Here's hoping everyone has a good holiday, whichever one you care to choose!

I'm currently sitting at home the day before X-mas because work gave everyone the 24th off, how kind :) All the shopping is done, the champagne is in the fridge and I think we're good for the next day or so. Oh wait, I have wrapping to do yet. Almost ready.

Kathleen is finished her first semester of school, she had an average of 94%, and she is annoyed it wasn't a 96%. I asked her why, turns out 96 is better because it is closer to 100 ... can't argue with that.

As you may know, Kat and I play World of Warcraft. It takes the place of television watching. Kathleen was talking to some of her online friends about the massage courses she was taking (and enjoying) and it turned out one of her online friends used to do massage. She now does photography. All her gear was sitting in her garage and she was going to be in San Diego for the holiday break. Some money was exchanged and now Kat owns a top of the line table, bolsters and three boxes of linens. Yay for random connections!

Last year Kat bought a small tree in a bucket to decorate and we put it outside all year to be watered by the sprinklers. She brought it back in, it's bigger now but seems to be suffering from a distinct camber. I think it looks more inclusive, the tree bends towards the viewer, casually inviting them to join the holiday spirit, like an off-beat but lovable uncle. So there, it's not bent, it's inclusive.

Kat already has one of her presents, the big one. She was interested in getting the Kindle for X-mas so me being the accommodating husband said no. We had to go look at all the alternatives that are out there. So we looked at the Nook (I wasn't impressed) and the Sony Reader (which I liked) as well as reading up on the Kindle. She ended up getting what she wanted the first time. At least I can feel we did some due diligence.

I'm no fan of e-readers, the DRM infestations they have and the restrictions on book sharing but I won't get in to it. On a positive note the trip to France we took earlier this year would have been far easier with a Kindle. I took two Stephen Erickson books with me, yes, two. Bringing a Kindle would have been far easier on my spine. The screen is great and Kat likes the whole feel of it, she's reading it right now.

Weather here is getting chilly, not northern climes cold, but chilly. It was 10 degrees celsius the other day when I left work. I had to turn on the grip heaters on the motorcycle. Kat also had to use the seat heaters in the car. How we suffer ;)

Random story: I was pulled over by the police the last week on the way to the pub to meet up with some members of my soccer team. I was riding the scooter and wearing my glow-in-the-dark jacket from MEC, so I wasn't looking that scary. At least I didn't think so. I had turned right on a red when there was a sign saying I shouldn't be doing that. Oops. The first thing the cop asks me is whether I'm on parole, which struck me as odd, I told him no. He then asked me whether I had any weapons such as a shotgun or grenades that he should be worried about, which also struck me as odd. Where in a scooter was I supposed to be hiding a shotgun? It all ended with me not getting a ticket, so I was happy, but still confused. I didn't ask him whether that was standard procedure, but talking with friends afterwards it doesn't seem like it is.

I wonder if it was the fact that I was so apparently not scary that made him cautious. Nevertheless my team mates had my back, they were watching from down the street to so they could record if I was brutalized. How thoughtful.

On a final note, most people are lazy, I think we can agree on that. Given the choice between and escalator and stairs, people take the escalator. What happens if you make the stairs more interesting? What happens if you give feedback to people when they throw their trash away? How did they ever manage to get those projects approved?

American Thanksgiving is fast approaching. I'm looking forward to the three day week coming up, also not looking forward to it. It will be two days of work that won't be helping the project get finished. I'd make the developers work the holiday if I thought I could get away with it, but probably not. Two of them are from India so it isn't like they'd be celebrating anyway ...

Finally got back in to biking around the canyon at lunch hour. A director in the company kept booking half hour meetings at 11am that would stretch in to 12:15 or so and chew right through my riding time. Saw one of my favourite signs while in the canyon (see over to the right). That is the North American sign for "Good biking is over here". Plus by not defining what a single track trail is I can always claim innocence.

Kat and I will continue to avoid Black Friday. There would have to be something I *really* wanted and it would have to be very discounted for me to put up with the crowds of shoppers. So far nothing has met that criteria. The one big purchase that Kat and I were going to do has already been done online. We've ordered a pet-specific Roomba (I hope that link works, I think there are shopping cart specific values in there that may cause issues). That is the big gift for the house. For those of you who don't bother following the link, it is a robot that vacuums your floors for you, avoids banging in to furniture and will go back to the base station for recharging when the power starts to run out. Kat and I can indulge in more leisure time as robots make our lives easier. Hmm, I'm sure I've heard that statement before. What could possibly go wrong?

We figure if the robot scares the animals, that's just another plus.

Speaking of purchases, I recently bought an Eyetv adapter to plug in to the Mac Mini with the plan of getting rid of the CRT television and the DVR that we rent from cable company. Plus (my thinking went) we could burn copies of T.V. shows to DVD after we pulled out the advertisements. Oddly enough buying that piece of equipment led to the following discoveries:

1) It didn't work.
2) The cable company encrypts all the channels so, I can't get them on the EyeTV.
3) The clear over-the-air channels have horrible reception where we are in San Diego due to the hills.
4) We only watch a couple shows on cable.
5) Why the hell do we pay so much money for channels we don't watch?
6) Project Runway is shown a week later on Hulu for free.

So we've decided to drop cable entirely. I won't be able to watch Premiere League Soccer any more, but I see that as a couple hours of the weekend I get back. I'll go surfing or read a book.

So an initial investment of $200 is leading to a $20 cost to ship it back, a $200 refund from the company, and $60 less a month in cable costs. That's a win.

Some quick links.
One for the cat lovers out there, here.
One for the end-of-the-world lovers out there who are worried about the Large Hadron Collider causing black holes to swallow the world. The Register have gathered up some of the best comments from the fringe crowd.

Beer week was here last week. Some of the pubs around the areas were offering beers along with custom food. An example of the stuff we *didn't* eat is:

3rd Course; Spiced waffles, house made chocolate bacon ice cream, coco nibs
Beer Pairing; Belgian Stout

I'm not such a beer fan that I could pair a stout with bacon ice cream. I like bacon and I like stout, but throwing ice cream in to that equation makes it all kinds of wrong. We did have some coffee stout with a brownie at the Blind Lady Ale Pub. Yummers.

When Kat and I first arrived in San Diego one of our big complaints was the lack of pubs. There were bars everywhere, but no pubs, or very, very few. Now we have a bunch in the area with all kinds of custom micro-brews on tap. I appreciate the change, and from the crowds we are seeing in the pubs, so do a lot of other San Diego residents. So for all of you Canadians who like to mock American beer because it is weak and tasteless, you are mocking the best selling American beers (Budweiser and Coors) and if you look at the matching Canadian beers (Molson and Blue) they aren't that much better in the 'taste' category. There are *tons* of really, really good microbreweries down here. Stone Brewery even has a lovely upscale restaurant attached to its brewery. I put a link in there to their site, for some reason it asks you whether you are over 21, it is safe for work.

On a final note, got back to the beach again. Strapping the surf board to the top of the car and driving down the highway causes the surfboard to bounce around in a disconcerting way. Plus the straps were humming in the wind and drowning out the Stuart McLean CD I was listening to. Stuart McLean and surfing, there's a combo for you. Oh yes, turns out my upper body strength still sucks.

The holidays are fast approaching and I find myself getting excited. Yes, this may seem out of character, but within my sometimes-crusty mien, there resides a bouncy child that goes "whee!" when plans for christmas begin to wind up.

As some of you are fully aware, plans have flip-flopped a bit already, but we've always been fairly relaxed about that sort of thing. Adaptable one might even say. We've also been called 'spontaneous' because friends can often count on us to go "okay!" when they call last minute and ask us to join them for hijinks. So, this year is no exception; plans to have guests for Christmas day became speculation about traveling north or east to visit some snow and friendly faces, and finally morphed into an obligatory stay-at-home event. When I say obligatory, I do not mean to say it is a bad thing. Yes, Phillip may have to work right up to Christmas day due to a timely technical release; however, we are happy to cozy up at home with the pets in front of our gas fire and pretend it's cold outside while we sip coffee, have a long breakfast and open presents to each other. See? "Wheee!"

