Mini Vivi Nova not firing

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I just wanted to post a quick note incase anyone has his issue as well.

I topped my mini Vivi Nova off and when I connected it to my ego twist it was not firing. I found that the atty at the top of the post had become loose. I was able to tighten it up using a pair of tweezers, I was able to tighten it without removing the silicon cap but you may have to remove it to get a good grip on the atty. Once the atty was tightened again it continued to fire as expected.

Hope this step works for ou as well.

Vaping

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In an effort to change my life I have started to use a personal vaporizer, know to most people as an electronic cigarette. As a result I have stopped smoking cigarettes. I have noticed a few changes, I am no longer short of breath in the morning and I am no longer feeling sick. Maybe at some point I will reduce the amount of nicotine in the e-juice for the electronic cigarette.

I wanted to share this so that anyone else who is looking for an alternate to smoking will have my personal story. I will be sharing some tips and tricks as well as my personal setup over the next few days.

An excellent program that I have found that has a large amount of useful information is the vape team at vplive. Here is a link to their youtube channel and their live website.

How I would spend my 29,000 days

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I recently came across this article while looking for the Klingon version of the Gangnam style video. It was an article that was posted to the Metro News website, I am not able to tell from the article if this was included in any of the print editions of the paper. Here is a link to the article.

In the article the author asks why someone would attend a Star Trek convention and I guess as an extension any sci-fi/fantasy convention. He brings into question a couple who exchanged their vows in Klingon at the convention. He draws the conclusion that time is short in life referencing that the average person lives 29,000 days alive and there are so many better things to do with our time.

To start off I would like to say that if I have 29,000 days to live on this planet why not spend it with people who like the same things as me. For me conventions are about seeing the stars, getting an autograph or a picture, but one of the best things about attending a sci-fi/fantasy convention to me is the people you meet. Most of the people who are not the flag waving-costume wearing-I am an actual person in whatever fictional universe they follow person.

Some of them are retired, some are sysadmins, some are secretaries, some are musicians, some run their own business, the list goes on. All of these people have one thing in common and it is a starting point for getting to know someone new. How often in life are you able to approach someone and know they the both of you will have something in common. It is very rare, the only other instance I can think of is at a sporting event and I would say that there are more people dressed in the (literal) uniform of the team that they like then there are at a sci-fi/fantasy con.

Sports fans have the same issue with media focus, the tv cameras focus on the fans that are screaming, the people with face paint on, the overweight guy with his belly painted and yet there is only a small chuckle at that.

Take  a step back and think about it, how would you spend you 29,000 days on this earth? Would you rather spend it with a bunch of strangers, or people you barely know, or would you like to spend it with people you know you have something in common with.

My name is Jeff and I am a proud trekkie. :)

BABM – Building a better me

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With the new year upon us I wanted to post a follow up to my earlier post on building a better me. I hate the idea of new year’s resolutions, setting promises to yourself that will go unmet is not something that I want to do. So I am going to be working on a six month plan, and if that goes well move on to another six months or a year.

For starters I want to read ore this upcoming year, over the holidays I received some books as gifts and picked some up on boxing day. The list of books is The Fault in our Stars, An Abundance of Katherines, Lolita, Goliath, and The Hobbit, adding those to the other books that I have been wanting to read or in the process of reading will give me a good starting point for reading.

It has been a while since I have watched broadcast or cable TV, I have done a season pass in iTunes for some TV series so one of the usual points that I see when people are making new years resolutions does not really apply to me, for the most part I am watching “edu-tainment” usually in podcast for but there are a few PBS shows that I am currently watching.

In regards to education I am looking to expand my knowledge set and either take some college courses or get some certifications that will help me in my career search.

I am looking forward to the flight that was given to me at Christmas this year and hope that it will be a good experience and might give me some perspective on what I may want to do with my life in the future.

The books that I am currently reading are Lolita and Double Cross: The Inside Story of James A Richardson and Canadian Airways. I want to have both of these books done by the end of January and will update as I read them.

Building a better me

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For anyone who has been checking this blog with any regularity has noticed that I do not post often and I am looking to change that. I had this idea kicking around in my head for a while and have decided to act on it. One of the major reasons for me deciding to go through this program of building a better me is I find myself at a bit of a crossroads in life after being laid off this summer from my employeer of four years.

To start with I am a computer engineering graduate and have been employed in the computer field for the past five years since graduating college. I have moved back to Manitoba where I can be closer to family and the support network that I need in my life. I have no idea where this project will take me or if I will be able to force myself to post regularly on what I am doing.

I recently finished watching all of the vlogbrothers videos and ome of the Project for Awesome live stream and I have been inspired to use this blog as my accountability for this project.

I will be updating this site between now and the new year with hopefully a bit of a plan for what the next six months to a year will hold for me.

