Go And Get ‘Em 16 (GC3486K) starts at 6pm this evening and runs straight through to 6pm tomorrow evening. For those not in the know, the Go And Get ‘Em geocaching events are held about once a year in Ottawa at around this time of the year. Basically, local cachers hide geocaches specifically for the event and a couple of days before the event, they are published on the geocaching.com website. At 6pm on the Friday of the event, people start looking for them. Afterwards, we meet up for dinner on Saturday and visit with each other. There’s usually a table with prizes and everyone gets to vote for their favourite caches.

I’ve been to most of the Go And Get ‘Em events and even made some special geocoins with another geocacher for past event, which you can read about here, here and here. But, it’s a lot of work producing and selling them, so we haven’t done them for a while. Maybe in a couple of years to commemorate the 20th edition.

So, with about three and a half hours to go, I’m starting to champ at the bit in terms of leaving work, grabbing my geocaching bag, meeting up with Nikon-Guy and another cacher for several hours of caching. I’m not sure how late we’ll be out, but I don’t think we’re going to cache straight through the 24 hours, unlike a couple of cachers I know.

See you on the trail!

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve basically resigned myself to the fact that I’m probably going to have to make weekly excursions to a comic book store because it appears I may have started following some comic books series. Today being Wednesday, I made the first of what’s likely to be many treks down to one of the local comic book stores (the Ottawa branch of Silver Snail).

I picked out copies of Green Arrow #1 and #2 and joined the line for the cash to pay for them. A couple of days ago I had emailed the store asking if they could put aside copies of the first two issues of Green Lantern: New Guardians, so when I was next I mentioned this. The guy behind the counter asked me my name and when I told him he said, and I quote:

Oh, you’re the new guy!

And then the girl behind the other cash register looked over from whatever she was doing and said exactly the same thing.

Anyway, enough about that… it’s time to carefully read my purchases before I put them back in their individual bags with boards.

As a kid, I remember buying comic books. They were inexpensive and fun to read and had cool ads full of exciting things like x-ray glasses, sea monkeys and how to be like Charles Atlas. Many years later and my how things have changed. The artwork is more refined (at least compared to the comics I was reading when I younger), the printing is just better, the paper is higher quality than the newsprint-like stuff of the good ol’ days and the ads are different. No more x-ray specs! And there are a lot more comics out on the market.

The “traditional” characters like Batman, Spiderman, Green Lantern, and other superheroes are still there, but there are hundreds of comics on everything from Buffy to Dorothy & the Wizard of Oz. Fans of Richie Rich, Archie and MAD Magazine need not fret because they’re still in print, too. And the prices really haven’t gone up that much, allowing for inflation – you can buy a mainstream comic for about $3, which is a pretty good deal.

And when you do bite the bullet and head to your local comic book store, you’re asked whether you want a “bag and board” for each of your new purchases. (The correct answer to this question is, of course, yes.)

And how do I know all of this? Well, a few days ago Joseph Mallozzi, one of the creative geniuses behind the various Stargate series, announced on his blog that a new comic book called Dark Matter written by him and his writing partner, Paul Mullie, will be released on January 11, 2012. He’s been teasing the readers of his blog with tidbits about the new comic for a while now and it sounds pretty cool,  so I decided to find out what’s involved in getting my hands on a copy of it and that ultimately involved a trip to one of the local comic book stores, aka the top of a very slippery slope.

As it happened, a couple of months ago DC comics did a big “reboot” of many of their series, including the various Green Lanterns, Batman, Justice League and others, so many of the story arcs have just started. So, if you’re a newbie to the genre, it’s fairly easy to get in without having to get up to speed on years of character history.

Unfortunately, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m probably going to start making weekly excursions to the comic book store because, of course, the release schedules for the various comics I’ve apparently started following are staggered on a weekly basis.

And I’ve already pre-ordered my copy of Dark Matter.

Curse you, Joseph Mallozzi! 😉

I’ve been using the Sociable plugin for quite a while to offer readers a quick and easy way to share what I’ve written on different social networks. It’s fairly configurable, allowing you to select where you want to make it easy for people to share things with. I have about half a dozen little icons at the bottom of each post that you can click to share the entry with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, or by email, or add it to your favourites, share it in Google Reader or post it to Digg or Reddit. There are other social networks that I could choose, like MySpace (does anyone still use MySpace?), but I don’t want to clutter things up with a zillion little icons.

There was a major upgrade that appeared in my WordPress control panel today bringing it up to version 4.0.3, from 3.whatever. Usually WordPress plugin updates are fairly painless, so clicking on it didn’t really concern me, so I upgraded and then watched as all my icons disappeared.

Grr. (more…)

A Canadian Press story on CTV’s website today caught my eye. You may be familiar with the $50 million slush stimulus fund ostensibly for last year’s G8 summit that basically allowed Tony Clement to funnel a huge amount of money into his riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka. A large volume of emails between him and Claude Doughty, the mayor of Huntsville, reveals that Tony Clement was micromanaging the fund.

The revelation of these emails by the NDP who dug them up has embarrassed the mayor to the extent that next time he does business with a federal minister he’ll be careful not to leave a “reproducable [sic]” email trail of such discussions – he’s going to do everything by telephone. So, basically, if there’s ever a dispute over what was agreed it’s going to be a your word vs. mine situation, which I don’t see him winning. Yikes!

Maybe he’ll take a leaf from Richard Nixon’s book and start recording all his conversations.