Just wanted to share one thought totally unrelated to my travels and adventures.

[Deep breath.]

OMG!! BSG IS BACK!! BSG IS BACK!! BSG IS BACK!!

[Cough.]

That is all.

Excuse me. I have an appointment with mucus.

Probably about the next two hours were spent training BBEdit to do text replacements the way that I want it to. And it agreed very nicely. And then made me a very nice latte with lots of foam. And rubbed my feet. Holy crap is it nice using software designed to be user-friendly and powerful. I do believe this trial period will end with me paying for a BBEdit License. Unless someone knows of a comparable Mac text editor with FTP capabilities and the ability to totally hack the keyboard shortcuts…

And the last hour was spent doing actual work. Yay.

I do feel like I’m working with about one arm, two fingers, and about 1/3 of my regular brain capacity. I NEED MY INTERNET! Damn damn damn damn damn… I’m crawling out of my skin up here… I can make it though. Landing in Calgary in about half an hour and then I have almost three ours in which to find a clean vein and shoot up some pure grade INTAWEB straight to my central nervous system.

Whoops. Seats up in the full upright and locked position. Gotta go…

…

Awwww CRAP.

Stupid Telus. Stupid stupid Telus.

I’m in Calgary and I have no internet.

I was willing to pay for internet access. I was ready to pay through my freaking NOSE.

But NOOOOoooOOOOoooo… Telus Hotspot Service is “temporarily unavailable”. Phaw. Telus service is a big dodohead an he likes to eat stinky poos. Really stinky poos. Like, when my sisterwhoeatspoofor two eats poo, the poos that come out of her. Poo MADE from poo. That stinky.

Crap.

Oh well. At least I get to recharge.

And drink coffee. Mmmmm… coffee.

…

Later. Still Calgary. (The Rockies! In the distance. Hi, Mountains!)

Telus is up now.

At $10.00 a freaking hour.

Considering that my flight is boarding in 2 minutes… my nose is less willing to be a conduit of payment than it was previously. So, I must wait until Vancouver to pay through the nose.

What is with the whole paying for Wifi in airports? Is it really that expensive for them? Is gouging us really that fun? (“Whee! Let us sing the Gouging Song! Gouge gouge gouge gouge gouge gouge gouge gouge gouge gouge gouge gouge gouge gouge goooooooooooooge… GOUGE! GOUGE! GOUGE! Lovely. Good job everyone. Gerald, a little less vibrato next time, thank you very much. This is a fight song, not The Barber of Seville. Don’t look at me like that, Gerald. Gerald. Gerald. Please don’t cry. Oh, Gerald.”) Just imagine how much happier people in airports could be if they didn’t have bullcrap Wifi fees rammed sideways up their poopchutes.

…

Heh. “Poopchutes”.

…

That’s it. I’m watching Battlestar Galactica on this leg of my journey. I can work later.

…

Well… it seems that Banana can’t suck up the juice too fast. I’ve got about 15 more minutes of juice until I can charge her up in Vancouver. Thus concludes my BSG watching extravaganza. Oh well,

One awesome thing: MOUNTAINS! MOUNTAINS! MOUNTAINS!

Please join me in a rousing chorus of “Woot!”

After gazing slack-jawed for a couple of minutes, I did have the presence of mind to grab my camera to take a picture of the Rockies from above… just as we hit the cloud cover. So. Sorry No photo.

I’m signing off again. For a bit. I got me some podcasts to listen too.

Getting hungry too. Mrph.

…

Vancouver. Fog. Cloud cover. No view. Expensive internet. Should I pay for it?… Nope. The end of the road is near. I’ll log in at the hotel.

…

Review: Harvey’s hamburgers suck.

…

Landed in Prince George. I’m in the complimentary shuttle that the conference has set up, waiting for the slowpokes to get their luggage stowed. It’s 4:40 local time. My body thinks it is 8:40. Supper is gonna be weird.

I want to get in my room. And eat. AND GET ONLINE. YAAARGH.

Nice side effect of the new keyboard — it making me unlearn my pounding keyboarding habits. Maybe I won’t wake up the neighbours anymore.

(Nice Banana. I love my Banana. I would never hurt my Banana.)

…

I’M HERE! I’M HERE! I’M HERE!

Especially if by “here” you are referring to the middle of nowhere.

And for the one person from Prince George that reads this in two years doing a search for “free banana poopchutes in Prince George”, I’m not saying that Prince George is in the middle of nowhere.

My hotel is in the middle of nowhere.

There’s a gas station across the street. And a Chinese restaurant. About half a mile down there are a few tractor dealerships.

Oh, and the hotel has a casino.

As I have on occasion offered to win a bear for My Lovely Wife at the fair and left having spent over $40.00… this could be a bad thing.

Whatever the case… I need sustenance. I’m signing out for now. Will report more later.

…

One more note. I tried to take a picture of the view from my hotel room, but my camera turned itself off in protest. Sorry. The view really is that boring.

