Live wrestling

I did something over the weekend I hadn't done in a long time. I went to a live wrestling event. It was Main Stream Wrestling at the rink in Musquodoboit Harbour.

I went to the event with my son, who noticed the posters and wanted to go. We ended up getting ringside seats which were only $12 each. There was a good crowd there. I'm glad there was a pretty good turnout. Hopefully they will return some time. The canteen was busy, a lot of people there ordered fries and poutine. We ate beforehand at Gazoo's in Porters Lake which is open again for the summer. It's always a treat there.

They had some tables off to the side with merchandise. They had a lot of WWE action figures. We got some hard to find ones Matt Hardy and Mankind. That was an unexpected find.

The show itself was very good. The doors opened at 6:30 for a 7:30 start. There were some entertaining matches. The quality of the wrestling was good. The fighters interacted with the fans a lot more than they do on TV. So that was cool. One of the guys Grimez, was huge, over 7 feet tall. He had green face paint and was in the main event.

If you go to their site they are doing a spring tour. So if you're in the Atlantic provinces they may be coming to a venue near you soon. They will be in Dartmouth on April 30.

I hadn't been to live wrestling in a long time. Well over 20 years. I used to go to Atlantic Grand Prix wrestling at the Halifax Forum on Thursday nights in the mid 80s. It was a good time at the Main Stream wrestling event. Well organized with quality fighters and action. It was good entertainment for the cost.

Sterilized

I recently heard back from the Doctor's office. The test results came back negative. That means my vasectomy is finally complete and I'm now sterile.

It's good to have it completed now. The procedure was back in September at the Dartmouth General Hospital. I've always been fond of that hospital for some reason, it's always been my favorite. After I did the follow up test it was unfortunately still showing some genetic material. So I had to wait a couple of months and go back for another test in February. Going to the VG lab in the Mackenzie building to drop off this sample is not an enjoyable experience. I'm glad it's over.

In a way it's kind of moot at this point to be sterilized, if you know what I mean. Still this is one of those things that you have to take care of before you need it. It's a bit like insurance. There's a non trivial probability it may come into play in the time I have left so it's sensible to get it done [especially considering the cost of a failure]. Plus things can happen fast and with the lengthy lead times [it was well over a year from my initial family Dr. visit to when I got the final negative test results from the urologist office] you want to get this done before you really need it.

Plus it has some immediate value. It makes a very clear statement to what my intentions are about breeding. There can be no possibility of ambiguity or confusion or misunderstanding on this point. And I now control my own reproductive fate. I don't have to rely on the virtue of individuals, synthetic technology, pills, other people, to take care of this for me. My strategy is unexploitable.

Michael Crichton - Prey

I finished up another book recently. It was Prey by Michael Crichton. It was a good book. An easy and compelling read. It only took a few days to get through it.

It's the story of an experiment with nanotechnology and computer programming gone awry. Crichton uses some of the elements that are in some of his other books. Psychologists are prominent characters in this book (Sphere); new advanced technology gone awry (Jurassic Park); set in Silicon Valley (Disclosure, Airframe); infidelity (Disclosure); computer programmers (Jurassic Park). Crichton isn't afraid to reuse what works and what the fans are comfortable with and enjoy. The book isn't cliché though and there's plenty of fresh material and well thought out plot twists to keep it interesting.

There's still a few Crichton I haven't read yet and I'm sure I'll catch up and read them. Plus he seems to still be writing new books which is great for me and the many other fans. My local library branch doesn't usually have Crichton for some reason. I ended up getting Prey from a branch me and my son went in after a hockey game.

Printer ink

I picked up some ink for my printer over the weekend. I really like my printer. It's a Canon Pixma ip 3000. It has always worked well. When it prints it will tell you if your ink cartridges are getting low. When I looked at the diagnostic screen I didn't even realize the printer has double sided printing.

Both the red and the cyan were low. I went to inkjet x-change in west end mall. They had aftermarket cartridges for the Canon and I was set. It only came to about $22 total for the two of them and they took the old cartridges for recycling. I'd been to that inkjet exchange before for a black cartridge a few months ago. Although the printer is dated Canon uses the same cartridge models on some newer models so it's still compatible. Typical of good design and engineering by Canon.

I'm glad these aftermarket printer kiosk stores have cropped up in the last few years. In the past around 5+ years ago printer ink cost a fortune and was hard to find.

The ink jet place is across from the registry of motor vehicles office. The former main part of West End mall is kind of a strange place now. It's so eerie and quiet now. No food court. No real stores along the main drag. No Sears any more. The Bay is still there though and I couldn't help but wander aimlessly through for a few minutes for old times sake. I guess with west end mall most of the action has shifted to the other end of the site with wal-mart, Sobey's, NSLC and other retail using outside entrances.