Of course we can't talk about holidays without mentioning Thanksgiving, which is coming up very quickly. This year, rather than attend the HUGE event hosted by our friends, known fondly far and wide as The Maryland House (even though they now live on a different street), we are hosting a small gathering with two other couples. The fun of this is that we are at home, so no traveling is required; secondly, one of the Kevins (we have so many friends named Kevin) is bringing the bird itself, with stuffing, so I'm responsible for side dishes.  I'll be making maple-glazed sweet potatoes, rosemary-orange cranberry sauce, brussels sprouts au gratin, brandied carrots and parsnips and my delicious garlic-mashed potatoes. Jenny is bringing gluten-free pumpkin pie and a banana-squash cream pie for dessert. How nice is all of that? Thank you very much!

In other news, Phillip is still beloved by his bosses and doing well at work and I am enjoying massage therapy classes immensely. I've learned so much in a short time about health, history and the quirky machine we call the human body. In the first week, I found myself saying "fascinating!" a lot, and that's just in the nine month Massage Therapy, Western Techniques program. There is a full year-program for a Holistic Health Practitioner license that is even more in-depth. Returning to school seems to be paying dividends already; I realize that this is what I've needed to feel like I can put down roots here and have no doubt that by the time I am ready to graduate, I will have made many valuable contacts that will see me happily employed with a number of ready clients. Future plans entail spa-work for a few years and maybe eventually owning my own small business.  It's exciting and motivating and I feel like I've made the right choice for a new career.

That said, theatre will never by far from my heart. While I don't think I can make a living at it here, I do think I will continue to perform and write for a long time. At the moment, I am cast in a show called "True West" by the amazing Sam Shepard. It is a story about sibling rivalry (between brothers), but the director is making a bold choice in casting 'Austin' as a sister (yours truly). The risk will be that when violence erupts, it will be seen as "against a woman" rather than the intended sibling hostility, so we will have an interesting challenge on our hands. I'm excited because this is a wonderful opportunity for me to take on a juicy role opposite a very talented friend of mine who is an amazing actor.  Rehearsals start in January.

So, that's my little update, out of the blue. I hope all of you are healthy, safe and happy and wish you all glad tidings for the end of the year.

I'm at the coffee shop while Kat is off doing a read-through for some Day of the Dead
thing going on tomorrow. I couldn't help but feel like I had to put that guy to the right out of his misery. Who bakes unhappy ginger bread men? Perhaps he was the only one enlightened enough to realize his lot in life is to be dismembered and ingested. I had to eat him before he spread the news to the rest of the pile of ginger men and a yummy sugary riot ensued. Wow. I need to cut back on the caffeine.

We're back from the cruise, it was fun. It didn't give me a "Wow, we must do this again!" moment, but it was enjoyable. Kat pointed out that the rest of my discussion (below) doesn't sound like we enjoyed it. We did, but we aren't cruising converts.
I have to say if you have kids, cruises would be great. There were (so we were told) 700 staff on board for 2,100 people. I think that is a better ratio than at day care. We saw a lot of kids running rampant around the ship unsupervised and why not, where are they going to go? I guess they could have jumped off the ship, five stories down to the ocean. Of course if your child is the type to do that, they aren't safe anywhere.

Kat and I spent a lot of time lying in the shade and reading. Snoozing. Snoozing was really big. Staying in your cabin to relax wasn't really much of an option since it was a very small cabin. Some of the bigger boats we saw had cabins with balconies facing out, how cool would that be? They did make towel animals for you during the 'turn down service' they were adorable. I'll link in some pictures later.

They do try and keep you very busy, if you allow them:

• Didn't take part in the 'hairiest chest' competition.
• Did play some miniature golf. On a ship, top deck, how cool is that?
  
• Didn't do any of the bingo (although they were giving away a lot of money).
• Did go in the warm-tub (wasn't hot enough to be called a hot tub).
• Didn't go to any of the 'how-to shop' seminars.
• Did go ashore in Catalina and Ensenda (Mexico).
• Didn't do any of the package tours they organize.
• Didn't go to the meet-and-greet with the captain and the officers.
  
• Did go to the first 'show' they had. I don't go to those types of shows so I don't have much of a baseline, but when the guy starts singing J. Geil's band 'Centerfold' song and they've changed the words to be about women on a yearly calendar, ouch. When Ms. November came out dancing with a rubber turkey on a platter (Thanksgiving month here in the U.S.A.), I wasn't sure if that was the part I enjoyed the most, or cringed the most.
• Did go see, briefly, part of the hypnotist show. Just enough to realize it wasn't worth it.
  
• Didn't go to the second show they had. It was promised as 'completely different' to the first show and just walking by the auditorium, you knew it wasn't different at all.

In terms of food ... acceptable and ever-present.  One of the areas was open all the time. You could eat from 7:30 AM straight through to midnight if you really wanted to. On the second night we started to meet Kristina and Kevin at 'our' dining room (there were two). The chef was Indian, which meant the vegetarian dishes at supper were great, the others were good. Free food did mean we saw some of those unsupervised urchins running around at breakfast with a fizzy drink in one hand and an ice cream in another. Yeah, that's what we thought too. Explains why they had a 'serenity' section at the back of the boat where children weren't allowed. We spent a lot of time there.

One thing that did strike me was that I should have been reading a dystopian novel while I was on board, it would have *so* fit.
- You're issued a card when you board the ship. Everything you want to do, you use the card. It's ID, it's collateral for borrowing towels or putters, it's money for the slot machines, it's money for your drinks. England, you paying attention?
- Your picture is taken as you get on the ship, off the ship, and constantly during the trip. Oh yes, those pictures of you belong to them and they can use them as they see fit.
- They attempt to keep you busy all the time, join in with your comrades! Have fun!
- Attempting to leave the boat or getting back on means you line up, get your ID checked and everything else goes through the x-ray machine and metal detectors.
- No matter where you go there are 'staff' watching you.
- You want to go where? That part of the boat? I'm afraid not comrade, but remember the dancers are on at 6pm in the Mikado lounge!

Overall the cruise is very much like going to Vegas, if you suspend your disbelief and enjoy it (and ignore the cost of drinks) it can be a lot of fun.

I had a rather embarrassing revelation on my motorcycle last week. I have a sixth gear! The Yamaha only had five and I was constantly looking for another gear, the BMW has six ... but the five I was using for the last six months were doing fine. I had an inspiration on the way home from work to try and see if there was another gear and surprise, there was. I'll see if the discovery of the sixth gear will increase my MPG.

I finally bought a surf board: 8.2 feet. Picked it up last week last week and took it out last Wednesday morning. Embarrassingly (again) the surf was stronger than I was used to and I couldn't even get the board past the surf break. I'd paddle out 15 feet and get nailed by a wave that would push me back 12 feet. Three waves later I'd gone nine feet and realized that I'm seriously short of upper body strength. I caught some tiny waves as they reformed before hitting the beach. There is next to no surf this weekend so I'm planning my not-so-mad skills out to the beach again.

I've alway been fascinated with how people learn. Why is it that some people seem to pick up on languages really easily and others (namely myself) don't seem to get it? I believe a good amount of it is simply the way you are wired, some people are better at it naturally. Some of it is the way my brain has been trained over the last ten years of being in consulting and IT. As soon as I start to hear information my brain attempts to put it in boxes, define them, and make connections between the boxes. It must be why I need to have a white board in my office when discussing things, I'm constantly drawing boxes and connections. I believe even have a rows of stick figures on my board right now with lines connecting them.

I figure I'd be a very good mechanic if I took the time to learn about engines, it's the same pattern.

Languages are far too anarchic to be nicely put in to boxes. No boxes and flows, no remembering by me. Yes, languages inherit from other languages and there are basics like Latin that are roots for many rules of language. Yes there are rules in English like "I before E except after C" (although I heard they are thinking of scrapping that one) but those aren't really rules, they're suggestions. How are you supposed to learn something if the rules keep changing or being ignored? It used to drive me nuts trying to learn French by memorizing the 'rules' first and then attempting to apply them.

The only reason I understand English is because I'm constantly bombarded by it, not because I have any sort of aptitude. I couldn't tell you what a hanging participle is, but if I read a sentence I can tell you whether it is grammatically correct. Sadly it's a binary sort of ability, either it is correct, or it isn't. I couldn't tell you exactly what is wrong with it.

