Brought to you by the department of the painfully obvious

Here's your tax dollars at work: Statistics Canada recently released a study finding that the work force is depressed. That is, more workers reported symptoms of clinical depression in the last five years then in the past. It was found that workers in sales and service jobs were more depressed then both blue collar and white collar workers. Duh. Serving the public sucks. We make movies about it, remember (Clerks, anyone?).

While we're on the subject, here's my reason to be depressed of the day. This story, like most depressing things in life (for men anyway), begins with a girl. But not the way you might think. During my undergrad years a friend of mine was taking electrical engineering. She graduated in the class before me and I lost touch with her after that. So you can imagine my surprise when the UNB alumni magazine is delivered today and in it there is reprinted said friend's wedding announcement. This is not the depressing part. She'd been dating the guy in question since high school. The announcement goes on to say that she works for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission assigned to Point Lepreau Generating Station near Saint John, New Brunswick. This is the depressing part. Just one more of my school friends who graduated about the same time I did and rather then taking an idiotic second degree are out working a dream job.

Things that slightly bother me

I was re-watching Revenge of the Sith the other night when I noticed a few technical problems with some of the weapons shown in the movie during the initial battle.

First, the buzz droids. I suppose there may be a psychological warfare aspect to a missile that explodes and scatters small robots that slowly tear your ship apart, but really, wouldn't about 10 pounds of high explosive work just as well and leave less time for countermeasures?

In another scene we see a number of battle droids firing several large energy weapons. These eject a shell after each time they are fired, similar to a modern artillery piece. My question is why there is even a shell since it is an energy weapon? A shell serves to hold a propellant charge for launching a projectile. An energy weapon wouldn't strictly need one, and it would be best to avoid having one, since most of the hard work for a modern artillery soldier is the task of lifting each shell from storage into the breech of the gun.

Also, why is Mustafar consistently called a planet when it is clearly a moon orbiting a large gas giant? This system seems to be based on Io, the innermost of Jupiter's large moons, which is heated to extreme volcanic activity by the gravitational effects of Jupiter on the one hand and the three other large moons on the other. I suppose for the purposes of the movie it is nice not to have the International Astronomical Union to worry about, otherwise Mustafar would have gotten plutoed.

Random thoughts on ink

Specifically, the kind that sits in a patch of scar tissue and forms a tattoo. I'm personally glad that this form of art is becoming more socially acceptable. Strangely, most magazines on the subject still feature the kind of artwork you would expect to see on fat, hairy, bikers. Which is odd, because I find most of that to be in bad taste and its hardly representative of what you can get nowadays. The association of tattoos with bikers, gangsters, and other undesirable groups is probably what turned off the baby boom generation to tattoos. Then generation X seemed to continue the downward trend, not that that generation was short of cultural changes. Because, that's the two generations that seems to have the most reservations about getting them. The previous generation certainly did not seem to think much of it; I remember my grandfather had one, probably from his days in the Merchant Navy during the second world war. In the current generation, I'm not at all surprised to see a tattoo on a person from any walk of life. I'm getting one next Monday, and I'm a professional. Seems to me as long as you put it in a spot where you can hide it at your option, you'll get no objection.

Getting a tattoo is also much safer, which also probably accounts for the expansion. The development of the disposable needle certainly helps, and sterilization and health inspection. Yeah, some places in Ottawa are still somewhat on the shady side, but the place that was recommended to me seemed very respectable when I went to get the estimate and make the appointment. I was actually quite surprised by just how nice a place it was. So we'll see how it goes. Stay tuned.

Feeling Slightly Off

Ever have a day off and have no idea what to do with yourself? Rare days when there you don't have to go to work and have nothing in particular planned? I'm having one of those right now, and so far I have spent most of it surfing aimlessly and reading Geoffrey Hindley's A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons. Yeah, that is the sort of book you'll usually find me reading when I pick up some non-fiction. I'll give a review at some point assuming I ever finish it, I'm very good a starting books but bad at finishing them in anything like a timely manner. I suppose I'll go for a walk at some point, it's cheap and gets me out of the apartment for an hour or so. Ah, the joys of being broke.

Tonight the NFL playoffs start, the league has decided in its wisdom to hold the first pair of wild card games at 4:30 and 8:00 pm (EST). Why there is not an afternoon game eludes me, perhaps I'm just used to the regular season format where the night game is the last of a triple-header.

Welcome to 2007

Which, if you were to take a look at 1960's vintage predictions regarding the advancement of technology you might think that at least some of us would be living on colonies on the Moon or Mars. Which would be cool. Unfortunately, we're limited to sitting watching Star Trek.

I see the last update was December 23rd so here is my holidays by the numbers:

3 parties
2 hangovers
1 boxing day shopping spree
2 turkey dinners
3 paid holidays (all of which, as luck would have it, go on the same cheque)

That wasn't intentionally a symmetrical sequence of numbers, but I find these kinds of mathematical accidents happen to me a lot. Anyway, I had a good time during the holidays and am hoping to find a better job shortly into the new year. I'm also getting married in September and have a lot of organizing to do between now and then.