Where the heck have I been?

Ummmm.... nowhere, everywhere and some places in between...

I guess it stands to reason that I'm set up in Vancouver now. I finally have my own place to live and, more importantly, my own internet conection. So I guess it's time for an update to the blog.

I'll try not to fit everything in at once, but there has been much going on in the last few months. Let's see, I spent 3 weeks in the far north in Fort St-John. This is the trip I made: Google Maps Directions . I've plenty of pictures of that adventure, but I'll save those for a later post.

Vancouver's been great, but one of the best developments so far is actually south of the Canadian border. I've found a wonderful girlfriend who lives in Tacoma, and we've spent much time heading North or South respectively to see each other. I spent the Christmas holiday with her which was quite wonderful.

So for today's update, it's beautiful and sunny and I've decided to post pictures of the view from my balcony. I'm planning to get some more shots at sunset too, so maybe I'll update the post with some of those :)

A panoramic video from my balcony:


A picture from my living room:


From the balcony:


Again from the balcony:


Our friend the eagle who visits regularly:


A closeup of Mr. Bald Eagle:


More to come, soon, I promise!

On my Way...

As I write this, I'm sitting at the Montreal airport waiting for my flight to Vancouver to board, YAY!

It's been a heck of a week. Lots of family and friends, lots of figuring out what goes first and what I can live without for a while.

So I'll make this post short, and just post up some pictures of this week. Don't worry, I'll catch up once I'm in my new hometown of Vancouver, BC.

My Nephew wanted a piggy-back ride (don't mind my coffee tongue, just finished one):


Apparently my back is a good place to sleep:


John-Douglas watching Cars while playing with his Lego Mack and Lightning McQueen toys:


Never more angelic than while watching Cars, lol:


On his way to Nanny's house (my Nanny, lol):


I played with this as a kid and just had to prove that I'm not lying when I say that when I was a kid my parents gave me blocks of wood to play with. Best part is it's actually Fisher Price, lol:




That's it for now, more once I'm in my new time-zone!

Planes and the Bows of the Rains :)

Wow. What a week that was. Between wrapping up the old job and getting ready to move, it really hasn't stopped for a second!

The good news is I'm all ready to go and as soon as the FedEx truck shows up with my check (Dang them for not holding it at the center!), I'm off to Montreal. My brother drove here on Saturday and went back home yesterday with most of my stuff, so I'm only a check, a tank of gas, and a few Tim Hortons coffees away from Montreal at this point.

What better thing to do while waiting for my check than to update my blog?

Well, let's see. I finally managed to get up on the roof at work with my camera last week. I didn't have my tripod, and only managed to get up there for about a half-hour, but it was still enough time to get a few decent photos and some video.

Here's a slideshow of the better of the pictures (lots more, but these came out the best).

I also took three seperate videos:








Let's see, I also managed to score evidence that MACs do indeed bluescreen.


The only significant difference I can see if the screen goes transparent rather than blue (Ooooo), and that a MAC apparently bluescreens in four languages. I also found it funny that it is called "Kernel Panic". At least my PC never panics when it runs into a problem, it just calmly freezes and needs a restart. Then again, I haven't restarted my PC in three months as I write this...

I also had to get my own cell phone plan for the first time in 5 years. It was quite easy, and they threw in a new phone which is now oficially my backup phone. Nothing too fancy, just your run-of-the mill RAZR V3T. It only took me about 15 minutes once I got it home to hack it, unlock it and start the process of making it my own. Here's the progress thus far...

Main screen. Skinned it to a "Windows Vista" menu scheme and added my own wallpaper:

Outside LCD with phone closed. Added the image :)

Outside LCD with phone open (I couldn't help it) :


These pictures really don't do it justice, but on the before-last day at my job, I went outside to be greeted by a full rainbow right out front of the building. There was the beginning of a second rainbow on the left-hand side, and from the angle I was at, it almost looked like the rainbow ended at the building I've worked in for the last year. Hrmph, all that time and I never spotted a pot of gold!

Double-Rainbow:

Single Rainbow but brighter:

Into the building (that's my old work):


Well, that's about it for now. Getting ready for the drive to Montreal as soon as FedEx gets here to drop off one last package delivered to this address. I'll surely be updating this a lot more often this week, and of course next week as I start off my Vancouver adventuring! I'm told that we're going hang-gliding my second weekend in BC, I can't wait!

