This past Monday Sofi stood in the cold at the Prairie Dog for 45 mins. to get her hands on a couple of free passes to Monster-in-Law, but when we went to the show on Wednesday we got there too late I guess, because they were all sold out. It wasn't all bad, because I ran into Nick's parents and his brother and got to say hello for a while, and it gave me the opportunity to get Sofi to watch Episode I in preparation for this month's release of the final installment of the trilogy. She had never seen any of them so I figured I'd start her off in story-order instead of release-order because I didn't get the original trilogy on DVD for Christmas like I planned :(

We went to Mom and Dad's for supper on Friday night which was fun. We stayed afterwards for pretty much the rest of the night.

Saturday morning we got up early and walked a few blocks to Fiona's b/f Evan's place, where we met up with her and Azure-Dee and hit the town garage sale hunting.

Sofi, Azure-Dee, and Fiona checking out bargains

We had a good time haggling over junk. I picked up a clock radio (I'll finally be able to get a clear signal to listen to Radio One at night!) and a book for less than $5 and that was fine with me. We went for lunch afterwards at The Tap, which was good food and great conversation. Fiona is moving to Calgary in a couple months because Evan is going to medical school at the U of C so it was nice to spend some quality time with her before she leaves.

That afternoon I finally went to the doctor to finally find out what the hell was growing inside the left side of my face, and it turns out it's some kind of cyst. He prescribed some meds so I'm hopeful it will be a thing of the past soon, because at this point it's just pissing me off. Sofi and I spent the rest of the afternoon going to pretty much every single mattress place in the city, and I think we've nailed it down to three places: Sears, Father's Furniture, and The Bay (only because they are having a 50% off sale and we have a huge gift-certificate, so that brings their prices down to regular levels). It was exhausting and I hope we pick up something soon - it will be nice to cross that off the to-do list and make sleeping that much more comfortable :)

On Sunday I went grocery shopping and we busied ourselves at home trying to fill out the last of the immigration paperwork. That night we went to Brad's house - Sofi, to attend some kind of houseware party hosted by Steff, and me, to get Brad the hell away from there. We went to the Galaxy and saw Kicking & Screaming, which was a funny show for a 'G' rated flick! We relaxed with a beer in Brad's garage before Sofi and I headed home for the night.

A few housekeeping items:

• The deadline for the Big Game Draw application is May 31, so if you'd like to come hunting with me and Nick, let me know, because we've got two spots open on our sheet.
• Cabin party invites will be out soon - it is scheduled for July 21st to 24th, so take work off now!
• Sofi and I are going to the Cathedral Village Arts Festival and Mosaic - anybody want to join us?
• I am taking work off on Wednesday morning to head to the Leg for the Queen's visit - again, anybody want to join us?

I recently finished the last book in S.M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time trilogy. I was loaned the series by a buddy of mine at work and read the books off and on over the last six months.

From the Amazon summary:

A cosmic disturbance transports the island of Nantucket and its inhabitants over three thousand years back in time to the shores of a Stone Age America. In addition to coping with the day-to-day problems of survival and the trauma of losing all connection with the modern world, the residents of the time-stranded island find their lives complicated by the presence of native tribes across the water.

The three books (Island in the Sea of Time, Against the Tide of Years, and On the Oceans of Eternity) cover about a decade or so after "the Event" that throws them back in time. Although they were not the best books I have ever read, they were definitely worth the time spent reading them. Stirling put an incredible amount of time researching almost everything that goes into the book, and it shows. It could almost be considered a pseudo-history book. Unfortunately, all that detail does tend to get in the way of the story, and I found myself skimming sometimes when I thought he was just describing for the sake of describing rather than furthering the story. As a side note, although it seems I was probably reading a first edition, I found the third volume needed a serious amount of proof-reading - there were typos and spelling mistakes all over the place. Bad editor!

There is an enormous amount of circa-18th century naval warfare in the book, which I found very interesting and made Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World an even better movie for me, since it's pretty much the same level of technology as in the books.

The one thing that was so very American about the novel (and by extension, the author) was the way their post-Event society was set up. If the movie had been set in Saskatchewan (or Canada, for that matter), you would have ended up with a ton of government departments controlling every aspect of the transplanted island, but in this novel there is very little government. Instead, the Islanders started hundreds of companies to deal with their problems. "Sea Haven Engineering" handles most of the Island's machining needs, another company handles most of the production of clothing, and so on. I found it very interesting that they wouldn't just band together and have everyone collectively own everything, especially since it was really them against the world from the beginning. It was striking that not only did they not take that approach, but that (in the novel, at least) their system served them very well. The approach didn't seem either right or wrong, but it did bleed red, white, and blue!