Of course since I have no grounding in rules for English I have to wonder why I'm so pedantic about them. If my understanding comes from constant references then you'd figure I'd be faster at accepting regional differences and new ways of speaking. I still wince whenever somebody in southern California says "Uh-huh" instead of "You're welcome".

Kat is studying for her first test so we are back at the coffee shop, her decrying the lack of highlighters in her bag and me with the laptop. She is planning on acing the tests so studying is a requirement. We had to leave the house so she could get some studying done, which I can completely understand. As I've probably mentioned before, I'm all about avoidance of temptation. Staying at home means there are things to distract Kat from studying, like playing Warcraft. One of the reasons I bought the Mac Air is (other than being really cool) that it isn't powerful enough to play any interesting games. That way when I'm using it I have removed some temptations. So Kat could either sit at home and constantly resist doing things she would rather be doing, or we can leave and remove the temptation. Thus here we are. Of course now we have to resist desserts. It's a dangerous world out here.

Part of her studies are about nutrition so it was doubly funny when she ran in to an article in the Economist about fried butter. Now not only does she dislike the idea on a visceral level, but she can dislike it on a molecular level. She's trying to explain to me about ionic and covalent bonds but all I can think about is ionic vs. doric vs. corinthian columns. I'm not going to mention that to her because it'll mess up her studying and that would be bad.

I've been looking in to using surveymonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/) to gather information from customers but I cannot get past the name. I keep having this image of a closed room with statisticians in lab coats, clipboards and thick glasses at one end and a horde of monkeys at the other end. What could possibly go wrong?

Had a moment of weakness on Friday. I was standing on the beach just as the sun was starting to make enough light to see, shivering from the cold. For some reason I had decided shorts and a tee shirt was a good outfit to wear for 6:30 in the morning, it wasn't. So there I stood with all my gear looking at the ocean and thinking "Damn, it's cold!". I almost didn't go in. I finally sucked it up and went in, and it turns out the water was far warmer than the air and it was good.

I think I disappointed the guy in the picture. He was waiting for some carrion.

The standing invite I have out now has ten people on it, and I find maybe two (including myself) show up. That's fine. I don't expect other people to show up, but I use them to motivate myself to get my ass out of bed at 5:30 in the morning.

I still haven't bought a surfboard. Kevin Six and I went out to buy one last weekend, it is always good to go out with somebody who really knows their stuff. He skimmed through the used ones on sale muttering to himself, no good, no good, good but too expensive. There weren't any that met the good and cheap criteria. We even went to CostCo, since they sold surfboards earlier in the year. They were all gone. So I am still without a surfboard and just using the boogie boards. Kevin mentioned that I should wander by garage sales and any surfboard eight feet in height and $50 in cost could be considered a good one. The search continues.

I did see a used surfboard with green camouflage, not sure what that designer was thinking. The camouflage was on the top of the surfboard, so it won't be confusing sharks and it'll really stand out if you look down from above (unless you are caught in a seaweed jungle). Maybe the pattern was meant to be ironic, it's really anti-camouflage.

I'm writing this in the coffee shop while Kat and her theatre group are having a post-mortum of the show they put on. It is also the last meeting they will have as a group since four out of the five of them don't want to continue with the 'collective'. I'm sitting sitting as far away as possible. Things rarely end cleanly. I'm hoping I'm wrong about that.

It is also filling up with gay men and their little dogs. At least they are all well behaved ... the dogs, not the men. Okay, I take that back. Time to start stuffing muscle relaxants in to little pieces of meat.

Kat is still enjoying the massage courses. She was naming off all my muscles the other day, I'm always impressed with that because that kind of information never seems to stay in my head. I must have a filter that labels it 'not important' as soon as I hear it and shuffles it off to the damaged section of my memory. Same place that foreign language information is sent.

October is here and it is going to be busy. The latter half of the month is going to be full of things to do, including the short cruise. I'm still debating on whether to try and see as much as possible on the ship, or just sit on my ass for a few days and relax. I'm thinking the relax bit. Our friend Kevin has been adamant that no matter what happens he wants a fruity drink with a little umbrella in it. We've decided we have to hit up a dollar store and stock up on little umbrellas so we can throw then in everything he drinks.

Those of you with gmail accounts may have seen strange emails showing up in your inbox. Seems gmail will send emails that seem to be addressed to you, to you, even if they aren't exact. I have sent plane tickets addressed to Phillip Dean back to people (she had a son named Phillip Dean) and I know that Branpford House needs the parapets and rear wall repaired (mostly to "hack off loose render and to renew as necessary", hell who doesn't need that?).

This morning I was sent congratulations on taking up the responsibility as Dean of Philosophy at JDV (the Pontifical Institute of Philosophy and Religion). Seems somebody from Institute Mater Dei was interested in a visit, how exciting! To top it off I received the "Minutes of the Philosophy Faculty Council Meeting" which ended with:

The meeting was over by 4. p. m, with tea. (my emphasis)

That's the way to run a meeting. I'm moving to India and taking up philosophy. Namaste.

By the way, while looking up 'namaste' on the web I found out that Yoga is dangerous to Christians. You've been warned. I didn't get 1/3 of the way through that rant, and that site is Not Safe For Work if you work in a secular environment.

P.S. The meeting Kat was at did end quietly. I knew you were worried.

I was going to start this post on a more positive note, but I attempted to use the GPS unit and now I'm in a lousy mood. Don't ever, ever buy a Delorme PN-40 GPS. I have had nothing but problems with this thing, and now it won't even turn on. I don't think I care any more, time to write it off as an expensive mistake.

Glad that's over.

Wow, itunes seems to be stuck on a Madchester kick I guess that is my fault for owning all that music.

Kat had her first day of school for massage therapy. She was excited about it. I could tell because she was telling me all about it with the fervor of the newly

converted and I'm glad for it. It is good to see her wound up for something, I think she'll be really really good at it. How bizarre is that shot of a school bag? How often do you need to bring your own sheets to school? Oh, and as Kat reads this, she informs me that they are called "linens", not sheets. And students learn the habit of saying "disrobe", not "get naked" or "strip, please."

They told her that she should be practicing things they teach because they don't go over what was taught in previous classes. It is a forward march from day one and they leave the slow and witless behind. I made the witless bit up, they'd never call somebody who paid for the classes witless, but it seems they are more than willing to leave you behind. I like that in a training environment. Looks like my fears of not getting any side benefits of the course were ill conceived. She is supposed to practice, practice, practice. The fact that she is supposed to practice helping somebody sit up is a little odd, but I guess that is a skill that may come in handy if I have a sudden and unexpected decline. I'm thinking of playing goalie for another soccer team so the idea may not be that far-fetched.

She's not allowed to miss many classes, which is good for training, but not so good in other areas. Kat had to explain that she already had tickets to go on a cruise, so she may be early leaving one class and late arriving at another. That's right, cruise baby! Our friend, Kevin, messaged me early last week with a deal on a cruise ship that leaves San Diego Thursday night, pulls in to Catalina Island for Saturday, then down to Ensendada (Mexico) for Sunday, and back to San Diego Monday morning. It was only $175 each for a ocean view ... of course that price will probably put us beside the engine room, but with an ocean view. The boat is MASSIVE I've always wondered what a cruise ship is like and now I'll find out. We are going with Kevin and his fiance, Kristina, which is nice: relaxation with friends. I am planning on almost zero 'extras', meaning organized shore leave. I'll let the plebs go ashore, which will leave more mini golf for me. We'll be heading out late October. Yay! I'll let you know what it's like. I'm going to try and remember to take some picture with the cell phone and see if the GPS unit works in geo-tagging the shot. I'll have to load that in to Google to see where on the ocean I was when the shot was taken.

One of the organized tours you can do is to go swimming with dolphins. Bah, I did that last Friday. Two of them swam by me while I was in the ocean. Okay it was around 20 feet away, but still, dolphins! Free! Ocean! Plus dolphins=no sharks.

