Starring: Beverley Marquis
Song: Love Like You
Artist: Christopher Charles
Album: Man vs. Self
Director: Tom Antos

Even now when I think about that day… getting completely drunk on Peach Schnapps and then going outside and barfing it up on the sidewalk it still gives me butterflies. It was awesome. I was happy. I had not a care in the world. I was finally in America.

I remember wearing all denim, with a stetson walking down Main Street.. I didn’t look too bad.

Now I live in Canada… even though I’ve had ten years of the ‘New world’ buzz… it still is awesome everytime I go across the border.

So I figured I’d put this awesome Youtube video on. Sit back, close your eyes and imagine a small town bar with an uneven warped wooden floor.. not much lighting, only one pool table… coupla rednecks sitting at the bar and one or two people with Yank accents floating around… and hopefully you’ll get the feeling I do.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oscar Wilde once said that patriotism is a virtue of the vicious… but right now I couldn’t give a toss! I am very proudly a Canadian patriot.

I’m still a Permanent Resident of Canada (with the right to apply for Canadian citizenship).  I will forever be a British Canadian.  Blighty is where I’m from… where I was born and raised, but Canada’s my home and life now.

It feels good to finally refer to myself as Canadian.  Je suis construit pour la vie en Canada!

I like to think I’d react as a normal citizen – confront the abuser, report them to the authorities and let the judicial system handle them. In reality I’m very afraid of what might happen if my children were assaulted in any way. The thought of seeing red, and losing all semblance of control is such a scary thought it’s enough to make me vomit almost.

Recently  I’ve had a look at things that have existed for a long while – how do I know my children are safe when they’re out of my sight? Particularly my daughter who would have more trouble communicating if some dude was molesting her.

I’ve been reading and found a few lists which basically all state the following about child predators:

• The individual may shy away from adult interaction
• The individual may seem uninterested in other adults in a physical/intimate way
• The individual may appear to have a seemingly odd, unnatural, or even worrisome attachment to children
• The individual may crave control, and focus that need for control on children, because they are easily manipulated
• The individual may seek out children who are particularly vulnerable, such as loners, overweight or unpopular children, or children who come from a broken home
• The individual may exhibit child-like behaviors, and enjoy participating in activities typically reserved for children

In addition to the above qualities, a child predator is also more like to come from a broken home themselves, may have been abused or sexually assaulted as a child, may constantly degrade him or herself, have low self-esteem, and have very little, if any, adult friends of their own.

The part that scares the living fuck out of me is the following:

Sometimes, a child predator can seem like a perfectly normal and well-adjusted adult, and display no outwards signs of having any emotional or behavioral issues.

There is no force or human on this planet capable of preventing the infliction of retribution by me on someone who harms my children.   I just hope it  never happens because every single person involved (my children, both their parents, and the abuser) would lose out.

Just as I was feeling completely sick of working for myself, my previous boss called me and offered me my old job back and I accepted which was convenient and good for both of us. So I’m back at Overdrive slogging my guts out every day, working from home and building awesome websites. Not having to worry about work hours or schedules is brilliantly refreshing.

After 25 years I now officially have a girlfriend. I’m in a relationship for once, and not just shagging some bird and then getting ditched. My lady’s name is Sam and she’s delightfully kindhearted and easy to get along with (most of the time). I’ve got high hopes for us.

I completed a Battle Fitness Test at Kenora Armouries today for the Canadian Forces. Every reserve soldier has to do it once a year – 13km rucksack march followed by a fireman’s carry across 100yards. I completed it fourth to last and was 3 laps around the parade square behind the main group. The damn floor was slippery as hell and everytime I went to step forward my other foot would slip as I was bringing it up which made things worse. Apparently I went beetroot red and then started to go white. I need to work on my cardiovascular fitness.

I also ordered Seasons 1-7 of the tv series from England called ‘Spooks’. All I will say is… I do not regret it at all!

Band of Brothers ROCKS!

She then went off on the same ol’ looney left liberal spiel about shooting people is always the last answer.  The same infuriating blinded point of view that is seen in so many stupid people.  It makes me want to smack people around when they spout all that bullshit about war isn’t necessary and shooting people is not the answer.

I told the person I was talking to that her point of view would get her about five feet in the deserts of Afghanistan against a murdering suicide bomber.  I explained that my point of view would get me considerably further and give me a much greater chance of living than hers would give her.

Trying to impress upon someone that serving in the military is an act of citizenship, a display of a sense of duty and caring towards innocent fellow human beings, is enough to make almost anyone want to slap somebody.

We both agreed that there will never be peace in the world and there will always be bad people.  She said that although there’ll never be peace we should still try to move towards it.  I tried to explain it’s pointless and a waste of time KNOWINGLY trying to move towards something that doesn’t exist but she was mindnumbingly stupid and obstinate.  She had the nerve to call me brainwashed.

I told her that there will always be bad people… and one of the things that the military does is try to minimise the effect that those bad people have on society.

American President Barack Obama recently announced his decision to send an extra 30,000 troops.

Click here to view the embedded video.

These extra troops are far more likely to make a difference towards saving innocent people from oppression than some looney liberal twit’s misguided and idealistic view. In trying to work for peace without military means… there are only two possible outcomes; the people you’re trying to make see the light listen and change their ways, or they don’t listen and carry on with their bad deeds.  Using the military will help if the Taliban don’t listen to some crazy chick from Northwestern Ontario.  Her way doesn’t work.

I hate left wing people because 90% of the time they live in an idealistic world which simply isn’t compatible with reality.