Leaving on a Jet Plane...

It most certainly has been an eventful week in Transfrmrland.

Let's start with a brief summary:
Monday - Labour day
Tuesday - 12 hours of work
Wednesday - Resignation day
Thursday - Counter-offer day
Friday - 10 hours of work

Those of you who are paying attention may have gasped when you got to Wednesday on that list, do I'll give you a moment to recover and start with Monday :)

Monday being Labour Day, I had job-related duties to perform. Instead, I spent a good part of the day playing Bioshock. I managed to finish the game before the day came to a close, and am quite happy with it overall. Sure, there are a few things that I'd change if I could, but that can be said for pretty much any game out there. In general the game was wonderfully difficult, and followed a well-planned storyline. They even threw in an unexpected twist towards the end that I enjoyed quite a bit.

On to Tuesday, just a regular day of job-related toil. Early morning and late night and all that jazz. Not really anything in particular that stands out in my memory, so let's go on to Wednesday.

Some of you probably skipped right down here looking for the juicy tidbits. Well, I'll try not to leave you wanting :P I received a job offer late last week that I spent much of last weekend mulling over. It is a good offer, but involves a wee bit of relocation on my part. I've worked for my present company for about five years now, and have quite a good position, but this offer has a few perks that really had me thinking. By the end of the day Tuesday, I had made up my mind to accept the offer, and so on Wednesday September 5th, I submitted my resignation to my employer giving them two and a half weeks notice, and offering to help with the transition(I'm just that kind of guy...).

I think it really took the company by surprise, although it probably shouldn't have. I really do enjoy my job, but a large part of that comes from the people I work with. Over the last few months, one-by-one, these people have been leaving. All have gone on to accept wonderful positions with other companies and continue their own personal growth, but it left me wondering if maybe I should be doing the same. When this "limited-time offer" arose, I took it as a sign that it was, indeed time to move on.

On Thursday, much as I expected, my company decided to provide a "counter-offer". This is basically when they really don't want, or can't afford to see you go, and so throw money at the problem. I have to say that the offer was quite flattering, but I had to turn it down. I know that they haven't given up alltogether, and expect to have several more meetings over the next two weeks, but I really don't believe that any of it will change my mind at this point.

So what does this mean? Well, it means quite a bit to do in a very short time. The new job is not in Toronto, as a matter of fact, it isn't even in Ontario. I will be relocating to Vancouver, British Columbia before this month is through, and will be starting my new job on the first of October. Short timeline is an understatement.

I'll definitely miss all the people I have met in Toronto over the last year and a half. Can't really say that much for the city itself. It's not absolutely evil, but it sure as heck is no Montreal. I'll have access to much better skiing in BC, something that I have missed dearly in TO. My family was a big part of the decision since they live in Montreal. Visiting them was only a 6 hour drive and I tended to go back at least once a month for a weekend. From BC, that just won't be possible, although I will definitely have to plan some extended visits over the next year. I spoke to them before making up my mind, and they urged me to do this, which played a big part in my decision to "go for it".

So now, over the next two weeks I will be simultaneously wrapping up my role for my present company, and preparing for a move accross the country. I won't be bringing a lot of my belongings with me, but will rather be storing them in Montreal until I have found a place to live, and settled in some. Even my car is remaining behind for the first bit. I'm sure that you can all picture just what such a quick transition involves, so I will spare you the boring details, and just leave it at that.

I plan to spend the last week of September in Montreal, with my family, and fly out to BC from there. I'll be having several "going-away" parties, one for Toronto, one for friends in Montreal, and one for family there. Hopefully I'll have time for all of these.

So there it is. In less than a week, my life has changed radically. In three weeks, it will change even more radically as I migrate clear across the country to the West Coast. I'm already tired, and stressign about every minute detail, but decided to take today to take it somewhat easy and handle some of the more mundane logistics. Tomorrow, I start the packing (I hate moving...).

On that note, I'll leave off, but rest-assured that I'll be sure to share my trials, tribulations and triumphs over the next few weeks with you all.

Hope you like the new soundtrack :) I thought it was rather appropriate.

Frosty Mugs and Code Battles

Yay for long weekends! Double-yay for long weekends that cross the Canada-US border. It's nice to not have to go into work tomorrow, especially with the hours that I've been putting in lately.

So, what did I spend my weekend doing? Let's see.