Good god, I followed that link to the ship and looked at some of the virtual tours, the decor looks like a designer on valium just finished watching the little mermaid. I was hoping for classy mahogany and tux-and-tails ambiance. I'll have to refrain from drinking too much or I'll think I've fallen in to a bad disney nightmare. On the plus side I could look at the decor as bordering on Bioshock levels and enjoy a possible dark side to it. Kevin will get that, he's played Bioshock. If you haven't played Bioshock think art deco, undersea and Ayn Rand gone horribly, horribly wrong. Woo, now I have an entire sub-text for the cruise!

October will be a busy month, cruise aside, the Tragically Hip is coming to play at the Belly Up tavern. The Belly Up is a good spot to see bands, better than 4th and B where we saw them last time. It isn't as good as Barrymore's in Ottawa, which still stands out as one of the absolute *best* places to see a band. I expect that it will be full of expat Canadians. Last time we saw the band here, we were sitting beside a couple from Yellowknife who just happened to be down here on vacation when the Hip came. Considering how many times the guy had seen the Hip I found it very fishy that he just happened to be be in San Diego AND knew that they were playing at a local bar.

I'm heading out Sunday to hopefully pick up a surfboard. Wish me luck figuring out how to get that attached to the smart car. If I do I'll upload some shots.

On a last note I saw a reference to Gander The Dog somewhere. I read it to Kat and we both got the shivers, but now I cannot recall where I saw it. It isn't in any of the Mclean's I have and it isn't in the Economist. It still makes you wonder:

For saving the lives of Canadian infantrymen during the Battle of Lye Mun on Hong Kong Island in December 1941. On three documented occasions, Gander, the Newfoundland mascot of the Royal Rifles of Canada, engaged the enemy as his regiment joined the Winnipeg Grenadiers, members of Battalion Headquarters "C" Force and other Commonwealth troops in their courageous defence of the island. Twice Gander's attacks halted the enemy's advance and protected groups of wounded soldiers. In a final act of bravery, the war dog was killed in action gathering a grenade. Without Gander's intervention, many more lives would have been lost in the assault.Ω

I'm going to miss the early mornings at the beach when winter gets here. I had to get up at 5:30am last Friday (due to evil 8am meetings) and the sun hadn't even come up yet. By the time I was done in the waves and heading back to the car the sun was coming up over the valley, very pretty. I managed to catch some waves *along* the face of the wave rather than just down it, very cool.

I tossed out a previously written post, or partially written. I finally understand why important people outsource their speech writing. It's a lot of effort to get all worked up about something. Okay, no it isn't. It's a lot of work to get worked up about something and try to write about it in a serious manner with fact checking and well created paragraphs. Also grammar, don't get me started on grammar, once it gets its evil clutches in to you it colours everything you read. I need to be rich so I can hire some smart people, tell them I care deeply about X and Y, and I want them to write me good speeches and articles about it. Go make it happen, I've got a really big check here that says I care.

I can see why people on the fringes like the one sentence summaries and sound bites, WAY easier to do. Throw the sound bite out there, piss people off, make THEM do the work to prove you wrong. More time for the fringe people to think up more sound bites while you are working on gathering the facts to disprove the stupid things they've said. They can think up 10 stupid things to say while you are still trying to disprove the first one, you can't win.

Let me find some of the doozies they've been tossing out regarding socialized medicine ...

Stephen Hawking, I'm sure you have heard about.

Sarah Palin and her "Death Panels".  I hope she runs for President, that's a farce I'd almost pay to see.

Mmm, post soccer game laziness. I've finished off some english muffins with peanut butter and I'm eying up the wine bottle. Don't worry mom, I had a good lunch.

Kathleen has decided to kick the unemployment monkey in the gonads and head back to school. She has always been interested in massage and she has signed up for a nine month course to get certified. She figures this will work well in conjunction with theatre and it is something she can be passionate about. I'm all about the side benefits, practice, practice, practice. It is starting next Thursday so we will see how that goes, I'll keep you updated.

Previous to that she has been on a real spree around the house. The wall along the stairs is now painted, the low wall where we used to feed the cat has been painted (and covered over all her dirty paw marks, yay!). She even painted the upstairs bathroom!

Me, I'm going through an unfocussed streak at work. Doing more reacting rather than preemptive strikes. There is a whole centralized user storage and registration process that I'm working on, but it has stopped thrilling me. After going to all these Web 2.0 seminars at work and finding out we don't have much of a budget to send me to talk to our customers, I decided to leverage the new social media to get feedback on our sites. Turns out everybody loves talking about it, but nobody has any externally facing infrastructure. Woo. I'll find some other way to gather information.

I went to a lunch presentation on 'Where is my motorcycle?' put on by the motorcycle club at work and the local police department. Very informative. It turns out that stealing sport bikes are really, really big business in San Diego. They tend to focus on the latest model race bikes from Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha. The two police guys who came in described how the crooks steal the bikes and it turns out they are dead easy to steal. Crooks just bring in ignition pieces of their own, wire them to your bike, start it, and ride off. They figure an unlocked sport bike can be hot wired in less than a minute and ridden to Tijuana in less than 15 minutes.

I mention TJ because that is where all the stolen bikes from San Diego go. A couple of years back the San Diego police used to work with the TJ police in recovering bikes. Bikes that have LoJack installed are easy to trace a lot of the police cars have the LoJack scanners installed. Unfortunately one of the drug cartels became interested in the money being made from stolen motorcycles in TJ and decided they wanted a slice. So now bikes that make it to Mexico are never recovered by the police, ever. Retrieving stolen bikes in TJ is neither safe, nor fiscally wise for Mexican police officers. San Diego police officers that work near the border turn off the LoJack kits in their car because of all the noise it makes when they get close to the border. It is depressing.

Happily for me there is little demand for the type of bike I have, which means there is a very low risk of my motorcycle being stolen by professionals.

I miss all our friends back in Ottawa. We had a link sent out yesterday regarding Pigeons being faster than the internet. The email thread degraded to the point where Rick Pali was causing hat makers in Surrey to be tossed out in to feces filled gutters. Nice going Rick. In case you read the link about pigeons carrying memory sticks and thought about the airspeed of an unladen swallow, yes, we went there too.

Bad Island! (by the way, that image says Tap Fever, it'll become relevant later)

I'm sure everybody keeps up on international news, who doesn't? So you would have heard by now that the Turks and Caicos Islands lost their independence. The U.K. government came in and removed the elected premier, cabinet and assembly. Nobody seemed to care.
I was confused as to how England could possibly do this so I went to do some research and now I'm both less confused and more. Didn't know that was possible. Turns out the Turks and Caicos were still considered a British overseas territory. That is a pretty broad term since it takes in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands (which I've always thought to be independent) and the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar and the British Antarctic Territory (which I've always thought weren't independent). That means Canada is safe from Queen Elizabeth for now, but no getting uppity in the colonies!

I knew I had heard of the Turks and Caicos before in reference to Canada. I'd heard that at one time they wanted to become a protectorate of Canada (probably because we wouldn't suspend the elected officials). Turns out we have quite the history with those islands (all quotes lifted from Wikipedia):

In 1917, Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden suggested that the Turks and Caicos join Canada, but this suggestion was rejected by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

In 1974, Canadian New Democratic Party MP Max Saltsman tried to use his Private Member's Bill to create legislation to annex the islands to Canada, but it didn't pass in the Canadian House of Commons.

In 1979, independence was agreed upon in principle for 1982, but a change in government caused a policy reversal and they instead approached the Canadian government to discuss a possible union, but at the time the Canadian Government was embroiled in a debate over free trade with the U.S., and little attention was paid to the suggestion. In 2004 the Canadian province of Nova Scotia gave an invitation to join but Canada's government said they would look at the matter later

Props to Nova Scotia. I'm pretty sure if that had worked out the entire population of Nova Scotia would have moved to Turks and Caicos for the winter months.

In true Internet fashion discussions on this have descended in to hyperbole and farce. People are bringing up neo-colonialism and the slave trade. I'm guilty of taking an extreme stance during an argument to prove a point, but it is hard to take somebody seriously when they try to make tossing out an allegedly corrupt government and connect it with the slave trade. Welcome to the Internet, the shrillest will win.

