Rob Ford is mayor of Toronto, banged my head

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Ok, I did mean to update earlier but I've been... preoccupied of late. Well, my video card slowly dying is part of the excuse to be sure. I only realized today that it's actually over two years old! Seems like I only got it last year. Have I been playing games on it for that long?? It's a tiresome bore, I'll tell you. And I'm somewhat torn on what to "upgrade" to -- I bought my Sapphire ATI HD 4870 x2 2GB for $580, and it's now worth $300 new, which is actually about what I would like to spend, money not flowing as easily as it once did for me. I'll have to bite the bullet soon enough, there being a stack of games (Civ 5, Dead Rising 2, StarCraft 2, Fallout New Vegas) beckoning me to return.

So Toronto voted in Rob Ford! What rot, what rot. I'm sure most of you are by now aware of the "amalgamation gap", the stark difference in voting attitudes between downtown Toronto and the suburbs. I mean, on some subconscious level I suppose I knew of it but WOW, the mayoral voting by ward map really shows just how wide the gap is. It makes me itch to think our mayor is Rob Ford... I just... how... but why... ugh!!!

Oh right, I went to Toronto's 2010 Skepticamp event, held in the Center For Inquiry space. It was pretty good! I mean, I was entertained, learned a lot, and met a handful of skeptically-minded people. Whether I can get more involved in the skeptical community is another thing, but I'm definitely happy I went. Yeah, I mean I listen to a lot of SGU and am hopefully learning more and more each day, removing layers of irrational ideas and unfounded beliefs. I do certainly look back upon my more foolish self with a pitying eye.

What else.. I signed up for a 1-year Bixi contract, hoping that its coverage will expand to the point that I can use them daily. That would be so cool! Uhm, but speaking of cool bicycling, I took a tumble late last Friday night and got a concussion. The current theory is that I installed the seat too tightly, causing one of the bolts to snap. In any case I took a serious tumble and am frankly quite amazed that I didn't incur greater damage, hitting my head directly to the ground sans helmet. Yeah. Fixing the bicycle was a thankfully simple thing: a short trip to Bike Sauce did the trick in terms of finding a replacement bolt (definitely recommend going there for DIY repair), and a2chow helped tweak the alignment of the handlebars. We also used some plastic clip-ties to provide some additional security against a total seat-failure, as I would very much hate to go through an unplanned dismount again.

Oh and unrelatedly, I upgraded my iPhone to the 4G model. My original plan was to simply fix the screen of my much-battered 3G, and I'd even purchased a digitizer replacement kit, but a most upsetting fall cracked the LCD screen. I must say that I rather love the 4G, with its better resolution, faster processor, and HDR-supporting camera -- could my dreams of a multimedia handheld device finally be true? Sure, I'm still tethered to reality by that draconian machine known as iTunes, but there are times when I rather covet this hunk of gleaming metal.

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