pieces (where the kitchen floor meets the hallway).

So an update to how much the project is costing:
– New Trim and Quarter Round – $120
– Rental of the Air Nailer, along with the fuel cell, and some nails – $65
– A quart of white paint – ??? $20?

Also, I just realized that I only had three months to return laminate flooring so now I have 1.5 packs left over.

Grand total now: $726.  Please note that the guy at Home Depot said any tool rentals is good for the tax rebate!  So if I manage to break $1000, I should be good to go.  I may very well hit that if I buy some more paint to do the hallway.

I was watching the new X-Files film last night (which so far is pretty good…not mindblowingly good but it brings back good feelings of X-Files) and you know when they always type what location they are in and what time it is in the bottom left hand corner?

Yeah…uhm…that font size is SMALL.

I noticed this on another movie the other day…I believe it was the Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

My only thoughts on this are that these films are now being developed on large, wide screen televisions and so there is no thought to the archaic 27″ televisions that people have in their home.

Now, this is really not a big deal if I miss a quick location text but if you have subtitles, this is getting a little on the crazy side if I can’t even read the subtitles!

So here’s a message to the film/television industry. Don’t phase out the non-widescreen LCD Plasma Whatever doohickies yet! There are still people living in the dark ages of television who want to enjoy your film!

In true Palmer fashion, I present to you, a tale of grand proportions.

On Friday, May 22, Mike and I logged in to Capital Tickets to get in line of the queue.  I was on since 8AM and Mike followed shortly after.  At 10AM, all hell broke loose and the site was crashing all over the place and the situation looked dire.

When I finally got through a few minutes later, the system allowed me to choose from either the first 15 rows, the rest of the floor and 100 Level, and then the rest of the stadium.  Well OF COURSE I went for the first 15 rows, but unfortunately, after 5 minutes of the server taking its time, it came back saying there were no more tickets in that area.

Uh oh.  This wasn’t good.  If it took me five minutes to get that message popping up, what were my odds at some good tickets at all?  I tried for the 100 Level and no such luck.  After much cursing at the computers when we couldn’t get tickets, I eventually had some in the 300 Level but then we waited too long and I lost them.  I had left it until a minute was left until they expire and when I went to process the order the server took so long that it timed out.

So then I went in again and found some in Section 309. Mike still wasn’t having any luck and considering we had no luck getting floor, 100L, 200L, we decided to buy them.

So we have four tickets in Section 309. Unfortunately they (in my opinion) are not the greatest seats as they are to the side of the stage and not in front of it so we won’t be able to see that well.

Mike then managed to get Section 305 which was more in line with the stage and then I managed to get 306 but with a closer row. So we decided to bite the bullet, buy Section 306 and sell of Section 309.

$928 later we are now the proud owners of 8 tickets to go see AC/DC.

But of course, you know me and I love to leave people in suspense so let’s talk about what happened five minutes after…

I went back online on a whim (this would be around 10:45) to see if I could get better tickets and lo and behold, Section 105 appeared in my Cart! The heavens aligned and cheered at us for rocking out so much that we already spent $928 to see AC/DC that they said these guys deserve something a little better.

But the story gets better…

I was on both my Mom’s and my own computer at the time and when I called Mike to ask for sanity in wondering if we should buy another four tickets, Mom’s computer came up with the mother lode.

And that’s how we ended up with FOUR TICKETS TO AC/DC ON THE FLOOR ROW 33!!!! AUGH!

But we also have four tickets in Section 306 and four tickets in Section 309 to sell.

All was not lost…in fact, nothing was lost.  I immediately sent out an email to the masses asking if anyone was interested.  I didn’t get any takers during the day so in a stupour of alcohol that night, I went onto Craiglist and found someone looking for 8 tix at $150 each.  Of course, being the honest person I am (the more belieavable story would be that I had a few beer in me) I wrote to this person saying I would sell them at cost.

I got an email back the next morning saying they wanted them and bingo bango, deal was made.

Here’s an interesting twist to the story…Capital Tickets had left me a message about my tickets and I had no idea what it was about.  I did find out that the person I was going to sell them to had phoned Capital Tickets wondering how they can verify if my tickets are legit or not so maybe that sent a red flag their way.  I did end up getting a message from them saying that the maximum amount of tickets per credit card was 8 and seeing that I had bought 12 (4x4x4…I suppose that’s how the computer didn’t flag me and tell me “Whoa buddy!  You’re trying to buy 12 tickets!”), they would take back four of them.  Hey, it did not bother me much as I had wanted to return them in the first place!

I did end up selling the four leftover tickets to this individual from Arnprior who was more than happy to take his family to the show.

All in all, I have no idea how we ended up with floor tickets but now I’m realizing that there are so many unknown factors when buying concert tickets.  For example, my friend Kathleen and her husband was camped out at the ticket booth since 4AM and they only ended up with 200 Level tickets.  What the heck?  If anything, I think there should be preference to the people who camp out overnight, but that’s just me.

