Ryan James O'Sullivan

Happy New Years everyone – I hope those going out tonight have a safe and enjoyable celebration!

Let’s hope 2010 is a good one!

Merry Christmas to all!

Typically busy Christmas Day here in O’Sullivan land. I’ll have full loot links, etc tomorrow

Sunday was one of those days…

Tammy is having surgery this week so we elected to leave the baby up north with my parents for a few days (we are heading back up on Thursday when my vacation starts). This is the first time we’ve been separated from the baby for a prolonged stretch of time so it was, as you expect, very difficult to leave her.

So Sunday was tough enough on its own – what we found when we came home did not help matters.

For months now our neighbours have been complaining about Tammy’s smoking. Back in the early spring they approached us and let us know that Tammy’s smoking was causing trouble for their asthmatic son. Being good neighbours we did what we could to accommodate this: We moved Tammy’s porch swing out to the back of the yard and Tammy committed to smoking well away from the building so as not to cause our neighbours any grief.

As we moved through spring our neighbours attitude towards us grew more cold and it was clear they were not satisfied. Once summer came things started to get a little more tense: When Tammy would go out to smoke you would hear windows slam shut, doors slam shut, etc. As time continued to pass it would get worse and worse. Soon the random slammings were accompanied by rude comments made just loud enough for us to hear, music being turned up to full volume levels, banging on the walls and on and on.

Yesterday we get home and I realized with the baby gone I have no responsibilities to attend to – a really odd feeling when you are used to spending the daylight hours attending to the needs of an energetic little year and a half old. So what do I do with this new found freedom? Surely I get lots done around the house, go out and ride my bike, or something equally as productive? No sir, I go to sleep!

Until suddenly I am woken up the sound of banging on a door… wait… that’s my front door! I struggle when it comes to waking up so the banging stops before I can get myself oriented to answer the door. “Where the hell is Tammy?” I think to myself. As I lay back down to fall back asleep I had the answer – screaming erupted from my backyard. I was catching little bits of the yelling: “white trash”, “lung cancer”, “you stupid bitch” but I jumped out of bed when I heard this nugget “I am going to turn your backyard in to a bonfire”. Orly? Time for me to get my ass out of bed I think.

So I get up and open up the window (to get the full experience of course) and I see Tammy talking on the phone (being a good girl, not rising to the insults being thrown at her – through the whole thing she said not a word to the neighbour and kept talking to her mother who was on the phone – good for her, I would have gone to town) with our neighbour standing in her backyard JUST.GOING.OFF.

Now these people have three kids and the language that was used was mind blowing for someone who had three kids in the living room behind her watching. And I’m a foul mouthed asshole saying this. When Tammy made her way back inside after she hung up with her mother we had a good laugh and we started get back on with our lives. Not to be…

All of a sudden there was a furious banging on the door. I wonder who that could be? Sure enough it was our darling neighbour pounding on the door again and Tammy called through the door “I’m not dealing with you right now while you are like this” which of course was the sensible thing to do. If your neighbour is a psychopath and they come banging I highly recommend you don’t answer the door and … CALL THE POLICE.

Every one of those movies that centers around a neighbourly dispute that ends up with a massacre I always think to myself – jesus people, when they started threatening your life and coming to the door at odd hours with an axe why didn’t you think to call the police to at least make them aware?

So call the police we did and eventually the boys from 33 Division came to take our complaint. The officers who responded were great and patiently waited through the history of relations with our neighbour (which have until this smoking thing been without incident). They went over to talk to our neighbours and when they came back to update us they informed us “talking to them was an unpleasant challenge”.

The Coppers were on their way with a warning for our neighbours to back down issued and we hoped peace would return to 12 Castlegrove.

Sometime after all of this a shouting match erupted in our hallway as another neighbour went to our next door neighbours to complain about the language used in her tirade. Once this had occurred we figured we should let our Super know what is going on as soon as possible (we were going to hold off until Monday for regular office hours, it being Sunday and all).

After our report of the situation was delivered our Super asked us how we were doing with our basement? Uh, What? We’ve been out of town 24 hours – we had been up north. So down to the basement we go…

IT HAD FLOODED! Wonderful, happy Sunday folks.

