Les Bonnes Choses

My goodness, April is almost finished. That means I still have tomorrow to file my Canadian taxes. I must say, the only thing better than having to do your taxes once per year, is having to do it twice.

That was sarcasm, in case you didn't notice.

In going through my documents in preparation for filing my taxes, I came across a decent pile of old tax-related papers that no longer needed to be kept. I decided to do the prudent thing, which was bury them in the park behind my house in a lead-lined box rigged with a cyanide canister.

That's what I decided, anyways. However it turned out to be much less feasible than simply shredding the whole mess of papers. Unfortunately, despite the relative infrequency with which I use it, my paper shredder has decided to show its age. It has three settings: off, reverse and automatic. Off is self-explanatory. The reverse setting is intended to remedy a paper jam. The automatic setting causes the shredding blades to rotate when an infra-red sensor detects that some paper has been inserted. I think the sensor is shot, as the other day the shredder failed to respond when I inserted a small stack of bank statements. I jiggled it, hoping in vain that, like a dim fish, wriggling bait would cause it to bite. I gave up, leaving the stack of paper in the slot. In the middle of the night, I almost peed the bed when I was startled awake by the sound of the shredder spontaneously shredding the bills. Though groggy, I had the presence of mind not to bother hunting around the house for an intruder: compulsive document shredding seemed an unlikely motivation for a home invasion. Even if it was a home invasion, an intruder who began by shredding old bank statements rather than ransacking the house for alcohol would probably be an interesting person to talk to.

I turned to google this evening to see if anyone else had solved the problem of a faulty paper detector. One industrious priest took apart his shredder and shorted the sensor wires so that it always signaled that paper was detected. It seemed like an interesting project, but before I could find a screwdriver, I had a flash of lazy insight. The shredder now sits inverted on its basket, and works like a charm on the 'reverse' setting.

On the previous post about elimination communication, Asher asked me to draw a rhinocerous. I obliged him (he really likes animals, in the kind of way that you might imagine someone that goes on to do field work in some tropical location might). Just to test him, I asked if the rhino was walking. "Yes," Asher replied. "Why is he walking?" I asked. "Poop," he replied.

I saw it coming a mile away, but found myself surprised nonetheless.

So tonight's the big leader's debate in Canada. If you've been governed by a tyrant for a period lasting more than three terms, see your polling station. This may be a symptom of apathy, a potentially quality-of-life threatening condition.

Courtesy of Vivien over the weekend comes this Toronto Star article about getting people to vote instead of complaining about being victimized. And it got me to thinking. Every September of my grad school career, we were expected to put together one or more application packages for scholarships or grants from various government funding agencies (the budgets for these agencies have since been cut in recent years). This application season was a pain in the ass. Most time consuming was the part where you had to write a detailed description of your research: where it's been and where you want to go with it. Despite being a pain in the ass, it was still a good exercise. Probably. At the very least, it required us to do some deep reflection.

For many of us, that was all we got out of the exercise, as diminishingly small numbers of applicants were actually awarded any money. That was quite a bit of work for government money that may or may not pan out. But then I was thinking, what value would we place on the government services we take for granted? Sure we pay taxes, but look at it this way: each year, we all get thousands of dollars of funding in the form of health care, education, social assistance, roads and sewers and fake lakes. And we get it all without having to write anything. Maybe we should change that, and incentivize voting. You need your driver's license renewed? Write a 250 word essay on who you voted for in the last election and why.

I found this last summer, and tucked it in for a day like today.

From the story, our intrepid traveller finished on the name "Ayn", from which we might guess that he lives in the US Southwest. How very considerate to draw a map to where the crazies live.

Courtesy of my friend Ryan, I started to read this Financial Post story this morning, with the following opening paragraph:

With more than 90 retired teachers over the age of 100 and receiving benefits, the problem for the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is clear.

The problem to which they are referring, of course, is how to make 93 fatal medication interactions look like an accident. Clearly, teachers have been enjoying the good life for far too long if so many of them are making it past 100. You don't see the pension plan run for Nova Scotia coal miners running into this problem, do you? Assuming they don't die during a cave-in during their working years, you can pretty much count on black lung striking down most retired coal miners the moment they step on to the putting green for the first time.

At the same time, tonnes of dollars (that's metric tonnes of Canadian dollars, which at today's exchange rate works out to 1.144 tons of US dollars) are being sunk into removing such hazards as asbestos from our schools. I say we kill two birds with one stone. Save the money and leave the asbestos. Teachers need a little on-the-job danger; something that won't really kick in until they've finished paying into the system, but resolves quickly once they're ready to start collecting.

