MailFreezr is a service which allows you to send an e-mail message to anyone anytime between 1-100 years from now (er, assuming the site's around then – which, even for it to be there in a year, I'd say the odds aren't that great! Plus who knows what technology will do in the next 5, 10, 50 or 100 years?)
Anyhow, here's the blurb from the site:
I had been looking through a suitcase of my late grandmother,
and found a sealed envelope in which there was a letter from ten years
ago. She had written all her thoughts and comments about the
family. What beautiful words they were! I'll never be able to forget
them!
To uncover warm words from the past… There is something
romantic, unexplored and mysterious about them! Do you want to be able
to pass these fantastic feelings on to your folks?
Now it's truly possible to do so!
You do not have to worry that paper can deteriorate, that ink can
fade, or that a letter can be just lost among other papers…
Now everything is as easy as pie! Send an email to your folks which they will receive after scores of years!!! 😉 Make a declaration of love, share your feelings, relate the story which you passed over in silence. Maybe you will expose a family skeleton, which will become revealed history for your descendants!
You may not be living, but your message will be delivered.
Shea, Pace and I
went for a bite to eat before a doctor's appointment late this
afternoon to check on the status of my leg (I'd gone to a clinic to get
it looked at originally so my family doctor hadn't seen it yet.)
Pace, not having
had a nap today, was a bit restless so we gave him my iPhone to keep
him occupied. (He sorta knows how to use it – he can swipe to get to
different pages, click to open programs and knows which icons represent
his favourites – a drawing program, a car racing game and a golf game –
mainly for the animated sequence at the start of it.)
A few minutes later, Shea looks over and goes “Why does this say 'Click here to return to call'?”
Turns out Pace
had somehow managed to click on the phone icon and dial one of the
numbers in my Contact List – namely the switchboard at Regina Public
Library! So for two or three minutes, a co-worker got to hear our
pre-dinner conversation as we encouraged Pace in his car playing game,
talked about my upcoming doctor's appointment and who knows what else!
I called back as
soon as I realised what had happened and had a good laugh with the
co-worker. She said she heard us clear as day and would occasionally
yell “Hang up, Jason” but of course I didn't hear her, not having the
phone up to my ear.
The funniest
part of the whole story was the message the co-worker left on my
answering machine at my home number (she didn't realise we were in a restaurant) saying she could hear me playing cars with my
son and suggesting that I turn off my phone!
I promise I'll stop writing about my poor little hockey boo-boo but I saw this on Reddit and couldn't resist posting it – a video highlighting some of the gutsiest performances from the NHL in 2008-09. (Warning: some potentially disturbing imagery)
Of course, the big difference between me breaking my leg then getting up and skating off and the guys in this video is that they get millions per year to play in front of tens of thousands of fans while I pay $8 a game to play at midnight with a bunch of old, fat bastards who can barely skate (er, obviously, I include myself in this category). But yeah, otherwise, it's exactly the same situation.
I used six weeks as a time frame to create this widget but the hospital said 4-6 weeks so who knows, I might get lucky and heal fast. (Of course, I could also trip and fall on the snow or in the bathroom or something and screw things up even worse.) To help things along, I've drank more milk this weekend than in probably the past month total. And I'm going to try to stay away from bone-sapping caffeine products like Pepsi and chocolate. So we'll see how it goes.
I don't really believe in karma or fate or messages from above. But I suspect I was getting pretty cocky about my ability to get up and walk around and this is some sort of message that I better not take that for granted in the future. (I told Shea this afternoon, “I wish I was out raking leaves right now. Seriously!”)
Anyhow, this is the widget I'll be keeping my eye on for the foreseeable future…
[Edit: I just realised that “Saturday Snap” was probably never more appropriate as a title!]
No, not it does not! Just that none of the other options (bright orange, glow-in-the-dark white, camouflage) appealed to daddy's highly evolved sense of fashion.
Man, thinking more about it – I played rec hockey with this team for almost ten years from either first or second year of undergrad till when Shea and I moved to Calgary in 2001. Then I played again all of last year. During all those years, we played all winter, many summers, at least one and often two games per week from October to March. In fact, our home ice time used to be on a Friday so there were more occasions than I care to remember where I'd go to hockey after having had a beer or four. But I've never had a serious injury in all that time. The odd bruise or slight twist or tweak of some body part, sure. But a broken bone?? Aaaarrrgghhhh!
SaskProgressive.com, a web site dedicated to highlighting progressive candidates and pressing issues in Saskatchewan's upcoming municipal elections has officially launched.
The press release is below. (Full disclosure: I'm one of the “five guys with a web site” referenced in the press release and was involved in the initial planning of the site and have full administrative privileges.)
— ATTENTION ALL SASKATCHEWAN PROGRESSIVES
Saskatchewan municipal elections are coming up later this month.
In
many cases, bland platforms will make it very difficult for voters to
determine what candidates really stand for. SaskProgressive.com is here
to help.