Speaking of bizarre things to happen I found yet another example of why California will eventually end up imploding as an economy. It's the bureaucracy. When Kat and I first tried to buy a house here we were stunned by the amount of red tape that was in the way. If I squinted I could see how it originally started off as an attempt to protect the average person, but it soon was co-opted by business to make as much money as possible off everybody. I won't start on my normal rant about the red tape involved in buying a house in California. Suffice it to say that Kathleen and I sold a house in Ottawa for $700 in lawyers fees, we *bought* a house here for $4,000 in fees. I make an effort to make bought stand out because normally they hit up the person making the money to pay the largest fees. Here we paid 6X the cost to be the buyer in Ottawa. We haven't sold a house, but I'm scared.

Let me take moment to get rid of those evil memories. In with the good air, out with the bad. Breathe, breathe.

Right, here is the latest. As some of you may know, Kathleen and I had a surfeit of two wheeled motorized vehicles in the garage. Two motorcycles and a scooter. As a good person I had them all insured, even though I rarely drove the scooter and never drove the Yamaha (I learned it was more expensive to sell it if it wasn't insured. One guess as to who has been lobbying the government). So I finally sold the Yamaha to a friend of a friend for a dirt cheap price. I just wanted it out of my garage. I call up the insurance company later to remove the Yamaha from the insurance (I need to make this clear, from three motorcycles to two, remember that) and the guy on the phone tells me that my insurance will be going up by $1 a year.

Yeah. That's what I thought as well. WTF?

So it turns out there is some bizarre California law about the more motorcycles you own the cheaper it is. I've tried to rationalize that but I'm having a hard time coming up with a good reason to legislate it. Perhaps the insurance guy was lying to me, that fits in far better with my world view.

I was going to post a picture of the bunnies outside my workplace. I've been impressed with them ever since I started up my not-so quiet motorcycle 14 feet away from from them and they didn't even flinch. I'm sure if they could isolate their middle fury digit, they'd be pointing it my direction. Sadly the photograph I took of them was another 'find the animal' type of photo, as I posted with the deer. Every time I use the camera in my phone I'm overcome with awe regarding eyeball design. Everything looks good while I'm looking at it, pull out the camera and I'm looking for the zoom button to define things. Good design on that eyeball.

Last weekend Kevin Six sent out an invitation (on Facebook, the bastard, I'm still not on facebook) for a meeting at La Jolla Shores for surfing then beach party starting at 5PM. I was all for that, since Kevin brings all the surfboards. Then I realized that our good friend Kristina had a tap recital at the same time. Surfing and s'mores or a bunch of unknown kids messing up tap dancing?

I should clarify that Kristina teaches tap on the weekends in addition to her normal job. I'm not just showing up to some bizarre amateur tap. She can dance, so can her fellow teachers, it's the people they teach that worry me.

So what did we do? We went to watch Kristina's kids tap dance. It was at a Pacific Beach public school built in the 60s with bad audio, broken air conditioning, and wooden seats. I don't think any money has been put in to the infrastructure since they bought the red-velvet back screen in the 70s. Welcome to the California public school system. If I manage to link in the bad cell phone picture it's because I want you to suffer like we did.

The kids in the photo were dancing to Bjork, which I have to admire. They spent most of their time looking off in to the distance, waving at the audience members or responding to their inner monologue (which I hear is much stronger in children). Only when the chorus kicked in did they slam dance their way around the stage with tap dance shoes on. I almost wanted children during that moment. Oh wait, I'm over it.

I figure our Karma points went up because we spent two hours watching bad tap-dance for a friend. Of course by telling you that it sucked I'm pretty sure I lost all the Karma points I gained. Stupid Karma. At least Kat came out on top.

Random addition.

When I sold my cruiser the guy asked me how I felt about the bike, I told him I liked the old bike, but I love my new bike. It's so true. I left work today, put on the leathers, fired up the moto bike, felt the heat soak in, kicked in the tunes and thought; oh yeah, commute time, bring it on. I feel that way going to and from work, how kick ass is that? Tunes for the ride today were started off with Aisha by Death In Vegas, odd video, good tune.

It's been another crazy week, which means I missed my lunch hour ride due to too much work. Never a good sign. I did get out last week and spotted a herd of deer while waiting in the parking lot. That is something I would have never thought to see. The valley walls are laced with wildlife paths, but I'd figured they they were much, much smaller animals: legions of migratory rabbits and the like. It was shocking to see deer wander by. I said 'herd'; however, it was really only eight, but you have to remember this is in a valley in urban San Diego. That is eight more than I expected. I pointed them out to somebody in the parking lot who responded with the not-so-soothing "Oh, maybe that is what the mountain lion I heard about eats". I'm going to remember to stay in the middle of the biking pack from now on.

Seriously, there are deer in that picture. Almost dead center.

I get this email forwarded to me from one of our testers and it starts out "Got Application Performance Challenges?" which immediately made me wonder what brainless hack wrote that. I can see the job advertisement now: "Are you a grammatically challenged copy writer? Come work for (insert application vendor here)". I'm so sick and tired of the "Got XXXX?" advertising campaign. I was going to push for a bumper sticker that said "Understand Grammar?" but I don't think it would sell.

So we are back in to peer review hell again this month. I've plowed through six peer reviews so far and I've got two more plus a self review to do. Do people ever give bad self reviews? I'm stoked this time around because I managed to use the term "myopic" in a peer review. I wasn't writing a bad review but it was my fifth review that day so I was amusing myself. One of the sections they have you review your co-workers on is their ability to balance their work load. A lot of the people I work with are responsible for bits of the infrastructure that our systems rely on, so I really don't *care* how they balance their work load as long as they do my stuff first.

It was getting late and I was on my fifth review so I stated that "George (not his real name) is very efficient at managing his workload, of course I have a very myopic view of his workload since I consider my stuff to be the most important". I'm not sure if I've helped him with that kind of review. A couple years ago I wrote "George (not his real name either) has lost the joy in his job." on a review. That came back to bite me in the ass because 'George' had that quoted to him by his boss and he immediately figured I'd written it, which was very astute of him. We're still good friends, he works somewhere else now.

Kat just finished making some chocolate cherry loaf. Tasty, but now it is sitting in my stomach like a carb laden sugary black hole. I'm afraid to go in to the kitchen because I think the other food is starting to form orbits around it.

I thought it would be interesting to see where people work. I think folks should email me pictures of their office/cube and I'll collate them all. You all have cell phones that take pictures, there is no excuse not to. I'll include the full size of mine here. The photo on the wall is Kat in her bandito outfit while we were crossing the Andes. Yes, I don't personalize my office much. I just work there.

I had a whole post going earlier this week but I started to talk about expectations of personal privacy. It turns out the phones Kat and I have do a lot of 'calling home' to their maker to blab all about our habits, what we were doing and where we were(!). My writing quickly degraded in to a rant about how everyone gathers data on you and you really don't have any privacy. I had to stop writing it because I could either give up entirely and join facebook and twitter or move to a wood cabin in the wilderness, hunt my own food, and never use electronics again. I've chosen the third path, willful ignorance. As I read on a bumper sticker "If you aren't outraged, you're not paying attention.", I'm making an effort not to pay attention. I'll give a call out to Lincoln who many years ago pointed out that ignorant is the happy way to be. In his case he argued that he wanted all politicians to lie to him and tell him everything is just fine. He figured it was their job to worry about the big things. Why were they attempting to offload their jobs to him by telling him the economy sucked? He elected THEM to worry about that, get back to it and stop sharing the pain.

Speaking of twitter and such, I'm still going to the work presentations of Web 2.0 and Social Media trying desperately to understand why they keep giving talks about it. I've even managed to coin a term for my attitude, I am officially a 'Optimistic Cynic' or 'Cynical Optimist' depending on who I'm talking to. I really want the technology to be everything they say it will be, but I doubt it.
They rolled out 'Yammer' as a beta try-out at work. Yammer is work equivalent of Twitter. My boss sent me the link to sign up so I installed it along with a plug-in for my Firefox browser. Every time somebody I subscribed to sent a message on Yammer my machine would drawl "Yam" (drawled like a stoned surfer discovering tubers for the first time) and the text would pop up. I've discovered things about Yammer:
1) It's annoying to have yet another thing interrupting me.
2) The "Yam" sound should never have passed user interface design. I turned it off.
3) Some people at my work have TOO MUCH TIME on their hands. How can they keep sending 'cool links' to the Yammer channels, don't they work? I became more convinced then ever that some people in the corporate infrastructure group are just like sugar sensitive A.D.D. kids in a candy store. Ooooh, shiny technology link! OMG, OMG look at this! THIS is the future! OMG, forget the last future, that's the past, look at this future!
4) 'Yamming' from a conference isn't about sharing information, it's all about pointing out that you are at a conference paid for by work while everyone else is stuck in the office. How are you supposed to distill a conference presentation down to 180 characters? You can't, stop trying.
5) I really, really don't care that you are going to be in building B for lunch.

