I have two items this morning. They found a body at UBC around 7am today along East Mall. A very odd situation indeed.

The second item is that they named the new VPD puppy "Diesel". Congrats to whoever came up with the winning entry. Diesel will be available to the public this Saturday at the Vancouver Police museum.

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Since Wednesday, there have been about five or six of us in the office who'd fire up NASA TV on the Internet around 10am. We'd then impatiently wait for the launch controller to proceed with the countdown for the launch of the New Horizons spacecraft.

On Wednesday, the launch was scrubbed because of an on-board warning, dashing our hopes of seeing that sumbitch blast off to Pluto. Then on Thursday, bad weather caused a power outage at one of the control facilities. Today, the launch was delayed because of cloud cover. I haven't been teased this much since... well, maybe that'll be another post.

Then, five minutes before 11am PST, the countdown resumed. At almost exactly 11am, the thing took off from the launch pad. It was a sight to behold. I bet there were some very happy short-sleeved men and women at NASA today.

If you missed it, the launch video can be found on the New Horizons mission web page.

At lunch today, Greg, Raj Tim, and myself were heading to Red Robin when fate interceded. I'm not exactly a big fan of RR and just as we got to the bottom of the steps to the place, we turned to look across the street. There, we saw a restaurant called "A Taste of Vietnam". Tim and I have been craving lunchtime pho for many, many months now. We all decided to abandon our RR plans and go have some Vietnamese food.

AToV is a nice place with some bright colours in their decor. Their menu is also more than satisfactory. Tim and I had some pho tai while Greg had lemon grass chicken with rice. Their pho was pretty good, not the best I've had, but not many come close to the Pho Van experience. Definitely a solid choice for a work lunch. I'd come back there any day of the week for lunch. They also deliver, so we're probably going to order from them next week... when we're most likely going to do some overtime.

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I was on the bus tonight going down Granville when an attractive young woman and her male companion got on. They sat down a few rows behind me. They began to converse and this was what I heard from the lady in question:

"You know you can find the best buffet at Club Super Sexe in Montreal? Yeah, it's cheap and the food is pretty good. Me and my girlfriends used to go there a lot. The dancers knew we were there for the food but they were still very friendly to us..."

After hearing this, I made a note that when I return to Montreal in the future, I must see what this buffet is all about.

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After spending less than an hour at a potluck dinner tonight, it took me an hour and a half to get home because I missed one of my buses by less than 20 seconds. The fun never stops when you're me.

As I watched my bus sail off into the distance, I knew that I had half an hour to waste before the next shuttle to Tatooine. I wish there was a bar close by to W. Hastings and Hornby where I catch my bus. All I'm asking for is a small, less than busy watering hole where I can saunter up to the bartender, and order up a Shirley Temple. Twenty minutes is a perfect time to nurse a drink and before you know it, it'll be time to ride off into the boonies again.

There was the Jolly Taxpayer pub on Hastings but it closed down at the end of December. My other options are the bars in the Waterfront and Pan Pacific hotels one street down from Hastings. They're probably nice but perhaps pricey for a twenty minute drink.

That is all.

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This post is going to be all over the place, so hold on and try to lean into the corners.

A few months ago, I read online about one Scott Martin in the UK who ate nothing but mainly potato chips and toast. I can't find the article now but at the time I read that his doctors said he was in relatively good shape surprisingly but stressed he should eat more healthy.

Now when I read that, and I know this is hard to believe for some people, I did not take that as a green light to increase my fried chicken comsumption. Even I thought that his diet was too extreme.

Martin died not very long ago at the age of 20. His liver was failing and his blood would not clot. He bled to death after a procedure to remove three infected teeth. You can read about it here.

I'll probably stop eating chips for about two days. The important thing is to realize is that moderation is the key, even with fried chicken.

In other less depressing news, the much talked about PEI expansion of our company is going ahead. No one from our Vancouver office is going to PEI. Instead, 6 to 8 programmers are coming to our office for a few weeks of training. I just found this out today. I mentioned to a co-worker that I was hoping a few of the programmers would be women. Our office is a sausage-fest. My co-worker looked at me like I was crazy.

"Erwin, we work for a video game company."

And with that, my hopes were dashed. Next Monday, 6 to 8 guys will be joining us.

Oh, one last thing. If anyone missed Kari Byron on Letterman last night, I think I can digitize her segment and host it on my server. Please let me know.

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I hardly watched any TV this fall. I know nothing of new shows. Nothing was relegated to the status of "appointment television".

It's the new year, however, and with that, comes new shows. Last week was the season premiere of Beauty and the Geek. I found the torrent on Friday night and I downloaded the first show before I went to bed. I watched a bit of it on Saturday morning. The first ten minutes or so recapped the first season and introduced a few people from the second season. They even have a brother on the show this time around. He's the dude who can finish a Rubik's cube in less than 20 seconds. I didn't have time to finish watching the rest. I hope I can catch up before next Thursday.

The season premiere of 24 was tonight. It was two hours tonight and another two hours tomorrow. I didn't have time to watch it, so I recorded it on my VCR. I'll probably have to do the same on Monday night. I briefly thought about not watching the entire season until it comes out on DVD in December of 2006 but that's a hell of a long time to wait.

I'm now of the opinion that if I had a choice between downloading a show or recording it on the VCR, I'd take the Internet version. Virtually every show that winds up on the Internet is recorded at a higher quality than any VCR is capable of. Most of these shows are also recorded off an HD source meaning that your computer version will be in widescreen.

It looks like I'll be watching a lot more TV this month and into the spring. You can't beat free entertainment.

Oh what? One more thing? You want to see Will Ferrell do his George W. Bush impression again? Yeah, I think you may find that here.

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