First I finally managed to get Bioshock working to my satisfaction. It's still not perfect, there is still a slight bug in the audio, but it is much more tolerable now. In my searches for fixes to the problem, I found that there is apparently a known audio bug in the PC version and an update (patch) to fix it should be out shortly. Lets hope so. After all the struggle to get it working, I haven't really played it much. I'll probably start it up and put in an hour or so once I'm done with this post.

Next on the list was cleaning and laundry. Oh, so exciting, and yet so satisfying once done. Truthfully I did leave some laundry to be finished up tomorrow, but why not, I do after all have an extra day of weeekend :)

I must say that I am quite enjoying the frosty mugs that I have acquired. A frosty mug is a mug that contains some sort of freezable liquid within its walls. I suspect the ones I won now are merely filled with water, but those I had as a kid were likely something more sinister and toxic. I like my beverages as cold as they can be, and the perfect way to do this without watering them down with ice, is the frosty mug. We had a set of these when I was a kid, and just about every day when I came home from school I would go through a ritual that was practically down to a science. First add whatever the beverage of the day (usually juice of some sort) to the frosty mug, then stick the frosty mug back into the freezer for exactly an hour (which usually was equal to two cartoons). After an hour, the juice would have frozen around the outsides of the mug, with the center being wonderfully chilled juicyness. The next hour would be spent sipping the chilled juice as I shaved frozen juice off the side of the mug with a spoon, pure heaven.

I definitely enjoyed the frostyness of my drinks today as I fought the evil code-monsters trying to embed music into my blog. Not just any music mind you, but a playlist of my choosing. Also imperative was allowing anyone viewing the blog to pause, stop, or change tracks at will. My first attempt was using a flash-based mp3 player I found at MyFlashFetish.com. It allowed multiple Mp3 files, was compact and customizable to fit the page's color scheme, and scrolled the track titles. I was pretty happy with it until... it didnt work. Well, small correction, it worked fin on my main system, but not for others, after some testing I found it just wouldn't work with Firefox, nor with my laptop's IE7, even though it still worked just fine on my main system under the same browser. Oh well, no problem, I'll just find a media player that I know will work. After looking around, I settled on WMP. I figured out the coding to play from an online playlist so that I could line up multiple tracks, and even managed to get it colored to match the blog better. Then I tried Firefox and was shot down. See, that's what I like about IE, it is so forgiving to deprecated code, whereas Firfox balked at the simplicity of my embed tag. Ok, no problem, Google will surely help me find a bit of universal code to solve my woes! Finally, I managed to get it working, but can't skin it the way I can for IE, so it's a contrasting gray when viewed in Firefox (too bad Mozillanites!). Still, it works, and autoplays. Of course it doesn't show the track names the way I'd like but I can live with that. Hopefully people will hang around long enough to get to the various tracks that I have loaded into the playlist, but I suppose I can just change the playlist up from time to time too.

If you don't like what's playing, you can stop it or jump to the next track, it's all up to you.

Here's what's loaded in it to start:
1) Eminem vs. Dukes of Dixieland
2) Beatnic vs. Loitumé (Leekspin)
3) Dreadful Children - Pink Elephants on Parade

The Eminem mix is just plain fun, so far everyone I have played it for finds it quite amusing. Beatnic vx. Loitumé is an awesome breakbeat mix I found of the song some of you will recognize from leekspin.com. Dreadful Children is a punk/ska band from Seattle and their cover of PEOP is a lot of fun. You can find more tracks by the Dreadul Children on their MySpace page.

Now, I'm going to play a bit of Bioshock :)

Little wonders and big dissapointments...

Coming off a restful weekend, and heading back to work is bad enough. Having to head into work for 5am, well, that's considerably worse. Of course, it wasn't enough that I had to be on-site at such an ungodly hour, no, that would be too easy. Things had to proceed downward in a spiral that could only occur on a Monday morning.

Needless to say that by the time 5:30pm rolled around, and I could finally leave my place of torture (or work, depending on how you look at it), I was more than happy to oblige.

The drive home was rather uneventful, save for the horrible effect of bright sunlight on the tired soul. Why is it so much worse to drive in the sunlight when you're tired than it is at night? I could probably drive all the way to Montreal, completely exhausted at night, but try during the day and the sun's rays just insist on trying their darnedest to slam your eyes shut. Fortunately, I wasn't that tired, and despite forgetting my sunglasses at home this morning (must... not... repeat) I managed to make it home in one piece, avoiding Corollas and other such hazards.