Look forward to that post within the next few weeks.

Webmind

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I just finished the WWW trilogy by Robert J Sawyer and it has me pondering what if there were an emergent AI on the Internet. How would the world react? Would we be accepting of an all knowing entity that would know all of humanities secrets? What would it be like to converse with it? To be able to access the whole of human knowledge without needing to look anything up.

To me one of the big questions that arises is what would it be like to speak with something or someone who would not judge, who would be able to help give perspective on life. Would this mean that counsellors and psychiatrists would be out of work? Or would most people be too gun shy to give their private thoughts over to something that has access to every outlet available on the planet?

Would it indeed turn out to be big brother as in Orwell’s 1984? Or would it be benevolent as in the WWW series? My personal hope is that we do get to see an emergent AI on the Internet and that it is benevolent, that it makes the world a better place. While it is an ingesting thought experiment to ponder what technology run amok might be I would not want to live in that world.

The book series ends with webminds final words to those who created it, and the series also leave the reader with the thought of what would you say to those who created you, gave your life meaning, and to those who you have helped. I will not write webminds solution here but I agree with it whole heartedly.

edx courses

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I just registered for edx. An open university put together by Harvard, MIT, and Berkeley. One of the things that drew me to this was because it closely models the course studies at the universities. I have signed up for one course out of the possible seven. I have no idea what the course work is going to be like. Right now I am registered for CS50x: Introduction to Computer Science, this is a Harvard course and if I am able to complete the course with an appropriate grade I will be able to receive a certificate from Harvardx stating that I have completed the course to their standards.

My hope for the outcome of this course. I hope that it will be a learning experience, and that I can complete the course to a point where I am able to receive the certificate for completion of the course. The course starts on October, 15th, 2012 and it runs until April, 15th, 2012. For more information about the course please go here: https://www.edx.org/courses/HarvardX/CS50x/2012/about

Polaris day two and three

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I had hoped to post this sooner but by the timoil got back to my room on Saturday night I wadreaded tired. Then on Sunday I was not feeling good and I barely made it through the day.

I made my way back home on Monday and after a long nap I will be ready for my night shift tomorrow night.

Most of my time on Saturday and Sunday was going to have pictures taken with the actor guest, attending talks in the main room, and getting autographs.

Over the weekend I was able to see J. G. Hertzler and Robert O’Reilly on stage in their full Klingon makeup. That was a good talk and there was a lot of fan participation. I was also able to see Will Wheaton and he was quite funny. Neil Grayston provided a lot of information in the question and answer period. Miracle Laurie was nice and answered a lot of questions from the audience.

I was able to get all of the pictures and autographs that I wanted and will be posting pictures that I took from the panels soon.

Polaris Blastoff Party

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I just got back to my room after the blastoff party, it was a good evening and there were some interesting conversations.

As soon as J. G. Hertzler entered the room I could tell, he has a very distinctive voice that is fairly close to Martok. He spent some time at our table with Robert O’Reilly. I wasn’t able to speak with Tony Amendola as much as I would have liked to but I enjoyed listening to the conversations that were taking place.

I was able to speak with Neil Grayston about digital distribution of television shows, and a question that I had about product placement in television shows. He mentioned that on Eureka that whenever they needed an animated display they would use an iPod touch mounted in whatever prop they were using.

I was also able to speak with Miracle Laurie for a while and she had mentioned the band that she is in with her husband Ukebox Heroes. She had mentioned that she was up for the role of Kaylee against Jewel Staite, personally I believe she would have been good in the role. She was talking about how she is teaching Zumba classes and mentioned that she may bring her iPod and have the audience do a workout.

I wasn’t able to speak with Wil Wheaton, but his talk should be quite good.

Time to figure out my schedule for the rest of the weekend.

Polaris Day One

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I arrived at the Sheraton Parkway last night, I always like to arrive a day early and leave a day late. It makes it feel more like a vacation and there isn’t a large crowd at check-in or check-out. I just got back from the opening ceremonies, I highly enjoy the humour of Larry Stewart. One thing that was new this year there was a band at the opening ceremonies.  I enjoyed Nerds with Guitars and am downloading their LP right now. I would recommend checking them out if you enjoy nerd humour.

Later tonight I will be heading off to the Blastoff Party and am looking forward to meeting Wil Wheaton, Tony Amendola, Neil Grayston, Miracle Laurie, J. G. Hertzler, and Robert O’Reilly. I caught a glimpse of Neil Grayston while he was headed towards the Timmies across the parking lot.

I picked up two of Wil Wheaton’s books, “Just a Geek” and “Dancing Barefoot”, I can’t decide what one to get autographed. I am leaning towards “Just a Geek” and I will be getting a picture autographed as well.

Trying to figure out how to get all of the pictures and autographs I want while being able to see all of the stars on the main stage.