quoperative

Who knew?

Today man’s best friend let me down — my cat Sherlock barfed on my MacBook Pro keyboard. Technically it wasn’t even a real barf. Just bile. Kind of like a couple teaspoons of saliva — smelly, rotten, bubbly saliva if you must know. Bottom line, there wasn’t that much liquid.

I got mildly annoyed when I discovered said bile deposit and wiped off the keyboard with some Bounty towels as best as I could. Wiping it up seemed to anger the bile and it released some pretty nasty smells to communicate how upset it was that I was cleaning it up. I didn’t care… obviously. I just had to get back to work. To finish the A-1 clean-up job I decided to shoot some compressed air into the crevices of the keyboard to blow away any bile that I couldn’t reach with the paper towels. As anybody who knows anything about computers will tell you, nothing cleans a computer like compressed air.

Surprisingly, this did very little to actually “clean” the keyboard and when I pressed on the keys in the affected area I could still hear slooshing and bubbling. I decided to kick it up a notch and remove the keys to get under them and clean out the residual bile. This in turn released more unpleasant smells — kind of like sweaty feet dipped in rotten milk. My mood quickly went from optimistic to pissed off as I popped off nearly one third of the keys.

“Ok,” I thought to myself, “I’ll just get these little buggers rinsed off and dry off the keyboard and we’ll be back in business”. Turns out we didn’t get back in business quite so fast.

After letting the keys rinse and the machine dry off for a couple of hours I put the keys back on one by one and realized pretty quickly that basically all of them stopped working. Plus about 10 or so that I hadn’t removed. Turns out getting small amounts of bile into expensive electronics equipment can cause serious damage. I had no idea.

So, I’m left with an essentially non-functioning keyboard that I now have to get replaced. And because this is my primary work computer — and therefore a rather indispensable tool that I need to make a living — I have to somehow get this repair done without being left computer-less for very long.

And how did Sherlock react to this whole thing?

He feels terrible.

Lost fans should check out Jason Hunter’s Theory on Time Travel site. Jason’s theory attempts to explain (most) of what’s happened in the show so far and even suggests what will happen in the upcoming seasons as the series winds down. Even if he’s completely wrong — and I don’t think that’s possible, given his rather convincing arguments — it’s totally fascinating.

Warning: Make sure you’re fully caught up before checking it out because it does contain a lot of spoilers.

A bit late with the post but I just watched Lost on Saturday morning so I needed a day or so to digest.  This week’s episode was a total Ben-fest — which is always a good thing because he’s got to be the most intriguing character in the show.

Apart from all the Charles Widmore vs. Ben stuff we saw the boat’s doctor washed up on the shore of the island with his throat cut… apparently able to navigate impossible-to-follow bearings for miles to find the island with greater ease than anybody who actually possesses a pulse.  Is somebody trying to send them a message?  Seems rather curious that the doctor would just “happen” to surface at their beach camp.  Good thing Bernard knows Morse code and was able to foil Daniel’s little ploy to smooth things over.

And… even if you “know” Morse code is it actually possible to listen to a sentence communicated in blips and bleeps and understand it in real time?  That seemed pretty remarkable to me but then again my only experience with Morse Code was those Space Patrol walkie-talkies (on the far right) with the entire alphabet printed on the front.  I never really had the hours to dedicate to learning it when I was 8.  One of several regrets I will most likely take to the grave.

I just got back from a week and a half in Toronto. Living in Ottawa most of my life, whenever I’m there I feel like I’m seriously approaching the centre of the universe  — where ALL cool people originate from… I know, I’m feeding the ego — and that everybody that lives in Toronto has to be famous on some level so it is my obligated duty to make damn sure I recognize as many celebrities as possible… no matter how small their celebrity star is.

This trip was particularly lucrative for micro-celebrity sightings… I managed to spot former Hermit bass-master Ian McGettigan, former Local Rabbit “Montreal” Pete Elkas, former Deadly Snakes frontman Andre Ethier and former IME singer Edwin (serving me beers at a bar… word).  There must be something about spring time that gets all the 90s Canadian indie rawk heroes crawling out of the woodworks.

And Ian McGettigan was rocking the same sweater vest (sans undershirt of course) he was sporting back in June at NXNE.  I assume he hasn’t taken it off in 9 months.

Hmm… that was a particularly shallow remark.  Perhaps I can morph this blog into a TMZ-type thing focusing exclusively on really obscure Canadian musician celebrities.  That might be a conflict of interest… being a ridiculously obscure Canadian musician celebrity myself.  Or perhaps I can use my nano-celebritism to my advantage… since I seem to be the only one able to recognize or even show any interest these people.

Their stories need to be told.  I think I’m the one who needs to do it.  No more making web pages… I have to go find out what the guitarist from Zuckerbaby is doing right now.

Woah. I can’t believe they’re still together.