So that was Sunday. A disaster in neighbour relations followed up with a SURPRISE YOUR BASEMENT IS RUINED! It had only been about 12 hours since the flood so we did manage to recover most of the stuff but I did lose some books and we had to wash some clothes several times to get the flood water stink out of em.

Needless to say I cannot wait for vacation to start on Thursday night…

Yes ladies and gentleman the moment you have all been waiting for has arrived – Today, July 6th at approximately 6:21pm EST in the 2009th year of our Lord – My sac arrived.

It's my Sac in a Box

About a week late (due to a delay in customs – I cannot imagine why the above box would cause any concern) and after taking one of the most inefficient shipment routes I’ve ever seen (Quebec->Mississauga->Whitby->Toronto->Don Mills) my Sumosac has finally arrived.

For those of you wondering what in god’s name a Sumosac is here is the basic run down:  It is a bean bag chair on crack.  Instead of the traditional pellet/ball filling that eventually will end up all over your house it is filled with furniture grade foam like any other chair you likely have in your house.  Basically this is the Cadilac of Beanbag-like furniture.

Is the price you pay (229 bucks in this case) worth it?  That’ll have to wait for my review a week or so from now – for now I’ll cover the unboxing, cause quite frankly after the build up I’m way too excited about unboxing this beast.

Out of the box it started to grow and grow

I had read quite a few reviews both before my purchase (the almost universal high praise in those reviews are what led me to buy this thing in the end) and while waiting for the Sumosac to arrive so I thought I had a good handle on what to expect when the Sumosac arrived – that would be a no – reading about what happens when you open the box just does not do it justice.

As soon as I removed the Sumosac from the box the thing started to expand… not a weak sigh of release for the foam – no, an epic explosion.  Within about 45 seconds the Sac had expanded to about double its shipping size just insane.

Scale at about Unbox + 5 minutes

Above is what it grew to at about the five minute mark as I frantically moved objects in our office/play room to accommodate our new rapidly growing addition.

The steps Sumoslounge provide are pretty simple:

Step 1: Your sumo arrives in a plastic duffel, vacuum compressed for shipping. Carefully cut open the duffel, working down the side from the opening at the top.
Step 2: Take your sumo insert and it’s neatly folded cover out of the plastic bag, dispose of the bag.
Step 3: Break up large pieces of foam without opening the zipper on the insert, use some muscle. (NEVER open the zipper on the insert – if you do, foam will be EVERYWHERE).
Step 4: Let your sumo sit at least 24 hours in a warm place to allow the foam to expand.
Step 5: Fluff and fluff again, then fluff some more. Just keep fluffing until all the foam is broken up.
Step 6: Assemble your sumo – wrap fully fluffed insert in its cover and zip to close.
Step 7: Take some time to find your favorite position, relax and enjoy.

So Step 3 is where the fun begins – I proceed to jump on this thing, roll around, get in punching matches; everything I could think of doing to break apart the foam I did.  And man it was a lot of fun.  Spending the last year or so as a quasi-cripple has limited the amount of physical fun I’ve had (I know, with the Sac jokes we are already on immature human overload).  THIS WAS FUN.

See - Fun.

You didn't believe me? FUN!

Ahem.  So now several hours later this thing is getting crazy large.  I debated with Tammy initially about what size to get and man I think I’d be out an office if we had gone any bigger.  We went with the 4 foot model and it is well on its way to reaching that size.  Already the thing is starting to get comfortable, in fact the first time I sat down I thought to myself – you know you can just stop expanding now, you are quite comfortable as it is.

Even Tammy is starting to love the Sac

So with the Sumosac in the house for 5 hours now I can say we’ve already had a lot of fun and even managed to get a few moments of quality time cuddled up in its embarrassing foamy goodness.  And that’s it.  That’s the Sumosac in the O’Sullivan house so far.  I promise if I can ever remove myself from the Sac long enough I will post a full review in a week or so.

The Tragically Hip - We Are The Same

The Tragically Hip have a new album out and I’m happy to report it is awesome.  Their last album World Container was not for me but I did see the potential Bob Rock brought to the Hip’s sound so I waited patiently hoping they would perfect working with him on this second go.

We Are The Same plays more on The Hip’s unique funky country (did I just invent a genre?) style instead of their Rock style.  The songs are a bit slower and rely on a few layers of instruments and the band’s strong lyricism.