Now I’m not saying anything against the
cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with
dignity. They passed good laws – that is, laws that were good for cats.
But the laws that were good for cats weren’t very good for mice . . . .
The trouble wasn’t with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that
they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after
cats instead of mice.
Do you know which candidate or candidates
in your municipality share your progressive values? Do you know which
candidates are on your side? Can you tell the cats from the mice?
Our mission at SaskProgressive.com is to help you figure that out.
SaskProgressive.com
is a cooperative effort to identify those candidates for mayor, council
or school board who reflect our values, who will stand up for the needs
of citizens, not the greed of developers.
At SaskProgressive.com
you will be able to click on your municipality / school division and
see which candidates share your progressive values.
To make this
work, we’re going to need your help. We already know about some
progressives who are running for mayor, council or school board – but
we don’t know them all.
If you are a candidate in the upcoming
election and you believe you share our values – or if you know about a
candidate who ought to be on our list – go to SaskProgressive.com and
use the contact form to tell us about your campaign and to provide a
link to your campaign website.
-30-
SaskProgressive.com is a cooperative effort by five guys with a website.
ESPN recently did a poll of various sports scientists and other experts to rank the most difficult sports using a variety of factors – strength, flexibility, endurance, hand-eye coordination, etc. etc. In the end, boxing came out as the top sport across all categories but was followed closely by ice hockey.
Which leads to my next sad piece of news. I stupidly managed to break my leg last night playing rec league hockey. It’s one of those unfortunate accidents that was probably totally preventable in hindsight but happened so quickly at the time, you never see it coming.Â
I was playing forward and one of our defense missed me with a hard pass to get out of our zone. Their defenseman turned to chase down the puck and I followed after him. (Here’s where the hindsight comes in.) We have no refs to blow down icings so if I’d just backed off and let him skate down the ice and get the puck, especially since there was only ten minutes left in the game and we were losing pretty badly anyhow so even if I got a goal, it wouldn’t change anything.Â
But I gave chase pretty hard – I think in my head thinking “Well, the game’s almost over – let’s get one last good skate in” – and of course as I come down the ice at full throttle, he retrieves the puck and turns left. I go to turn right away from him but lose an edge crashing *really* heavy into the boards. I lay stunned for a second as players from both teams gather to ask if I’m okay.Â
Of course, being a big tough hockey player, I get up, “yeah, I’m okay” and hobble off. I sit on our bench, hoping that it’s just a really bad sprain but knowing on some level that’s probably not the case. The game ends and I even go out to do the end-of-game handshakes (again, stupid) then make my way gingerly off the ice. I get my equipment and skates off and it appears that there’s a DENT in my leg, above my ankle just over where my skate covers. Â
Oh-oh! Â
I pack up and again, being a tough guy, carry my equipment out to our van rather than asking someone to carry it for me. I drive home and now my ankle’s swollen up and climbing the stairs into our house (the equipment stays in the van!) nearly kills me. I wake up Shea and we debate going to the hospital but she’s scheduled for a busy day at work the next day plus we’d have to wake up Pace and drag him out for what could be a few hours in Emergency. So she gets me an ice bag and I crash out instead.Â
Up this morning and take Pace to his daycare then go to the clinic for X-Rays which confirm that it’s a break. Fuck. That means a cast and all the crap that goes with it – lack of mobility, worries about how to move around if more snow comes, not being able to help out around the house as easily.Â
But yeah, the next six to eight weeks are *not* going to be fun but hopefully they go fast.Â
(Funny story – Shea was taking me to get my cast and I go “I wish I had a time machine so I could push a button and be six weeks in the future with all of this over” and she goes, “If you had a time machine, why not just go back one day and be less of an idiot?” Good point.)Â
Shea posted a hilarious anti-breastfeeding article pro-Nestle Fake Milk Formula to her Facebook status with the usual heavy response to anytime this type of topic comes up – from both pro-breastfeeding moms and those who weren't able to or aren't as worked up about the prevalance of formula in our society.
It made me think, what are the most controversial topics you can bring up with someone to guarantee a good argument (or awkward silences): – religion/atheism – politics – abortion – euthanasia – parenting – breastfeeding – social programs (pick one) – economic programs (pick one) – pornography – sex – gambling – anything to do with races/gender issues/sexual orientation and all that fun stuff – why the Leafs suck so badly (okay, nobody disagrees about this! )
So anyhow, that's a long way of saying that I hope Shea posts this article about the completely different attitude towards breastfeeding that exists way around the world in Mongolia (although if you did a study, I'm sure the attitudes in Mongolia are much more common worldwide than the typical North American way of doing things – baby breastfeeds for maybe 3-6 months if they're lucky or else mom says she just wasn't able to do it – which might be true but you shouldn't admit in the same article that you “didn't realise how much work breastfeeding would be” or mention that being able to leave baby with grandma and grandpa for a night out is a nice bonus as was the case in the article Shea posted to her Facebook.)
)