I wrote a summary of the technology at my bosses request pointing out that everything Yammer does we already have existing tools to do, and those tools are using mature technology that we don't have to invest more money in. Ah hell, I know people at work who can barely manage to create an email filter and they want them to pick up yet another invasive technology? The last internal presentation I went to the presenter talked about how the uptake of Yammer is on the rise at work.

Sometimes technology sucks.

World of Warcraft has advertised their latest expansion pack that sounds very interesting. They are making goblins playable race for the Horde. If they make them as cool as the goblins in Warhammer it may be tempting to take the game up again. The first time I saw a goblin in Warhammer do the /special command I laughed so hard I leaked a tear or two. So inappropriate, but that is the race that allows the fighters an ability called "right in the jibblies". How can you not like that?

Last Monday night, I managed to pop out my knee playing soccer. We were short our normal goalie and I'm backup goalie on account of I don't have a filter between "Should I jump in front of this guy?" and jumping. This normally leaves me in mid-air, or being trampled under foot wondering just how I got there. I've been told it looks good, and I think I'll put it on my tombstone "At least it looked good". I went out again tonight to play, but had a mad attack of common sense and just watched the game instead. It's very, very frustrating to be constrained by common sense. I'm not a fan.

As I mentioned in my last post, it was a very busy weekend (two weekends ago). The murder mystery had me worried, I'm not much of a people person if I don't already know them and it was a 'ask other people for information and role play' kind of evening. Kathleen swept out in to the crowd like she'd known them for ever and I was sitting at the table with a 'scientist' and two members of the 'gazelle liberation army' (GLA). Happily the 'scientist' was in reality a sound engineer and foley artist, which was pretty cool. The fact that I had to do a character assassination of my wife within five minutes of the start managed to break the ice. Some people were tagged as 'Dancers' and were forced to go up on stage later in the evening and do an interpretive dance bit on wounded gazelle. I took some photos with the new phone, but looking at them now ... everyone gathered around the 'wounded animal' while badly imitating gazelles looks downright creepy.


We ended going out that evening with members of the GLA to a pub near our place. Kat was stoked and having a great time. The scientist at our table wasn't drinking and gave me her drink tickets. It turns out that I was the driver that night so Kat enjoyed the large portions of wine being served. I'd been up since 5:30 in the morning to get in the ocean and by 12:30 AM I was just tired and wanted to go home.

The Testes toss tournament was a success, Kat and I burned out in the third round, which was good. We were there from 11:00 am until 3pm when we left (it continued on until 8pm). I never knew how much effort they put in to the tournament, but there were over 80 people (40 teams), four lanes to 'toss', bullhorns, kegs of beer, kegs of mixed drinks (when did this happen?) and of course the two police cars that showed up.

There was lots of what I would consider 'surfer flesh' hanging around: young, buff and tanned boys. Two of them had the, I'm assuming it's stylish, ass-crack showing in their low slung shorts. Kat and I met up with folks from the soccer team, the shorts boys came up in conversation and we learned that they are there every year, they are referred to as the "McCrackins" and most people can't stand them. Paula's shining moment this year was beating their teams out of the tournament.

Four hours in the sun, then home to shower, change and off to a wedding party for one of my co-workers who got married in Lebanon last month. I lasted until 9PM and then I was just tired from being in the sun all day and wanted to go home. I'm pretty sure it was the sun that made me tired, it could have been the Lebanese line dancing and ululations that were making me a little uncomfortable, but that would make me look bad. Four hours in the sun, exhausting.

I seem to have missed a week in my normal posting schedule. I'll fully admit that the busy weekend threw me off, but I've also been playing Oblivion again. It is an older game (a couple years or so) and an open ended RPG. It took me a while to start but I'm finally starting to enjoy it. The game has been around long enough that there is wiki site out there dedicated to it and that site has *everything*. Every quest in the game is indexed, detailed and searchable. I enjoy the game, but some of the effort people have put in to this site is disturbing.

Kat has continued to find that getting a job is very difficult to do in a depression. She had an audition on Saturday that she thinks went well, but sadly the male lead they chose was younger, so she thinks they'll be casting somebody younger to match. I told her to work the Mrs. Robinson angle, of course me telling her that after the audition probably didn't help. If I'd been there I would have said the same thing, in a stage whisper. Yep, that bad joke is in there intentionally.

Kathleen is still recovering from Saturday night. We went out to support a friend of ours in her karaoke habit. It was a quiet night with not many people so Kathleen volunteered to go do a tune. I'll say right now that I've heard Kat sing and she sounds good, not trained, but good. The karaoke machine hated her. It was a little painful and her ego was still suffering on Sunday.

I've been thinking about teaching the dog a new trick. I'm just in the planning stages. He's been giving me his undivided attention, but i don't think it's sinking in. I tell him to get me a beer and he just looks confused. I realize that opening the fridge is probably something I shouldn't be teaching him, since he'd sniff everything and leave nose marks in the butter, so I'm upping the ante. I figure if I ask him enough times and project maybe I'll teach him to run to the corner store with a $10 bill attached to him and open *their* fridge and get the beer.

I think the tough part is going to be teaching him the difference that opening our fridge is bad, but opening their fridge is good. My hopes aren't high.

I posted a picture a while ago of an eviscerated pigeon, I thought it was a cat that had done it. Jim Pantekoek pointed out that it looked like peregrine falcon kill, which I figure was way cooler. I'm now pretty sure it was a Cooper's Hawk. Kat spotted one around here a year ago and this weekend I spotted one 20 meters away from me on my neighbors lawn. When it took off it had a small bird in its claws. I watched it until it landed on a telephone post, then feathers flew everywhere. Yay for natural predators! Well, yay until it attempts to drag off my dog, then boo.

There was some unfortunate news on the motorcycle front, the battery died on the BMW. Dead, just like that. No warning. Happily I am still under the 'BMW roadside assistance plan' so I got a free tow to the dealership. It was just a truck with some gear on the back, pretty cool. Initially the mechanic was trying to explain to me that if I didn't have a trickle charger on the battery it may have died from lack of use. I then told him it was ridden five days a week, 35 miles a day, and there was no way I needed a trickle charger on it.

I guess I showed that I was annoyed with the battery dying, and kudos to the dealership, they comp'd the entire thing. So tow, battery and labor was all free. Well ... built in to the cost of the bike, so not really 'free'. That happened on Wednesday evening and Kat was forced to come save me in the car. I then drove the car in to work for two days. BORING. Luckily I had Kat's iPod which had Stewart Mclean's Tales from the Vinyl Cafe on it. That makes traffic so much more bearable.

I also talked some co-workers in to going body surfing before work last Friday, so I needed the car to carry the wetsuit, flippers and other junk. In the ocean by 7AM. It was surprisingly warm. I've attempted to put it on everyone's calendar, every Friday morning for the rest of the summer, we'll see how that goes.

This is going to be a busy weekend. We have a 'Murder Mystery' fund raiser for Moxie theatre this Friday. Kat has to play a successful actress (she wanted to be the oil barren) and I have to play her successful actor husband. Uh-oh. The husband thing I figure I can do, it's the successful actor bit that has me worried. I'm thinking my character just had a recent head injury and drinking problem, I can work with that. My motivation is going to be "Who are you people, and why am I here?". You know how hard it is going to be not to ask people what my motivation is? Must. Not. Speak.

Saturday is the 4th annual Testes Toss. I'd link the wikipedia entry for that but there doesn't seem to be one. Go figure. Oh, wait, one of the folks on my soccer team just got back to me with a wikipedia entry for Ladder Golf, looks like the alternate name is mentioned down at the bottom. I'll try to remember to take pictures so you can all enjoy it vicariously.