Anyway… so almost immediately I felt the need for something more powerful and better quality. I went and checked out 007 Airsoft to see what Ken had.  Needless to say I was rather excited by his range of Airsoft weapons – it’s only too bad some of them are available to law enforcement or licensed movie production companies.

Canadian law basically states the lower receiver has to be clear plastic.  If you look closely in the picture you’ll see the lower receiver on the weapon I bought is tinted dark so it’s a bit more realistic.

It has an anodized aluminum upper receiver and detachable carrying handle, tinted clear glass fiber reinforced C8 lower receiver conforming to Canadian regulations, CNC Aluminum RIS unit, a Nylon fiber pistol grip, railed vertical grip, RIS panels, retractable crane stock (holds battery) with two styles butt plates, 14mm threaded aluminum CNC outer barrel, iron chamber block, 6.05mm tight bore inner barrel, a metal one-piece hop up chamber, ultra high torque motor, 300rd high capacity magazine,

The gear box has an M120 spring, steel gears, 8mm ball bearings, aluminum cylinder, aluminum cylinder head with double o-rings, reinforced nylon fiber piston with steel teeth, aluminum piston head with bearings, aluminum bearing spring guide, POM nozzle with internal o-ring, high temperature wires.

Steel furniture includes charging handle, magazine catch, bolt catch, selector, front sight, and flash hider. The other metal parts are rear sight assembly, trigger, ejection port cover, trigger guard, magazine, front/rear sling mounts, forward assist knob, steel motor pinion gear, and locking body pins.

The best part is the velocity is 400fps using 0.20g plastic BBs. I can’t wait to get out and start shooting helpless little moggies. I’m also going to check out Xtreme Tactics in Winnipeg and kick some serious ass – show some of those newbie punks how British dudes with a rifle get busy!

Oh yeah… Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare 2 kicks serious arse. Every review I heard about it was positive – the reputation was well worth it.

But for now folks.. I hope you find this stuff useful.

I’d love to hear from people if anyone uses these… so leave a comment!

You plum!

<a href="<?php echo get_page_link(1);?>"><?php echo get_the_title(1) ?></a>

This will output a single dynamic link to a post or a page.

<a href="<?php echo get_category_link(1);?>"><?php echo get_cat_name(1) ?></a>

This will output a single dynamic link to a category.

If you don’t have a functions.php in your WordPress theme, create ‘functions.php’ and add this function to it.

function wp_delete_post_link($link = ‘Delete This’, $before = ”, $after = ”)
{
global $post;
if ( $post->post_type == ‘page’ ) {
if ( !current_user_can( ‘edit_page’, $post->ID ) )
return;
} else {
if ( !current_user_can( ‘edit_post’, $post->ID ) )
return;
}
$link = "<a onclick=\"return confirm(‘Are you SURE you want to delete this post/page?’)\" href=’" . wp_nonce_url( get_bloginfo(‘url’) . "/wp-admin/post.php?action=delete&amp;post=" . $post->ID, ‘delete-post_’ . $post->ID) . "’>".$link."</a>";
echo $before . $link . $after;
}

Then add the following into your template within The Loop wherever you wish the delete link to go.

<?php wp_delete_post_link(‘Delete’, ‘ <strong class=”delete”>’, ‘</strong> ‘) ?>

Open ‘comments.php’ and look for the edit comment link which will be something like: <?php edit_comment_link(‘Edit’,’ [ ',' ] ‘); ?> and add the following after it:

<?php if (current_user_can(‘edit_post’, $post->ID)) { ?><strong>[ <a onclick="return confirm('Are you SURE you want to delete this comment?')" href='<?php echo wp_nonce_url("/wp-admin/comment.php?action=deletecomment&amp;c=$comment->comment_ID&amp;_wp_original_http_referer=" . wp_get_referer(), 'delete-comment_' . $comment->comment_ID.""); ?>'>Delete</a> ]</strong><?php } ?>

You should be able to put the code below into your functions.php… or into the html head of your theme:

<?php
$post_id = get_post($post->ID); // get current post or page
$slug = $post_id->post_name; // define slug as $slug
?>

Then use the following to echo the slug:

<?php echo $slug; ?>

Put this code into your functions.php:

function function_name() {
global $wp_query;
$thePostID = $wp_query->post->ID;
}

Then use the following to echo the Post ID:

<?php echo $post->ID ?>

When the account was originally set up I was told that I would only be allowed to spend what I had in my account (no overdraft). I was given a Debit card with a MasterCard symbol on it. Turns out this is a very handy card to have as I can use it at Tim Horton’s to get coffee.

So anyway to cut a long story short… I called up yesterday to get a new card and found out I had USD$798 in overdraft fees. I was obviously livid which was made even worse to find out that the fees all stemmed from four transactions totalling USD$13. I told the guy on the phone to cancel the charges or close the account, and then I asked to speak to a supervisor. I got through to a nice lady who took all the information and sent it up the corporate ladder to a splendid lady called Jennifer Fox who is (I think) the Vice-President of Customer Service for Associated Bank.

Ms Fox zeroed my balance, removed those late fees and gave me back the deposit I’d made a few weeks earlier. She said that she’d looked at the account, saw the charges were small and knew right away I’d never have made those tiny transactions knowing it would cost $35 a time. Ms Fox also removed the ability to go overdrawn so now if I have a balance of $10 and try to swipe $11… the transaction will be refused (which is how I always figured my account functioned).

Ms Fox also had a web banking specialist in her office at the time and they set me up with web banking so now I can check my balance online.

Suffice to say I am very happy with the outcome. I’m very pleasantly surprised that Associated Bank cared enough about their customers to come to an agreeable ending. No doubt I’ll be referring customers whenever possible.