If you are going the iTunes route (I did – but this is one of the few band’s I’ll still go the whole album) I would say the must get songs are Coffee Girl (probably one of my top 5 Hip songs now – great funky beat and an awesome trumpet outro), Now the Struggle Has a Name, The Last Recluse, and Queen of the Furrows (one of their songs with odd lyrics which probably refer to some inside joke).

Typical of the Hip the album plays well from the first to last track and is extremely listenable.  Although this isn’t their best work there are enough worthy tracks to please members of the hip club and newbies alike.

Well my projects at work for this fiscal year (which ends at the end of March) have come to a close and I had a week’s vacation left so I decided to take next week off. I must say I’m more than a little excited for the break.

As indicated in my last post I’m rather burnt out in a few respects at the moment (mostly a nagging frustration that I’m not getting to a lot of stuff I want to get to outside of work and family time) and this time off should be really good for me.

I don’t have any specifics plans but I’m hoping to finish unpacking the house, get atvtrailfind right on the edge of release ready and hell after all that maybe I’ll relax. I’m also going up north tomorrow to check out the atvs and take some (I hope) winter photos up there.

Excited for the break – bring it on…

Andrew Sullivan is one of many American conservatives supporting Obama this election. His ten reasons to support Obama are worth considering for all conservatives.

10. A body blow to racial identity politics. An end to the era of Jesse Jackson in black America.

9. Less debt. Yes, Obama will raise taxes on those earning over a quarter of a million. And he will spend on healthcare, Iraq, Afghanistan and the environment. But so will McCain. He plans more spending on health, the environment and won’t touch defense of entitlements. And his refusal to touch taxes means an extra $4 trillion in debt over the massive increase presided over by Bush. And the CBO estimates that McCain’s plans will add more to the debt over four years than Obama’s. Fiscal conservatives have a clear choice.

8. A return to realism and prudence in foreign policy. Obama has consistently cited the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush as his inspiration. McCain’s knee-jerk reaction to the Georgian conflict, his commitment to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and his brinksmanship over Iran’s nuclear ambitions make him a far riskier choice for conservatives. The choice between Obama and McCain is like the choice between George H.W. Bush’s first term and George W.’s.

7. An ability to understand the difference between listening to generals and delegating foreign policy to them.

6. Temperament. Obama has the coolest, calmest demeanor of any president since Eisenhower. Conservatism values that kind of constancy, especially compared with the hot-headed, irrational impulsiveness of McCain.

5. Faith. Obama’s fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism.

4. A truce in the culture war. Obama takes us past the debilitating boomer warfare that has raged since the 1960s. Nothing has distorted our politics so gravely; nothing has made a rational politics more elusive.

3. Two words: President Palin.

2. Conservative reform. Until conservatism can get a distance from the big-spending, privacy-busting, debt-ridden, crony-laden, fundamentalist, intolerant, incompetent and arrogant faux conservatism of the Bush-Cheney years, it will never regain a coherent message to actually govern this country again. The survival of conservatism requires a temporary eclipse of today’s Republicanism. Losing would be the best thing to happen to conservatism since 1964. Back then, conservatives lost in a landslide for the right reasons. Now, Republicans are losing in a landslide for the wrong reasons.

1. The War Against Islamist terror. The strategy deployed by Bush and Cheney has failed. It has failed to destroy al Qaeda, except in a country, Iraq, where their presence was minimal before the US invasion. It has failed to bring any of the terrorists to justice, instead creating the excrescence of Gitmo, torture, secret sites, and the collapse of America’s reputation abroad. It has empowered Iran, allowed al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan, made the next vast generation of Muslims loathe America, and imperiled our alliances. We need smarter leadership of the war: balancing force with diplomacy, hard power with better p.r., deploying strategy rather than mere tactics, and self-confidence rather than a bunker mentality.

Those conservatives who remain convinced, as I do, that Islamist terror remains the greatest threat to the West cannot risk a perpetuation of the failed Manichean worldview of the past eight years, and cannot risk the possibility of McCain making rash decisions in the middle of a potentially catastrophic global conflict. If you are serious about the war on terror and believe it is a war we have to win, the only serious candidate is Barack Obama.

Source.