Of course, any book of this nature really illustrates the age of excess that we currently live in and how we could not only survive, but thrive with so very much less. After reading this story you'll probably feel even worse than usual about the pervasive consumerism that dominates our lives today - I know I do.

Also, the book has sword-wielding lesbians.

I haven't been able to read a real book for a few months now, but I realized that I forgot to write anything about the last couple of books that I finished.

The first one was The Affluent Society, by John Kenneth Galbraith. It was a well-researched and well-thought out essay about how people's notions of economics and productivity are still based on the ones from the 18th and 19th centuries when production was so very important. His argument is that we should no longer be obsessed with production and measuring it since we as humanity are capable of producing far more than we need. The two main points of his book were that we need to find a way to value public goods as much as private ones, and that by reforming our unemployment policy, we would be able to better manage employment in today’s society where many people have jobs but do no work of real value (in terms of producing products that we actually need). The book was written in the 1950's, but you can see how pretty much all of it still applies today. It gave me real pause for thought about why we measure the success of our society in terms of GDP, and how we might better put our resources to use.

The second book I read was called Pit Bull: Lessons from Wall Street's Champion Trader by Martin "Buzzy" Schwartz. It was basically an autobiography of Buzzy's life as a day-trader, and was mostly comprised of him bragging about all his accomplishments. It was neat to get a "view from the floor" at a number of different markets, but I think biggest lesson I learned is that I am probably not cut out for day-trading. In the end, the stress and the sheer amount of work involved nearly killed him (literally). I think that's something I can probably do without!

It's taken me a while but I finally finished the book I was reading, The Canadian Establishment: Vol 1. I got this book from my mom, and it's a paperback from 1975 that discusses the thousand most powerful men in Canada and how they got their fortunes. Since the book is almost 30 years old at this point, it's more of a history lesson than anything. If you are interested in business and Canadian history, I'd say this is a must-read. A lot of the book is anecdotes about business deals and other cool stuff, so it's not like it's a boring read either. I'd say if you are looking for some entrepreneurial inspiration you can look to this book to give you some, at least if you're Canadian.

Since we're on the topic of books, I might as well talk about another book I finished reading a while ago that contains a ton of entrepreneurial inspiration, The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump's first autobiography. It is an amazing book in that it's a first-hand account of how he first rose to fame and fortune. He's got two other books that detail his career post-1987 (during which time he lost all his money then made it all back!) but this book starts from when he was a kid all the way to his first period at the top. The lesson in this book is definitely "dream big", because he did and obviously he succeeded - today he's worth around $2 billion! The cool thing was that I read this book before I even heard of his new TV show. I recommend both!

Another book that I read recently was sent to me by Jamie Block (née Thorburn) up in Saskatoon. You see, for a long while now off-and-on we've been corresponding back and forth, mainly regarding religion. We hadn't talked much in the last few years, but I sent her a note just before Christmas to tell her that I hadn't forgotten about her and a book she had recommended. A long time ago we'd decided to educate each other on topics of our own personal interest, so I asked her to pick up a copy of All That You Can't Leave Behind by U2. She asked me to pick up a copy of Letters from a Skeptic, but I hadn't been able to find it in bookstores since it's a specialty book and I was too lazy to order it. Anyways, 'lo and behold that along with her Christmas card she sends me her copy of the book to read! Anyways, I finally did read it and I have to admit it's an interesting approach to Christianity, one that honestly makes me feel a lot less, well, critical of those who subscribe to its teachings. There are some extreme leaps of logic made in the book, but since we're talking about faith and not science, it's understandable. It's a worthwhile first-step on the path to Christianity, if you ever feel inclined to start walking in that direction!

I finished reading Struts in Action a few days ago and I'm very glad I did. A colleague had picked it up at work but moved on to another project before he could put it to use so I finally brought it home. I would consider myself pretty much a Struts 1.0 expert, but I really don't have much experience with any of the 1.1 technology or really anything recent in Jakarta-land, although I've been reading and keeping up on it as much as I can. This book did a great job of keeping 1.0 and 1.1 things separate and clearly showing what the differences are. I am not so sure how good a how-to book this one is for those completely unfamiliar with Struts, or at least web frameworks, but my gut feeling is that it would be a good one. I might be biased, as well, because Ted Husted and his website got me out of a lot of jams when I was learning Struts for the first time ;)