On a completely unrelated note, I saw an advertisement for the Nissan Cube on Hulu. Wow, that car is ugly. The part that truly struck me is it said "Professional driver, closed course" but I don't think that car goes anywhere that isn't computer graphic driven, and it surely isn't getting over 40 KPH.
Kat and I got new cell phones a week ago, I'm still working my way through it. So far it is pretty damn cool. One of the guys at work also picked up the same phone, he's doing far more with it then I am. For the geeks out there, he's set up his phone so he can SSH to it. How cool is that? I'll write more about it next time. The phone is the Palm Pre.

In discussions with some Indian co-workers it turns out that for some reason Americans don't shorten everything. They pointed out that some British terms are far shorter to say, but haven't been picked up here in the U.S.A. : apartment vs flat or elevator vs. lift.

The fact that nobody has picked up on those words goes against my theory, so I came up with a corollary: people have a 'invented here' bias for short words. Americans won't use slang that they didn't invent. No doubt I'll have more holes punched in my shortening theory, that is why it's called a theory.

Not really a surprise, yes Americans are getting fatter. Good to see Colorado holding out.

During the house warming party last week I found out that the house our friends bought came with a lawn mower for their four feet of lawn. Andy mentioned that he plans on never cutting it, so I volunteered to take the lawn mower off his hands (I'm nice that way). If you were wondering what the picture of the Smart car is doing on this post, that is a lawn mower in the back. It's amazing what you can fit in that car. The lawn mower was held in by a hammock and a bike lock, I get inventive at times.

Maverick had another I'm-not-a-guard-dog moment this week. As some of you may have heard before, the first time he heard our fire alarms go off he peed on the floor in fear. Any Lassie like "Little Timmy is down the well!" actions are not going to be forthcoming from him. He'd probably be more likely to be paralyzed with fear thinking "They're going to blame me!" and look guilty until Timmy's cries fade with exhaustion, then he'd furtively look around and slink away.

Kathleen was alone at home, and in the shower, when she heard a loud bang noise. A short time later Maverick forces his way in to the bathroom looking guilty and whining. Being alone in the house Kathleen's immediate thought was that somebody may have broken in to the house and Maverick was doing his "run to the alpha dog for security" bit. She wrapped herself in a towel and went out to investigate. She didn't finding anything, well, she did find a puddle of pee on the carpet downstairs. Maverick being true to form: Fear, pee, run behind somebody else.

I was on Salesforce training this week. Like most training I've had, a lot of it wasn't that useful. My department uses salesforce as a ticketing system to allow customers to open issues. The training was for potential contractors so it covered the sales and marketing capabilities of Salesforce. There were modules covering things that I've never cared about, and hopefully will never have to care about. I've never liked Sales/Marketing and even being tangentially exposed to them made me shudder. I hope I *never* have to do sales, I would so suck at it and I'd be unhappy the entire time. Just talking about 'leads' and 'converting leads' and 'opportunities' makes me uncomfortable.

I won't complain too much about the training because I didn't pay for it. If somebody else pays and 10% of the training is useful information I'm pretty happy. If I pay for it I want higher than 35% return. That means the information is 100% relevant and 35% new, or 70% relevant and 50% new or 40% relevant and 87% new. You math types can see where I'm going with that. This explains why I've paid for so little training. I've signed up for courses at work that are interesting in areas, like how humans perceive colours and light. Eventually that course went in to pretty heavy math regarding colour and image compression algorithms, but that is why I always carry my laptop with me, I just log back in to work while I'm sitting in the auditorium.

I have a training 'plan' at work that keeps track of all the courses I've been to, it must make for very confusing reading for HR.

I think I spent more time figuring out how to put padding around the images in this post then I did writing it. Luckily I'm a geek so I find that a good use of time.

Post Kat Arrival.

Kat is back in San Diego and all is well with the world. Her plane arrived early, but I was smart and checked the arrival on-line and showed up in plenty of time. I had a hell of time finding parking at the airport. I finally realized that if the massive Hummers are parking in the stripped 'do not park here' zones the Smart car surely should fit. It did.

While Kat was away I spent much money (in my head) redecorating. We shall see how much of that survives review by somebody with way better taste than myself. The couch still remains in the living room only because it won't fit in the back room without me ripping the legs off and I was wise enough not to do that. I'm still considering it, but more of a 'removal' than a 'rip'. I have to be careful with my verbs.

Why I get this urge to move everything around while Kat is gone is beyond my understanding.

I've unearthed the scooter from its dusty and unused state. The battery is dead but it started on the first kick this morning. I used it to drive around and check out furniture stores, which I love doing. Kat wasn't interested, so I was solo on the scooter.

So as part of the redecorating urge I'm looking for some shelves/storage that will go beside where the cat is fed. I had an image of some low white plastic cubes that would look cool, yet still not dominate the area. I swear I've seen them before, but I've had quite a time tracking them down. I finally found what I thought I was looking for at the container store (which is kind of odd) the Ladora style shelving. Sadly they are a little too high for what I was looking for, and the examples they had in the store didn't pass the Ikea test.

The Ikea test is something I came up with after buy lots of Ikea stuff, taking it home, building it, then realizing that it wasn't that stable (or just plain sucked). Now when I look at furniture I put my hand on the top and push down, then push left and right. If the furniture wobbles, it doesn't pass. If they can't build it stable in the store, it sure isn't going to be stable after I build it.

I also stopped off at the bookstore while I was scooting around and came out with two books, even though I have some already waiting for me to finish. The Road and a steampunk type novel The Affinity Bridge from an author I never heard of. If I've never heard of the author I read the first couple pages and see if I like the style, this one passed, I'll let you know. The Road was mentioned in an interview with one of the main game designers for Fallout Three, a game franchise that I've loved. He said most of the designers had read that book and it influenced the look and feel of the game. That's good enough for me!

Turns out there was a 'movie tie in' version of the book. I've hated those things ever since working in a book store, and from my conversations with the lady in the bookstore it looks like bookstore snobbishness is alive and well. I bought the original trade-paper version and, much to Kathleen's bemusement, scraped off the "Now a major motion picture!" sticker.

Kathleen finally had to come save me. The scooter decided that it didn't want to kick start, and after 20 minutes of trying it (in the increasing heat) I called Kat. While she was driving over I became increasingly inventive in ways to get the scooter started. It's a pain to do because you have to hold the front brake on for it to start (the left brake). You also need to put it up on the center stand to stabilize it, and hold the back rack so it doesn't tip over when you try to kick start it. This means you can't get a really good kick, and you can't apply any gas. By the time Kat showed up I had a bungee cord attached to the front brake to keep it depressed, a really good leverage on the kick, but I still couldn't reach the gas. When Kat showed up and ran the brake and gas for me it started no problem.

Now if it ever stops working again I know to get a random person to help me. The Americans were friendly as ever, with two guys wiling to lend advice such as "Is the key turned all the way?" and "That's good cardio". They may have been willing to help more than that, but we never got that far. We just gazed at the dead scooter in a manly way while I dripped sweat on it.

It's a strange thing, but if I take the scooter short distances I jump on with shorts and shirt, if I take the motorcycle short distances I feel like I have to put the full leathers on.

Some updates for those of you who were worried:
-- I have a new helmet now.
-- The dog has been groomed and is no longer toxic.
-- My best of Groove Armada came in the mail, groove time baby! So far four of the songs stand out: My Friend (the reason I bought the album), Chicago, Easy and If Everybody Looked the Same. It's a win. I think that link will work, it goes to Pandora.
-- The pigeons seem to have given up. Woo!

July 4th weekend report. I was lazy and didn't do anything interesting, well not on the 4th anyway. Friday I did go surfing with Kevin, Kevin and a friend of Kevin's, Kymri. I was going to bore people about the boards I used and Kevin Six's surfing style but I'm pretty damn sure nobody cares.

Suffice it to say Kevin Six is a surfing daemon. That man can turn and catch a wave before I can get out the sentence "Oooh, that one would have been good". He even was complimented by some 12yr olds: "Look at that old guy go!". There is a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one. Kevin missed the comment so we had to make sure he heard *all* about it when he got back.

