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They physics geeks are beside themselves and trying to contain their excitement.

They think the data produced in these collisions will help us understand – among other things – the first moments of the universe.

The last two attempts to get the thing going failed so it was a rather pressurized environment there at CERN this morning.

But now they are shooting beams through the underground network of tunnels and producing collisions and new particles that will give us new information about our world.
The models are beautiful.

These experiments will tell us about the formation of the matter, dark matter and the extra dimensions that may exist around us.

It is a very exciting time.

That’s because I just got me one of those sexy new iPhones.

The keyboard is on-screen.

It works either vertically (the hard way) or horizontally (much easier), depending on which way you hold it.

Two-thumbed typing on-screen is a learned skill, and mannnee funmy worsss haf rezultef

But I’m getting there. And I’m getting faster.

Soon I will be posting from my iPhone, or as someone called it the other day: the digital Swiss Army Knife.

Trust me, this thing lives up to its rep.

W00t! You can almost feel the fresh air and the smile coming off my computer.

I knew things were getting dicey when the pie for my old 80GB C-drive was almost entirely blue. That’s almost full. Not good.

When I first got it four years ago 80GB seemed infinite. And now, 80 Gigs seems piddly. That would be Moore’s Law of exponentially increasing computer power at work.

Now my pie is almost entirely pink. That’s almost empty. That is good.

For the record, I have my data backed up on an external drive and on my Homeserver. Not bullet-proof because I’m still all on-site, but I can sleep at night for now.

Blogs, news, sites I need for my work – poof! All gone.

You never think about backing up your bookmarks.

IT happened while I was trying to install Google Chrome. It didn’t work and when I tried to revert back to normal, there was no more normal.

So I had to start installing things again. Not sure why Google Chrome would take out Firefox.

It’s taking some time to get back where I started and if I’m slow getting to some of your blogs, have mercy.

Please distill down the lesson that should be learned,  and leave in comments.

The roguish, dysfunctional, foul-mouthed boyz of Sunnyvale Trailer Park will be no more.

And it doesn’t seem right, somehow.

For anyone unfamiliar with Trailer Park Boys, the show is a collision of concepts: Think the Spinal Tap mockumentary, the US show My Name is Earl and the Burt Reynolds slapstick flick Cannonball Run – and you’re getting close.

The show ran on Showcase TV for almost a decade. Not sure why it was cancelled.

TPBs depicts the life and times of a bunch of bad-ass boys living in a trailer park in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. They are petty-criminals and low-functioning misfits from broken families. They have drug and alcohol problems. They can’t keep jobs. And they swear like troopers.

Ricky – the emotional one – lives in a car half the time, a car with only one door. Julian – the rational one – always has a rum and coke in his hand and scheme up his sleeve. And  sweet-hearted Bubbles – the heart and soul – wears coke-bottle eye glasses and acts as the conscience of the crowd.

Throw in a drunken trailer park supervisor, a cast of other oddlings and a decidedly British sensibility of humour, and you have the Trailer Park Boys phenomenon.

Some people think that Trailer Park Boys is a satire or exaggeration. It is not.

I grew up in the Dartmouth, the town in which this show takes place, and trust me, these people exist. I knew and hung out with them in Graham’s Grove Park and in the lounge or lobby of the Dartmouth Inn (when I was 15 and well below drinking age!) We were all from broken and troubled families. We found safe haven in our gang of misfits.

Perhaps that is why I’ve never been able to embrace the usual middle class mores and norms. I like being on the outside. That’s why I loved this show.

I will miss Ricky, Julian and Bubbles. I will miss their honesty, hardships and humanity. Real humans do swear.

The Trailer Park Boys are my people.

The government is promising to open up the wireless industry to more competition in the hope this will stick a pin in the Bell-Rogers-Telus oligarchy, which has kept prices so ridiculously high.

Having used cellphone services outside of Canada, I was shocked to the toenails to see the prices charged in Canada – two and sometimes three times as much, for less service.
Even more shocking was the apparent lack of outrage by Canadian cell phone users who simply didn’t know (or care?) they were being ripped off so spectacularly. Blank faces and WTF? responses convinced me that Canadians were happy with the status quo.

Happily, things have changed. People are mad. And rightfully so. Good.

If Canada ever hopes to compete in the 21st-century global economy, it needs to slay the Bell-Rogers-Telus rip-off dragon. And that looks set to happen when they open the airwaves to new competitors.

You just typed until the little bell went off and then you pulled the carriage return. Sure, you had to fuss with carbon paper and liquid ink, but at least you knew what you were dealing with.

Then along came computers, wireless keyboards and the ubiquitous USB. This little device was invented to make life easier. Now you had a standard plug on the end of peripherals such as mouse devices, keyboards, PDAs, gamepads and joysticks, scanners, digital cameras, mass storage and printers. Life would now be plug-and-play.

But what happens when a simple typist sits down to her keyboard and it doesn’t work because the USB device is malfunctioning? The typist then has to set out on a techie mission to to discover the problem by using trouble-shooting wizards and going to websites to download drivers.

Sadly, the problem is not fixed and this typist is left with a non-functioning keyboard. The temp. replacement is an old-fashioned plug in keyboard with no USB but all the keys marked in French and symbols are located in different places on the board.

So forgive me if you occasionally see something like this: #$%##@. It will have meant something when I keyed it in.

Please accept apologies from a simple typist who just wants to type. And if anyone has the solution to this problem, it would be gratefully received.

I’m a low-rank recruit in Photoshop bootcamp. This follows similar grueling bootcamps in Illustrator and Dreamweaver last week. SIR, YES, SIR!

By the end of it, I’ll be a first-rank private in the Adobe Army ready for deployment in any zone of image-altering combat or website-launching unrest. SIR!
One, two, three, four.

ONE, TWO, THREE FOUR!!

Sniff. Sniff. I want my blankie.