Gwen on , , , 13 Feb 2008 11:25 am

When Anthony wrote the post about the big boom on Broadway this morning we got one of the weirdest comments ever. Now we are used to the spam we get urging us to buy modern office furniture, or the internet drug of the week (percocet, viagra etc.), but we have never had “Osama the Bomma” make themselves known to us before. The amount of spam comments we get is amazing. It is the reason we moderate all our comments and get them emailed to us first. In fact on Left Coast Mama I am well over 25,000 spam caught. I know that the bigger blogs have their comments break a lot because sometimes the spam filters just can’t keep up with the amount of spam.

Anyway, the comment in question was interesting to say the least. As most of you know, I taught at a Muslim school for three years. If I thought that Muslims were responsible for everything bad in the world, there is no way I could have taught there for so long and made so many friends. I am sure that the person/people who wrote this comment didn’t actually read what Anthony wrote, and really have no idea about our ideologies and practices. We have taken out all the hyperlinks, but we thought you might find the comment itself kind of interesting.

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Beneficent,

Hello!

Yes about that explosion in Vancouver… that was me, silly! Don’t you guys know that we Muslims are responsible for all of the planet’s ills? Forget your sociopathic leaders, retarded political system and botched technology – blame the folks who’ve made it a personal priority to worship God alone (not along with Jesus or the Pope or your dollar bills) and try to live out good lives! We’re an easy target, c’mon bring it!

This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds…

echo OVERLOADING CPU
echo OVERLOADING MEMORY
echo OVERLOADING HEATSINK
echo WARNING! echo CRITICAL TEMPERATURE

Interesting right?

Anthony on , 13 Feb 2008 08:23 am

broadwayexplosion2.JPGApparently a Starbucks nearby (4 blocks away) was blown up last night, around 2:30am. As of right now, it seems that someone blew it up, and the Starbucks, and 4 other businesses have been complete destroyed. The medical offices that occupy the higher floors of the building seem to have lost windows, and I bet they have at the very least smoke damage. London Drugs and other businesses facing the explosion have lost windows, and even the Holiday Inn half a block west has lost some windows. The pictures on the TV news are pretty impressive, but I can find too much on the web yet.

As it is, we didn’t hear a thing, and are sufficiently away from the centre of action that the only thing that affects us is that Broadway is closed down for a few blocks and that busses are going to be rerouted until noon. Actually, since Gwen doesn’t need to go down that way, and since I commute by bike, the biggest effect is the swarm of news helicopters circling overhead.

(Image taken from the News1130 site, uncredited there, uncredited here.)


View Larger Map

More links:

Anthony on , 06 Jan 2008 06:49 pm

Faced with an suddenly oncoming police car today, driving the wrong way in our lane about 50 feet away, lights flashing and siren sounding:

Simultaneously:

Anthony: Oh, this is interesting… (frantically pulling over to the curb lane, downshifting, and signalling too)

Gwen: Oh my God, what is he doing?!?

Aidan: Look! A police car! Awesome!

Anthony on , , 03 Sep 2007 09:02 pm

RCMP_shield_crest_1.jpgWell, when I got up this morning, I certainly didn’t expect to be answering questions at the Burnaby Detachment of the RCMP today. But plans never seem to go as expected.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Today, after having a not-quite-total-loss of a weekend due to incompatible schedules with the boy and Gwen, and due to uncooperative weather, we were determined to get some geocaching in.

I located a suitable cluster 10 caches within a 1 km radius out in South Burnaby and we were off around 10:30am. The weather was overcast with light showers, typical for the weekend. We picked up the first cache pretty easily; it was a drive by in a small park underneath the SkyTrain.

The second cache, however, seemed to be in someone’s hedge (street side) on a quiet residential street. With plenty of people around this Labour Day, including what seemed to be a pack of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Gwen made a quick check, but the muggle pressure was getting to be too much.

Fortunately, there were a few more caches nearby, and they didn’t prove too elusive. After grabbing those ones, we tried again with the one in the hedge, and this time came up with a purse. I checked in the purse to see if it was a poor choice of a cache location, but no. In fact, it was full of someone’s ID. We hit the GPS and got it to route us to the nearest police station.

The Burnaby RCMP detachment is in Deer Lake Park, and beside the Burnaby Village Museum. We’d not been to any of the detachment, the park, or the museum, so it was quite in line with the spirit of why we do the geocaching!

The conversation at the detachment, though, was a little uncomfortable.

Me: I found this purse and noticed it had ID in it. We brought it here right away.

RCMP: Where did you find it?

Me: I found it underneath the hedge at this address (gives the nice lady a parking receipt with an address scribbled on the back)

RCMP: What were you doing underneath the hedge at that address?

Me: Um … have you heard of geocaching?

RCMP: No.

It went downhill from there. There a few more questions on where I found it, who’s house it was, and what it was I was doing there. Then she asked me to leave my name, phone number, address, and the time I discovered the purse … and the nice lady scribbled it all down on the back of the parking receipt.

On leaving the RCMP detachment, we noticed that there was a Carousel advertising free admission! The carousel is part of the Burnaby Village Museum — a real, old-style carousel with a mechanical music machine, and old-style horses going up and down, and the works. Aidan had a blast! After sucking us in with the free carousel, we paid the admission to go into the Village Museum, where they had face painting, a touchless petting-zoo, and turn-of-the-century (the 20th century, that is) demonstrations of smithing, farming, cars (ok, slightly after turn-of-the-century), and general “what life was like” exhibits and buildings. It was much more extensive than I expected (although not quite Sherbrooke Village).

CIMG1073.JPG

CIMG1076.JPG

CIMG1077.JPG

Gwen and Aidan rode the carousel again on our way out of the Village Museum, despite the (now) incredible line-up.

We left the park and decided to go back to the park we were in before, to pick up a few more caches — in particular one where there was a Travel Bug that hadn’t moved for quite some time. We picked up one, and headed down the hill for the other, only to discover we were decidedly on the wrong side of a very steep ravine. We piled the (now) cranky toddler back into the car, threw the gear back in the car and drove around to the other side. It was a successful TB rescue.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat (um, 4pm … but we had snacks, drinks, and a “pizza bread” for Aidan during our sojourn) and headed back into Vancouver to dump the TB collection we had amassed.

It was pretty close to 7pm when we arrived back.

So, the day didn’t quite turn out as expected, but the rain held off, we had fun, discovered a new part of the city we wouldn’t have visited otherwise, and at the moment I’m not in jail.

What will next weekend bring?

Next Page »