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.