Today we enjoyed a relatively pleasant spring day here in the Chicago area -- or at least, some of us enjoyed it. Others, such as I, spent the day indoors being productive. In between the parade of meetings I had, I dialed in to my favourite news source to see what's what.

This story got my goat today. Aside from appearing undemocratic, the PC Party of Canada Harper government policy of turning away potential voters who actually want to get informed just reinforces the image of a party full of yes-men engaging in groupthink.

Despite the facade behind which I occassionally write, I don't actually have any delusions about my sphere of influence, so, aside from guaranteeing my ineligibility to attend any event held by the PC Party of Canada Harper party, there's little point in arguing why I find Mr. Harper to be the scariest despot never to wage war on his own people. Actually, scratch that last qualifier.

Speaking of hamburger...

I am back in top BBQ form this evening as I took advantage of the remains of the day to cook up one of my fantastic creations from last summer: Blue Cheeseburger with Bacon (with the blue cheese and bacon mixed into the patty). Today's improvement comes courtesy of Bobby Flay, who recommends indenting the middle of your patty so that it doesn't cook into that usual flying-saucer shaped meatball that homemade patties often do on the grill.

As you may have guessed, games are a passion of mine. What you might not know is how this love of games was fostered from a young age by my grandfather. When I was quite young, my grandfather taught me how to play chess. Naturally, I had little chance against him because of his years playing against really good Russian, Polish and Ukranian players during the war when he worked with the Polish resistance. Below is one of the few photos we have from that time in his life.


You would think that this would have been a great opportunity to become a fantastic chess player. Alas, it became apparent that I was too easily frustrated, or at the very least a sore loser. But my grandfather was a kind soul, and was always open to playing just about any game I would suggest after he checkmated me in six moves. We played just about everything. GO! The Game of Life, Scrabble, Operation, Dungeons and Dragons. Back in the early 80's, I had even brought a Star Wars game to a family picnic. Unfortunately, it only came with adult sized Storm Trooper costumes, so I was unable to play.


Over the years, I think my grandpa and I must have played just about every game you could possibly find at a flea market. Sometimes I'd win; sometimes grandpa would win; but we'd always have fun. Except the Tomb of Horrors. That module was brutal. I never forgave grandpa for killing off my paladin.


My grandpa lived a long and happy life, but sadly passed away during my college years. One thing I regret is that the Settlers of Catan game didn't come out until some years after he died. He would have absolutely loved that game. Not long ago, I fashioned my own Settlers of Catan set (chronicled in my Prologue, Part 1, Part 2 ,Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5). Having finished the project, I feel I have become quite expert at mold-making and casting, and recently decided I wanted to try something a little more advanced.

Because the resin initially mixes as a thin liquid, it is possible to add dry materials to the plastic. Sometimes people do this to add mass, or colour to the plastic. For example, I had considered casting replacement game pieces with iron filings mixed in to the resin so they would work with the magnetic tiles. On one rainy Sunday afternoon, however, I had a flash of inspiration: I was going to play games with my grandpa again.

The urn containing my grandpa's ashes sits over the mantle at my aunt Vera's house. As it happens, there was recently a baby shower there. Also as it happens, the 1 liter plastic bag they provide at airport security will easily fit a sufficiently-sized pill container with a screw-on lid. I carefully spooned out a modest amount of ash into the pill bottle, taking care not to disrespect grandpa by spilling his ashes on the floor.


Getting the ashes over the border turned out to be easier than I thought because ashes don't count as a liquid, and so the airport security people didn't even notice the pill container. The weekend after the baby shower, I set about casting my new custom grandpa game pieces.


The materials were pretty straight forward. I had my syringes for measuring out the resin components, and I set aside a bowl containing the ashes. Not pictured is the measuring spoon. I calculated how much resin would be required for a complete set of game pieces, and then roughly estimated the volume of ash that would be required in each batch of resin so that grandpa would be roughly equally distributed throughout the entire set.


After mixing up a test batch, I cast my first pieces. I didn't get the ash properly mixed in the resin on my first attempt. After casting a few pieces, I got the hang of it, and successfully mixed grandpa into four complete sets of plastic game pieces.


I have painted up one complete set, and plan to do two of the other three sets this weekend. I think I will leave one of the sets the natural colour of the resin because as you might be able to see from the pictures, the ash mixed in with the resin gives the pieces an interesting mottled appearance that I think actually looks rather nice. Plus, it's an interesting conversation piece.