Today's Cassette, Friday December 13, 2019.

It was time to listen to something on cassette again after not doing so for a good while.  Tonight it's Phaedra, Tangerine Dream's first release on Virgin Records in 1974.  The album proved a success for both TD and Virgin, reaching 15 on the UK Album Chart that year.  It was also the debut of the sequencer driven sound that the group would become famous for.

Gas In Saskatoon, December 6, 2019.

Prices have wandered around quite a bit this week.  The week started with prices rising to 112.9 cents a litre.  But by today they'd dropped back down to 107.9 cents a litre at most stations.  With Federated Co Op having locked out their workers at the Regina refinery, and replacing them with replacement workers, I suspect we're going to see some price instability over the next few weeks.

No Cyber Monday Either.

No, I didn't do any Cyber Monday shopping either.  Which I'm sure will disappoint whoever it is at Amazon that gave me a bunch of hits today. 

No Black Friday For Me.

Nope, I wasn't sitting in the cold freezing my rear off waiting to get into someplace at 6 AM.  I had to work.  I didn't go out after work for Black Friday shopping.  The only things I bought were things I normally buy.  Most of the stuff on sale was stuff I didn't want, and the stuff I did want was out of my price range right now.  Boxing Day is a much likely shopping day for me than Black Friday ever will be.

Gas In Saskatoon, November 29, 2019.

We actually managed to go below the buck a litre barrier, just barely.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 99.9 cents a litre at most locations.  I would expect the price is probably on its way back up soon with Christmas approaching.

XP Lives.

Microsoft may be about to end support for Windows 7.  Internet traffic is increasingly driven by smart phones.  Yet Windows XP isn't dead yet.  Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10 have all come along, yet I still get the occasionally hit from machines using XP.  I guess if it works, why change it?

Gas In Saskatoon, November 15, 2019.

Another one cent drop to report.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 100.9 cents a litre at most stations.  I can't see it dropping much more, but I have been wrong before.

They Fight On.

Back in June I wrote about advertising for a local mixed martial arts promotion, Modern Fighting Championship  Today's flyer delivery once again featured advertising for MFC.  Modern Fighting Championship IV will be held November 29 at the Manhattan Ballroom.  Besides MMA this show will also feature 6 amateur boxing matches, and a Brazilian jiu jutsu "superfight" between Eric Wilson and Myke Lee.  The main event will be a lightweight bout between current MFC champ Jesse Boldt from Saskatoon against Winnipeg's Travis Gervais.

Compared to MFCIII the MFCIV card has several fighters with winning records.  And only one fighter will be making his MMA debut.  On the other hand one of the fighters, Josh Ladouceur, has a kind of disturbing 2-6 record.  That unfortunately sounds like a fighter who may be already in the "professional punching bag" category.  Interestingly 3 of the fighters come all the way from London, Ontario.  That's quite the trip to take to fight for a small promotion.

It would seem that the previous event did pretty well given that there's a sequel.  Good luck to the fighters. 

Gas In Saskatoon, November 8, 2019

One cent isn't much of a drop, but it's still a drop.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 101.9 cents a litre at most stations.  I doubt it will go much below the buck a litre mark, if at all.

Gas In Saskatoon, November 1, 2019.

Not much of a treat this week, but better than a trick at least.  Gas in Saskatoon has dropped to 102.9 cents a litre at most stations.

Very Slow.

We had almost no one knock on the door this Halloween.  And of the handful of people that turned up a couple were high school students doing a canned goods drive.  Very strange.  So I ended up buying some "just in case" candy we didn't actually need.  Maybe it's just that parents took their kids to safer venues like shopping malls to trick or treat this year. 

G Is King.

Looking at my posts this month I just noticed that so far only one hasn't begun with G.  This one won't change that.  I didn't do this on purpose, it's just one of those funny things that happens when you aren't paying attention.

Gas In Saskatoon, October 25, 2019.

A bit of a surprise this week.  Gas in Saskatoon has dropped to 105.9 cents a litre.  Given Monday's election I wouldn't have expected it to drop this much.

Goku Approved.

During my travels this morning I ran into something that left me shaking my head.  It was an empty can of Dragonball Z Spirit Bomb energy drink.  It has a nice picture on it of Goku about to throw a Spirit Bomb.  It's certainly one of the odder tie in products I've seen in a while.

But it is culturally appropriate.  The Japanese have been drinking what we'd recognise as energy drinks, there called eiyō dorinku, nutritional drinks, since at least the early '60s.  I would imagine someplace in Dragonball Z someone is portrayed as drinking what would be obvious to the original Japanese audience as an energy drink.

I'm sure someone would be upset at the idea of using a cartoon character to promote energy drinks, which are generally not recommended for kids.  But the North American audience for DBZ isn't really kids.  Most fans today may have been kids when the show first appeared here, but that was more than 20 years ago.

Go And Vote.

As always I encourage those of you who can to vote in today's Canadian federal election.  I don't care who you vote for.  I do have my opinions on who you should and shouldn't vote for, but in the end that's your choice.  And if you ever needed an incentive to vote it's an election like this, where the Conservatives and Liberals are neck and neck, and there's a high chance we'll have a minority government.  Early voting was up this year, so hopefully that's a sign the overall numbers of voters will be up this year.

Futile.

This week I spotted some election signs for the Christian Heritage Party.  It's one of those parties you look at and ask "Why bother?"  According to its Wikipedia entry the party has been around since 1987.  Yet in that time they have failed to elect even one candidate, not even coming close in any riding.   The party has pretty much no public profile outside its current supporters, leader Rod Taylor being ignored by the media. Their high point was in their first election appearance, 1988, when they won 3.56 percent of the vote.  In the 2015 election they won 0.97 percent of the vote, which was in fact an increase from 2011, when they won 0.84 percent.

The demographics become less in their favour with each passing year.  The percentage of Canadians who identify in some way as Christian is decreasing, and of course many who do have no interest in the conservative policies of the CHP.  They aren't likely to attract the support of those non-Christian voters who might agree with many of their policies.  And this election they face competition from the People's Party of Canada, which has former Conservative Party cabinet member and leadership candidate Maxime Bernier as leader. 

Having said all that I wouldn't be surprised if the CHP is around for future elections, which the PPC, which I suspect is as much a vanity project of Bernier as anything else, will not.  Stay tuned.

Gas In Saskatoon, October 18, 2019.

So much for that nice downward trend.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 114.9 cents a litre at most locations.   I assume the current escalation in Syria is probably not helping.

Gas In Saskatoon, October 11, 2019.

Another drop to report.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 108.4 cents a litre at most stations.  Nice to see it not go up before a holiday weekend.

Google Will Get You For That.

Recently one of the candidates for the People's Party of Canada put up some campaign signs in a local park.  This morning I took at look at them.  They're for Guto Penteado.  The Guto on the signs is presented in a font similar to one Google has occasionally used, and the letters are in several colours, again reminiscent of Google.  Seems to me that crossing paths with Google like that is not a good idea.  It's unlikely Google will have a chance to take action before the campaign ends, but why take the risk?

As for the PPC it will interesting to see if they're around this time next year.  To date they've remained under the 5 percent range in the polls.

Gas In Saskatoon, October 4, 2019.

We're down a bit again.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 112.9 cents a litre at most locations.  With Canadian Thanksgiving a week away it will be interesting to see if more change is in store.