Clock radio

I picked up a new clock radio recently. I got it at Superstore. It is a Sony. It was on special $20 marked down to $12. I was looking for a new clock radio. My old one had malfunctioned a couple of times and the buttons were getting sticky. I probably should have replaced it a long time ago.

One thing that is different was there is now a $3.50 surcharge on the clock radio. Which is annoying because it is only a $12 item. The clerk at the electronics warned me about the extra charge. I think he felt bad about it. At least I shouldn't have to throw out my old clock radio as it should now be returnable to a recycling depot.

It was different when I got it out. There's no 9V battery to put in. It has a built in lithium battery. After I plugged it in I didn't even need to set the time. The built in battery kept the time. That was pretty cool. It even has daylight saving time so that's a nice feature.

I checked out the radio. The reception was good, better than with the old clock radio. It was easy to set the alarm time. It seems well designed. Which is what you would expect from the Sony brand name. All things being equal, I'd rather have the Sony. Hopefully it will run well for a few years.

Going running again

I'll be off running again this season. I haven't gone out yet but I've decided I'm going to do it again this summer. Now that the snow is melted and it's getting a bit warmer in the evening and the light is lasting a bit longer it's about time to go out running again. It went pretty well last year. I'll plan to stick to the route I was using at the end of last season. I finished up around October last year.

I was looking for new running shoes. The Adidas response I used last year I ended up wearing to work during the winter. I was in Cleve's Bayers Lake last Saturday getting some skates sharpened. After that was done I wandered over to the shoes section. There were some running shoes on sale. I was going to get the same Adidas response I used last year as they were marked $130 down to $70. There were some other similar Adidas marked $120 down to $80 that looked nice too. Unfortunately they didn't have any Adidas in my size.

I was going to just leave but I decided to look at what else was there. I noticed there were some Saucony on sale. I've had Saucony before and they were really nice. There were two Saucony marked $120 down to $80. The red striped ones looked nicer but they were all out. They did have some Saucony Omni 7 in my size. They have grey stripes. They look OK, good enough to be seen in.

I tried them on and they are really light. They felt comfortable too. It was a good price $120 marked down to $80 so I decided to get them. So this will be my first non-Adidas running season; although I did try to buy the Adidas first but they were all out. Hopefully they will turn out to be a good buy.

I should try to get out running some time in April if it ever warms up a bit more. I've seen some people out in the morning running but I'm not that dedicated. Plus ball hockey season is still ongoing so I'm not fully engaged yet in post winter sports I guess. But at least I have everything I need now for when I'm ready to go.

Baseball cards update

Another update on baseball cards. I was down to just 7 left to finish the 1979 o pee chee set. I went on Sportlots and I was glad to see all of the cards I needed were listed there.

So I placed the order. It was spread across 4 sellers. The cost came to around $7 on paypal. That's fine to get the set finished. It got off to a good start. All four sellers marked their orders as filled within a couple of days. And in the first week two of the orders arrived with 3 of the cards.

Then ... well nothing. The remaining 2 orders did not arrive. That's pretty bad for there to be a 50% fail to deliver. It made me wonder if it was really bad luck or the site was a scam. They did have a follow up on sportlots so I registered a fail to deliver on the two sellers. One guy, barriere, basically admitted he hadn't sent the cards and wasn't going to. The other guy claimed he had sent the cards. That's strange for the second guy since it was a month later when I put in the fail to deliver notice.

After the required week the cards still hadn't arrived so I requested refund. The way sportlots worked I did get a credit. I left negative feedback on the two sellers. Pretty disappointing and that was that it seemed.

Then something unexpected happened. One of the orders arrived. It was surprising since it was postmarked February 5 air mail in Pennsylvania but it didn't arrive until March 20 here in Nova Scotia. So somehow the useless post office managed to take over six weeks to deliver an ordinary letter from Pennsylvania to Nova Scotia. That was very annoying. This is not the first major screw up with the post office. Just this year it took the post office nearly a month to deliver a letter from my place to another address in Halifax!

So then I had to try to right things with the seller on Sportlots. I contacted the sportlots support form and explained the situation. The order was marked as not filled as it had been over a month since I had made the order with no delivery. I asked sportlots to reverse the refund and re-make the payment to the seller. Also I asked for the negative feedback to be cleared as it was the stupid post office fault it wasn't delivered in a timely way. Fortunately sportlots customer support is not too bad and they did resolve the situation that the post office created.

So I guess that's as far as it will go with the 1979 set. It's disappointing to be the 3 cards short but maybe someday I'll find some other chance somewhere to find those last three cards. It was kind of a distraction as things dragged out with the 1979 set. I should get focused on it again and start on the 1978 o pee chee baseball set.

If anyone has any line on it, these are the cards I need to finish the set. 1979 o pee chee baseball.

322 Dave McKay
325 Jerry Remy
350 Lou Brock