Well, it finally happened. After over a year of being 'on the list' the Starbucks that Kat used to work at has finally closed. From what we've heard it wasn't that the location was losing money, it just wasn't making *enough* money. I suppose that means another coffee shop could conceivably move in there and survive, except we have plenty of good independent coffee shops in the area which seem to be doing just fine. Oh yeah, we also missed the last day they were open, meh. California now has a 11% unemployment rate, closing that store just added a few more. To Starbucks credit, they did try to place as many people as possible in other locations.

Kathleen is busy getting ready for her trip up to Canada, flight booked, rental car booked. We went to the bookstore to get some books, Kat picked up one by George R. R. Martin and I picked up the latest from William Gibson and Peter F. Hamilton. A day later I'm halfway through Spook Country and Kat has already finished her book. If it was a race to get to the Hamilton book, looks like I lost and she'll be taking that one on her trip. I didn't link the the home sites for Martin or Hamilton, just the wikipedia pages, because the official home pages are UGLY. Why can't authors get good web designers?

Speaking of books, I finished the book Lincoln lent me while I was in the U.K.: 'The Judging Eye' by the Canadian author R Scott Bakker. That man's editors need to clean up his prose a bit. He gets too poetic in some of his descriptions and it puts me to sleep. Of course I'm not huge on poetry so others may find it appealing. He's got great ideas and I'll buy the next few books in the series, but I have to read them sitting up with lots of caffeine in me.

Ending on the fiction theme, I found a nice addition to the car. It's sure to confuse people and annoy religious types, so that's all kinds of good. It's a reference from the movie Serenity. If you haven't seen that movie and you like Sci-Fi or westerns, you owe it to yourself to watch it. Heck, buy the Firefly series while you are at it, brilliant stuff.

Ugh, nothing like phone calls from work on Sunday afternoons. Guess I should go see what they want.

Last weekend we gathered with some friends at the beach to do some surfing and some avoiding-the-sun. The sun is not your friend. In this case the sun wasn't as bad as the sand, there was a constant wind off the ocean pushing sand everywhere, I'm still finding it in my cell phone, camera and bags. For those of you who care, the surf was very choppy but I managed a couple waves. Kevin was giving lessons to people who have never surfed, he's big on that. Kathleen was using their video camera for a while, I have to check with them for interesting videos.

I'm going to try and head out again this weekend. It's overcast with showers, so perhaps there won't be as many people out.

Kathleen decide to be nice to our 14yr old cat and buy her some soft food to eat. Now I'm yelled at whenever I go near her bowl. Demand, demand, demand. She is currently sitting beside her empty bowl staring at me, meowing, staring, meowing. I went out and bought some more hard food for her, now she hates me.

The epic trip that almost was.

Kathleen has decided to head back to Quebec for the gathering / funeral for her grandmother and uncle. While trying to plan it she thought about driving up to Quebec in the Smart car. If I had the time I'd do it. The only really bad part would be the mountains, the little engine doesn't like steep hills. There were talks of getting insight from Paul and Mom, GPS buying, timelines and carbon offsets (well, not so much that part). Driving there would be an adventure! Driving back, she realized, would be a chore.

So Kat is flying. I so rarely look at the air mile points we get from the credit card, it turns out we can just squeak in a free flight. Well ... free other than taxes and airport costs. Has there been inflation in airmile points while I wasn't looking?

It's been a tough week for clarity.

I received an email on Friday afternoon from one of our internal customers that outlined two new reports they wanted. I literally had to read the email for 15 minutes, re-arrange the paragraphs and tease out the fact that they were talking about three different systems, mixing up which did what, and asking for things that wouldn't help them with the problem I think they were having. One email, 45min time spent understanding and responding and it'll spawn a meeting.

Earlier this week I sent an request for clarification on a business process. The response I received back gave no clarification, included two bug reports for systems I have no control over and an enhancement request.

GPS Update, after much fiddling, reseting and cursing, it's working again. The sad thing is that I don't know which of the many key presses I did cleared it. Frustrating.

I'd upload a GPS of my lunch ride this week but the damn GPS hung, how terribly annoying. The heart rate monitor said I had a max heart rate of 210 but somehow I doubt that. Doesn't 210 mean I'm close to death?

A week has gone by, and I'm unimpressed with the U.S.A. commercial model.

I bought a rear case for my motorcycle when I coughed up the cash for the purchase. Last week I took it in and they had ordered the wrong part. Fair enough. Of course I had to call them to find out they had the pieces so I could show up, so they could find out they had the wrong ones. Hmm.

I was back at their store on Thursday because a friend of mine is recovering from being unemployed by buying stuff, lots of stuff. Since I was back at the BMW store I asked if they had my pieces in yet, and yes they did. So now I have my rear case installed (which will hold my helmet, woo!). They installed it quickly, but I had to ask them about it.

I included a shot of the new profile. It'll make my mother happier because it doesn't look so race oriented any more ;)

Back to my point though. I took my iMac back to the Apple store last Saturday to get the video card replaced and by Friday I was wondering what was happening. So I call them and find out, it's been fixed. They charged me less labour than I was expecting ... but yet again I had to call them.

Why am I calling these people so I can give them money? I figured they'd be all hot and bothered to get my cash. Okay, the BMW guys had my money, but that's no excuse for the Apple people.

So now I have my iMac back perhaps I won't be as assiduous about uploading things to the blog, I do have loads of distractions again. Quake live comes to mind. It's like the early 90s again, just free and runs in a browser. Of course I could simply enjoy the sound of my own typing and keep it up. Who knows?

Update on the pigeon issues. I joked the other day that my neighbour doesn't have any pigeon issues because he has a one story house and the neighbourhood cats can get on to his roof to eat them. I was considering installing a feline highway from his roof to mine (read a piece of wood) so they could eat the ones on my roof. Imagine my surprise when Kathleen and I come home from the Gastro Pub (horrible name, good food, yes the German Riesling kicks ass) and find that somebody has left a present on the doorstep. Is it wrong to dance around the corpse? I'm thinking yes. I simply nodded my appreciation to the silent hunters and moved on.

In case you are wondering, yes, it is getting crowded in the garage. I've had some interest, but nobody wants to buy the Yamaha yet.