I wasn’t ALLOWED to watch it last night, since it was on at 11:00 and My Lovely Wife said she would be asleep unless I was watching it in which case her subconscious mind would alert her to the fact that “her Starbuck” was on TV and cause her adrenal medulla to pump adrenaline through her system thereby causing her to wake up suddenly and in all likelihood punch me in the stomach repeatedly.

Or something like that.

Whatever her reasoning, last night’s Battlestar Galactica is sitting on our DVR right now.

UNWATCHED.

So… Internet… I have a small request to make:

Please don’t tell me what happened.

And I mean, NOTHING. Not even coy little hints. Those are the worst.

Hell, even if Edward James Olmos breaks character, looks directly at the camera and says, “Jason Sweeney — a rain of frozen toads will crush you DEAD if you walk on Oxford Street at exactly 11:10 am on January 22, 2007,” JUST LET ME TAKE MY CHANCES. A RAIN OF TOADS IS UNLIKELY AND EDWARD JAMES OLMOS IS NOT A WORLD AUTHORITY ON THEM.

We are watching it when we get home tonight.

After that, feel free to spoilerise the episode for everyone else.

Until then, can you please just share funny pictures of cats or videos of guys getting hit in the groin with iPhones or whatever?

Thanks.

You’re the best.

UPDATE: We’re all good. Spoilerise to your heart’s content.

(Special thanks on the whole not-ruining-the-episode-for-me front HAVE go out to Walking To Do. Rock on, DecemberFlower. You get an eCookie.)

• FIRST! The Sci-Fi Channel announces that they will be creating a 6-hour miniseries (producers include George Freaking Clooney) of Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. (If I haven’t mentioned it before. Neal Stephenson is my FAVOURITE author and if you haven’t you should read his Cryptonomicon right now. Go. We’ll be here when you get back.)
• SECOND! HBO has announced they are going to be making George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire into a motherfrakking TELEVISION SERIES! Gah! One of the best (not to mention bloody, brutal, and morally ambiguous) fantasy series out there, coming to us from the network that gave us The Sopranos, Deadwood, and Rome. My geek-o-meter is CLIMBING INTO THE RED HERE, PEOPLE.
• THIRD! G-FORCE! THE MOVIE!

I can’t take it any more. My geek organ… it is burst.

All this AND a new episode of Battlestar Galactica this weekend?

I will say it.

IT’S BETTER THAN COOKIES.

Our Saturday consisted of an eye-bubbling eight episode marathon to catch us up to the present. Every episode ended with My Lovely Wife announcing to the world, “NEEEEEEEEEEXT!”

And now… I must wait. Like a sucker.

LIKE A VERY IMPATIENT SUCKER.

This is bad. Our DVR is sitting at home with the season premieres of Rome AND 24 waiting for us… plus a behind-the-scenes documentary on Battlestar Galactica which is probably nothing more than a glorified promo. And which one do you think I want to watch most? Unless Jack Bauer or Mark Antony are getting in the cockpit of a Viper, it ain’t them.

I mean — C’MON! I have to wait SIX MORE DAYS FOR A NEW EPISODE?

THE DAYS… THEY PASS GLACIALLY.

For Christmas, Jason’s Dad bestowed upon his firstborn son boxed sets of the 1st and 2nd seasons of Battlestar Galactica. (Well, actually the 1st season and season 2.0… but I went out and got season 2.5 three days after Christmas. Yay me.)

I had been told it would rock. I was fully expecting it to rock. And guess what?

IT FRAKKING ROCKS!

(My Lovely Wife has also tasted of the Kool-Aid. Her standard reply when I ask if she wants to watch another episode? “I need to know what happens to my Starbuck!”)

But this post is not about how much BSG frakking rocks. Oh no.

At the moment, My Lovely Wife and I have 6 episodes left of the second season to watch and find ourselves at a critical juncture. Currently, one half of the 3rd season has aired on television and the second half of the 3rd season will start on January 21.

We need to see the first half of the season before the 21st so we can actually start to watch the show along with the rest of the world and I can stop reading the interweb without a constant ulcerating fear of BSG spoilers around every corner. EVEN ON MY OWN SITE. (Ugh.)

So, credit card in hand, I boogied over to iTunes to download season 3.

There I made an very interesting discovery.

Seeing as I reside in Canada, it seems I am not allowed to download from the U.S. iTunes Store. I can look at it all I want, nose pressed up against the plate-glass window. I’m just not allowed to give them my money and get a product from them in return. I guess they’re all scared of my Canadian cooties and run away like little crying babies. (No slight intended toward actual babies. Please don’t kill me, mommy bloggers.)

Instead, I am redirected to the Canadian iTunes Store.

WHICH! DOESN’T! HAVE! TELEVISION! SHOWS!

AUGH!

AUGH!

AUGH!

…

Boy.

I just wonder what I’m going to do now?

[Sound of dripping.]

Please excuse that viscous liquid pooling under your monitor. It’s just sarcasm. It’s biodegradable and should harmlessly evaporate.

It’s also nice on toast.