Standard San Diego weather, sunny in North Park, overcast by the beach. We surf in the evening, drive back up to North Park, it's sunny again. Some times I think living by the beach may be overrated. San Diego is the first place I've lived in where they have to give three weather forecasts, oops, just checked and there are four: Coast, Inland, Mountains and Desert. The moto ride last week differed by 12 degrees Fahrenheit, the ride Kat and I did to Anza Borrego desert went from comfortable (coast) to cold (mountain) to overly hot (desert).



Went for another Moto ride Sunday. Took the PoS GPS with me. It froze twice (as you may be able to see from the picture). It's time for me to post on the Delorme forums and see if there is some fix for this thing. I cannot believe it is so sensitive. Some very nice twisties and I'm still trying to figure out how to ride them on the BMW. It likes higher RPMs, but on the very tight corners I come out of them too slow for 2nd and have to downshift to 1st. I know you are supposed to go in to the corner in the gear you need to be in when you come out, am I supposed to downshift to first *before* the corner? Seems very wrong.

Kathleen is probably wondering why I'm doing all this riding while she is away and not while she is here. It's all about the practice. I want to make sure I know what I'm doing before I go two up on some of these roads.

Kat is still in Canada, she's back in Ottawa until Wednesday. If you want your Kat fix, and who doesn't, you've a limited time to get it. By the time I post this she'll probably be back. Too slow. I heard a group of them went to the Earl of Sussex, some things don't change. When I go back I'll make sure to head to the Manx.

I finally finished the body wash that I bought in France, no more smelling like a European for me. No, I don't know what that means, so don't ask me. The reason I mentioned it is because now I'm back to a generic body wash (whose make I cannot remember) but it smells clean. Not people clean, just clean. Who figured out what 'clean' smells like? Does it differ between cultures? I'm pretty sure a North America 'clean' isn't the same as a Japanese 'clean'. Where would you go to figure that out? How cool would a museum of smells be? -- Okay, I've thought more about that, I wouldn't go to either. -- We also have a dishwashing liquid that smells like lavender, which is something I normally associate with flowers and people. It took a little getting used to.

So I smell like clean dishes and the dishes smell like sexy people. I'm telling you, me and the kitchen are happening.

I'm posting this from the coffee shop, and some of the news is old already. I'm writing the next post and using older one. Now you know all your news isn't fresh.

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From the sounds coming in my back window either somebody is having epic sex, or they're cutting wood with a very dull saw. For everyones sake I hope it's the former. That's not going to upset people is it? Oh well, too late.

On to more pleasant things. The dog stinks and the cat should be bald and fat.

I pet the dog when I got home. Now I have an incense stick lit and I've washed my hands. Ugh. I fail to understand how he manages to generate that much pong by just sitting around.

Also, considering how much I feed the cat, and how much hair I find around the house, how is she not bald and fat? She's skinny and furry. I don't understand it.

I'd like to complain about a part of the health system. I can't complain about the U.S. health system in terms of availability for high cost items, they've got that covered. Back when Kathleen had inner ear issues they sent her from the specialist *directly* to the MRI. No waiting, off you go. How long is he wait for an MRI in Canada?

However, standard complaint about doctors coming up, the way they treat their patients seems far more conducive to "more money" than "preventative maintenance". To my personal doctors defense, he did tell me to wait until he got back from vacation to talk about my blood test. He mentioned that it wouldn't be analyzed very well. Kudos to him. I got a phone call on Tuesday from the receptionist that said doctor X had looked at my blood work and "avoid trans fats and exercise five times a week". Wow. He forgot to say 'eat your vegetables'. What the hell was that? Standard answer number five? Hopefully my GP will give me more useful information. I would assume that 99.9% of the U.S.A. would benefit from "avoid trans fats and exercise five times a week". Bah, humbug.

My friend Jim Collis and I went for a nice motorcycle ride last weekend. Woke early, good ride, some mistakes were made. Near the end of the ride I mentioned to Jim that I was going to run out of gas in 42 miles (yay for trip computers!). Three miles after that Jim ran out of gas. Amusing, yes.

I came to a stop, turned off the motorcycle, took the helmet and gloves off, and checked back to make sure he was okay. So there I was sitting on the bike with gloves in my left hand and my helmet in my right, next thing I realize the motorcycle is starting to roll backwards down the side of the road. I can't use my front brake because i have my helmet in my right hand, I can't use my back brake because that needs my right foot and I'm using that for balance. Down I go. So much for the new motorcycle.

Happily there was very little damage done to the motorcycle that super glue didn't fix (just the turn signal) but my helmet took a beating. Now it doesn't have a faceplate any more and the place where it is supposed to connect is broken. I put the helmet and sun glasses back on and took the highway. It took all of five minutes for a large and juicy bug to hit my cheekbone and splatter in to my eye. I can report that bug juice in the eye at 70 MPH isn't dangerous, but it is pretty damn gross.

Happy Canada day to everyone back home! I'm sure you'll all be sending photos of the celebration. From phone calls I had it sounds like Ottawa was rain free for the fireworks, woot! Okay, back to my previously written post ;) By the way, no photos for this post. Kathleen took off to the Eastern Townships with the camera so all I have left is the old Canon Powershot that is ... wow ... nine years old now. I think my phone takes as good photos. Of course this thing lasted many a mountain bike crash and still works, that is *very* impressive.

I finally went in for my '40,000 mile checkup' as the doctor's assistant referred to it. That would be the post-40 doctor's checkup. When the secretary asked me why I was making an appointment I told her I'd just turned 40 and figured I should find out if I was going to die. She took it in stride, I'm sure she's heard it all before.

I always feel like I'm getting short shrift from doctors when I go to see them, because I'm not sick. We go through a litany of questions:
Feeling sick? No.
Out of breath? No.
Dizzy?No.
Nausea? No.
Diarrhea? No.
Breathing problems? No.
Muscle pain? No.
Blood pressure? Fine, I guess.
Exercise? Yes.
Liver or pancreas pain? No. Wait, how would I know if those hurt? I don't even know where they are.

As a friend of mine once pointed out, healthy people should only go see specialists. With the GPs you are probably one of the few healthy people they see, so to them you are a picture of health and that slight knee problem is nothing to worry about.

At least they took blood. I don't think I've had blood work done in two decades.

Change of topic.

I have come to realize that people are essentially lazy in their speech, they want to get their point across with the bare minimum of effort. The most obvious of this is the use of shortcuts in texting and instant messenger. Nobody wants to text out the word 'you', so you get U. Wait gets turned in to 'w8'. I'm still fighting the use of 'UT' for 'You there' and I still type out 'yes' for answers instead of simply using 'y'. Interestingly enough simply putting UT in an IM *implies* a question, so you don't even need to put the punctuation in!

I think if we get good enough at simplification in communication we may manage to get all the way to just grunting at each other. Think of the time we'll save!

Laziness / simplification works on spoken language as well. It used to bother me that people used 'Where you at?' instead of 'Where are you?' when they both have the same number of syllables, you aren't saving anything by speaking incorrectly. However, If you try to move your mouth as little as possible, and say both those sentences you will find that pesky 'are' word requires you to move your jaw far more than if you simply used the 'at'. The 'at' is an easy tongue movement and takes less energy, mystery solved.

This phenomenon also helps me explain why, even though I cannot do accents well, I can do a Southern States accent. I figure everyone can do a Southern accent. Why is that? Don't try to pronunciate and do the bare minimum effort with your jaw, lips and tongue. Ta-Dah, a Southern accent.

Which brings me to an area where I see effort going up, IT buzzwords. The latest one to be doing the rounds by the IT Architecture group is 'space'.
- We need to investigate the Web 2.0 space.
- I know somebody who works in the LDAP space.
- This is targeted at the Corporate Social Networking space.
Every one of those sentences can have the word 'space' removed, and it still makes sense (to those of you who know what LDAP stands for). Somehow this meme has managed to bulk up sentences, going against the shorter/smaller tide. Sadly it hasn't added value, it's the written equivalent of empty calories.

I was sent a copy of one of the IT Architect presentations on 'Social Networking in the Corporate Space' and there was some text in there that made me giggle every time I read it. I'll try and remember to put a copy in here.