So there you have it…a tale of amazingness for you all.

iplaying: Money (That’s what I want) – The Beatles (With the Beatles)

Can the summer get any better? Paul McCartney is playing Halifax, NS on July 11!

Concert season is gearing up fast and I swear everything is falling into place in regards to dates, places, etc.

The biggest news is that AC/DC is coming to Ottawa on Monday August 10. The fact that this is really big news harkens back to a story about how Vero really really really wanted to go see AC/DC in Montreal on August 8. But alas, we were going to be in Windsor for a wedding on that exact date.

So then we started thinking about going to Moncton to see them on August 6. But that would require us driving 12 hours down, watching the concert, and drive 20 hours back to Windsor from Moncton on August 7th and then see the wedding the next day around noon on August 8. This was not an ideal situation, but it would have been done in the name of rock! This also reminds me of the time Mike, Danny and I trucked down to see AC/DC on a Friday night in Toronto from Kapuskasing (!!!) and Mike and Danny decided to drive home after the concert. That’s a little crazy and if memory serves me right, they made it to North Bay.

So then I checked out other tour dates and realized that they were playing in New Jersey and Google Maps helped me determine that New Jersey is quite a bit closer to Ottawa than Moncton! So plans to go to Jersey for the weekend were starting to form.

THEN they decided to play in Albany, NY last week which is only four hours away. But the thing is, I noticed that they were playing an arena show in Albany which was unlike their ‘summer stadiums’ only clause they originally had set up for the summer. Could this mean that Ottawa would have a chance? This, coupled with the fact that the Live Nation promoter indicated on Chez that we could very well hear some news about AC/DC in Ottawa in the next few weeks led to the realization that this could all happen.

And happen it did. Tuesday morning all I hear on Virgin Radio is AC/DC for the hour leading up to them announcing the tour date. Tickets go on sale this Friday and I’m quite pleased with the date they are playing as we will be back in town by then.

Other concerts I’m checking out this summer include:
– Malajube – June 11 at the Capital Music Hall. I still have yet to get tix to this. Hopefully they aren’t sold out!
– Bluesfest – 10 Days of bliss.
– Hope Volleyball – My favourite day of the year. Bands to be announced.
– AC/DC – August 10
– STOMPIN’ TOM!!! – August 13! This is incredible. I mentioned to Mom that we should go but they ended up buying tickets to see him while they are vacationing in St. John’s, NFLD. I think I’m going to get talking to Troy and see if we should send him ‘The Stomper’ song and maybe we can book an opening slot for The Stomper himself!
– PEARL JAM! Toronto, August 21!
– Metallica! October 29…I believe?

There’s also word that Kings of Leon are hitting Ottawa so I have to figure out if I want to go to that or not. I really enjoy their new album and they seem like a top notch band.

Awhile ago, I upgraded the iPhoto software on the Mac and was anxious to use the ‘Faces’ feature which supposedly is able to scan all your photos in search of a particular face. I never got it working until last week and I must say I’m quite impressed with it.

What you do is select a photo and ask iPhoto to scan for faces. It will then find my face and say “Who is this?” and I type in my name. Then I go back to the Faces dashboard and choose my face and it will say “Here are the confirmed photos of your face. Here are a few others which need confirming.” and they throw out a slew of pictures with me (hopefully) in them.

On the first round, the software may not be able to properly match my face to a picture and would throw up a picture of Eric instead but this is because I’ve only confirmed one photo of myself so it doesn’t have much to work with as a baseline. But as soon as I confirm a half dozen more, it can rescan with all that additional data and find my face in a more refined way.

I was quite impressed in how it ended up working. I scanned for Mike’s face a few times and it even found him in the background of a few shots as well as recognized him in full out zombie makeup from Hallowe’en! Impressive. Most impressive.

All in all, I find this to be a neat feature if you ever want to make a collage of someone you know. Instead of scouring the years upon years of digital photos you have, you can simply scan for the person’s face and spend a good 30 minutes weening out the photos that are not the person you’re searching for, and voila! I say 30 minutes but it depends on the person. Naturally, while scanning for my own face, I will probably spend an hour going through thousands of them. But for a distant relative, you may only have a few pictures of them.

Another neat aspect of it is the fact that they show the pictures chronologically so you can see how you have changed throughout the years. While some people probably won’t like to see this in themselves, I’ve always been intrigued with the capture of time within photographs and I’ve also thought of starting up a photo project where I take the same head shot of myself each day for a year to see the progression.

Of particular note, this feature will probably only be useful to people who use their camera to take pictures of different people. As for Maren who is expecting her first child soon, I highly suspect there will only be one person in all her photographs. 😉