On the way home, I stopped by the store. I needed a few things for the fridge, and figured I might even pick up a treat to help ease into the evening. Something caught my eye on the way to pick out a bottle of Ginger Ale, something that didn't quite seem to belong there. It looked like an anachronism, definitely not belonging amongst modern-day soda bottles, yet, despite rubbing my eyes to make sure they weren't toying with me, there it was.


Okay, so it's a bottle of Coke. Nothing incredibly special about it, right? WRONG. Notice the classic label style, the lack of contests, pictures, promotions, or even the typical "Classic" tag. It is just a simple, plain, bottle of Coke. I searched my frazzled memory banks, trying to think of just how long it had been since I'd seen such a plain and simple bottle of the acidically delightful brew (It's a guilty pleasure I was once addicted to), and found that I just couldn't remember. I don't thin I'm alone either. A quick glance around and I saw other people noticing too. As they noticed, I saw a few gravitate towards the row of bottles, pick one up, look at it quizzically, and drop it in amongst their purchases.

What a marvel to find novelty in the complete lack of adornment. Such plainness, as I thought about it, a bottle somehow ended up slipping it's way into my basket, Ginger Ale long forgotten. Aside from the Coca Cola on the label, the only hint of modern design is the nutritional (or lack thereof) information tastefully placed on the side. I was convinced that when I got home, should I check online, I would find some sort of gimmick, some sort of campaign based around the plain old-fashioned label. It was a delightful surprise to find none. Is this the act of some genius of marketing tapping into the nostalgic market? Is it simply a cheap-o label to save money in between promotions? I'm still not quite sure, but whichever it is, I find it's blandness oddly pleasing.

Enough about the Coke already (a sentence which has probably been said to countless celebrities over the years), what about the disappointment promised in the title of this post? Well, some of you may recall my comment about a certain game my flatmate had acquired for his Xbox 360 (if not, scroll down until you see a short blurb and a link to Bioshock). The game has some of the most beautiful graphics I have seen for a FPS and I definitely was yearning to play it. Last night, the flatmate just had to point out that it was available, not only in a PC version, but downloadable via Steam, my game delivery method of choice.

I'm sad to say that in a moment of weakness I purchased it, and began what turned out to be one of the longest game download I have yet gone through over the Steam network. As a matter of fact, after a brief jump into the 200kbps league, it slowed considerably to a measly 15kbps, where I assume it stayed all night. Fine, I didn't really expect to play it last night anyways, needing to hit the sack as early as I could (read: as early as my sleepless nature would allow) due to the early morning. I was still surprised when I woke up around 4:30am, only to find it around 75% downloaded and still running around the 15kbps mark. Instead of being upset, I just chalked it up to lots of people wanting the game, and it only added to my eagerness to partake.

So all day as I fought my way through snafus, foibles, and outright silliness, I had at the back of my mind that I would kill a couple hours once getting home in the virtual underwater world of the Big Daddies and Little Sisters. When I finally got home, I was happy to see the download done, and the game sitting at a wonderful "100% complete" Play Me!!! status.

What a disappointment that was. The first few times I launched the game, I was met by complete rejection in the form of "Bioshock.exe has performed an illegal operation and needs to close". No problem, I thought, a few tweaks here and there, maybe a new driver or two, and I'll be up and running in no time. Ack! I wish I hadn't thought that. Turns out that the PC version of Bioshock is in dire need of some patching. While some are enjoying it plenty, others are suffering through crashes every five minutes and still more people like me can't even get it to load.

Eventually I did, indeed get it to load, but after only a few moments in the game came to realize that something was very, very wrong. The graphics were screaming (Thanks, 512mb ATI X1600), but the sound was horrible. Distortion, sound spikes, and general crappiness burst forth from my speakers. After a mere minute or two in the game environment, I had had enough. No problem, I'll tweak my drivers. Unh hunh, sure, not bloody likely. I've been at it since 8:30pm, and no amount of driver updates, tweaks, or disabled startup programs seems to help. For a good while, it just went back to it's non-start mode, frustrating the crud out of me. Attempting to update my sound drivers resulted in one of the very first blue screens that I've experienced in Vista from which it couldn't recover. Ok, maybe I insist on running my SoundBlater Live 5.1, but it's a perfectly good card that has served me very, very well. I saw no reason to abandon it for the on board audio on my motherboard (even though it is a really good motherboard with a great audio processor), until tonight.

So, as I write this, I still haven't played Bioshock. I just finished enabling and installing the drivers for my on board audio, and I'm about to give it another whirl. If this doesn't work, I'm pretty sure that my flatmate will find me in the morning, curled up in a corner, rocking myself and mumbling something to the tune of "Bioshock, Biocrock, Biof$ck" to myself over and over.

So, without further Ado, I leave you all once more. Hopefully I'll be posting again soon, but, if not, you will likely find me in a padded room, using rubber cutlery and wearing one of those wonderful shirts that make you hug yourself.

Wish me luck!

It's the end of the week as we know it... and I feel fine :)

That's right,
It starts with a headache,
Work, stress and all the rest,
Puts my gumption to the test.

What a Friday! One of those days where just about everything that can go wrong, does. Let's see, we have network issues, HR issues, a lock that won't unlock, people doing silly things, and a friend's car being damaged by a careless monkey. I know there's more that I'm forgetting now, but honestly, I think I'm better off leaving it forgotten.

So I spent most of the day running back and forth cleaning up "messes" that likely should have been handled by others in the first place. Not a problem though, not everyone can use logic and reason to defeat the problems of the world ;)

On the upside, the data services on my phone were finally enabled today. I've had the phone since mid December now, and didn't really see a need for the data plan, so I never had it activated (even though my company will gladly pay for it along with the cell service). With the built-in wireless, it's usually pretty easy to find a hotspot, and I just couldn't bring myself to the uber-geek level of being permanently connected to the interweb. After one full day of having the data service though, I'm sold. Thinking back on the day, it made so many things easier that it isn't even funny. I have a feeling that this is going to be yet another of those "how did I live without it" things within only a short while.

While the day was really busy, I still found the time to get up on the roof again :) This time I was quick enough to snap a couple of shots of one of the planes coming over with the phone camera. Not the best shots but not that bad either.

(click on the pictures to see the full-sized versions)

Look, a Plane! (I assure you that is a plane...


Closer...


Closer still...


See, I told you it was a plane!


Coming in over the building.


For some reason it looks pretty small and far away. Might be the phone camera, I've noticed it does some wierd things with perspective from time to time. It was really only about 300-400 feet up. Granted, it was a smaller plane, and they seem to pass higher over the building. I'm thinking it probably has to do with it being easier for them to drop altitude quickly later on whereas the larger planes need a more diagonal aproach. I was distracted in conversation when the two jumbo jets following it came over, or I would have snapped those too.

Oh well, I'm really looking forward to getting up there with a proper camera and the zoom lens :)

So it's the weekend, and number one on my list of things to do is maybe try to sleep in a bit tomorrow. It seems the only time I can really sleep is Saturday mornings for some reason. Quite the opposite from when I was younger and Saturday morning cartoons were not to be missed. Then again, the last time I was up early on a Saturday and flipped the TV on to see what the modern-day cartoons looked like, there really wasn't anything on except on the cartoon network. It didn't really seem to be anything special, just the same stuff they play all the time :( Sad, when I think of how great that particular two+ hours of television was back in the day. I guess with the cartoon network, cartoons are on all the time now.

They wonder what is wrong with today's youth. No Saturday morning cartoon-fest, no prizes in their cereal, no "dangerous" playground equipment. I really can't blame them for being angry. My elementary school featured a metal jungle gym shaped like a dinosaur (since removed - too dangerous), a log "bridge" consisting of large timbers hanging from a log frame by chains which we would weave into intricate designs to climb over and fall through(since removed - too dangerous)
, a huge tire wall consisting of a 15 foot log frame with a wall of tires attached by chains suspended inside it (since removed - too dangerous) and a roundabout (since removed - too dangerous, Okay, so this one really was dangerous, lol). While I can't argue that these were indeed somewhat dangerous. Surviving them only made us tougher, and I don't remember any serious injuries that required ambulances or trips to the hospital. Even if they were dangerous, I'm a big fan of Darwin :)

Oh well. I guess that every generation must look back at things this way. I'm going to stop now, before I start telling stories of hiking eight miles through two feet of snow to pick up the paper ;)