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.

**********

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.

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.

Another lunch ride, I just know people love GPS / Google Earth screen shots. Who wouldn't? One hour, 700 calories, top heart rate of 163.

Soccer: Everton lost the FA cup today. I'm sad. Barcelona beat Man U in champions league earlier, so that makes me happy. They are all over-paid, but I find Man U's players (the new breed, not Scholes and Giggs) to be pouty prima donnas. If I was paid £122,400 a week I'd be all smiles, all the time. I'd also work for two years then buy a small house in the tropics, sponsor a theatre company, surf and mountain bike until I dropped dead from old age, but that's just me.

I've discovered a new (to me) site that allows watching of television shows streaming to your computer( www.hulu.com, sorry, it only works in the U.S.). This has allowed me to watch some shows that I'd heard of, but couldn't be bothered to sit in front of the T.V. at the correct time to watch.

That has always been the downside to television, they expect me to work my schedule around theirs, that will never happen. Now with the DVR and Hulu I can catch some of the entertainment when I want to, that is a far better proposition. So far I've been watching old episodes of Stargate SG-1 and Legend of the Seeker (based on a Terry Goodkind book! edit: had the wrong author name, oops) on Hulu and Reno 911 on the DVR.

I've always despised reality television, it's contrived and obviously very scripted. Reno 911 is shot to look like a reality t.v. show following a (very dysfunctional) police force around. In reality it is actors doing a whole lot of improvisation. It isn't, um, for everyone but there are some scenes of pure genius in it.

As some of you may know, I'm a big fan of computer games, and the last couple of years I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft. Well, it finally bored me enough to quit, then my iMac died. I guess I worked the video card too hard and the ventilation wasn't good enough. One dead video card. Luckily the iMac I bought has a replaceable one, so rather than replace the entire logic board it will only be $400 for the video card and labour. Sigh.

Now that I have no games to play I have more time on my hands. I've mapped out new motorcycle rides, cleaned my old motorcycle, put a bunch of stuff on craiglist to sell, updated the blog, and done some gardening. It is freaking Kathleen out, mostly the gardening part.

I have been waging a war on some pigeons that have decided that the eaves in our house are a perfect place to gather, talk, raise children, and defecate. I take exception to all those things. In stages I have been introducing pigeon deterrents. I throw up blocks, they overcome them, I throw up more. Yes, it is as sad as it sounds.

My chicken wire blockades have been extended along the gutters now and I think I've finally managed to overcome them. Check out the confused look on that avian rat. While we were in Paris we had some pigeon pate, not on purpose, the Parisian waiter insisted that we have it. It was excellent, like most food in Paris. Now when I look at those annoying things I think: a few pistachios and you're edible, just ask your cousin.

Post Vacation Update
Well, we are back from vacation in France, have been for a couple weeks. Vacation was wonderful, a sub-set pictures are here. I was playing with geo-tagging the photographs (I bought a GPS), so you'll notice the fun little "Photo Locations" window in the Picasa web album. It wasn't as easy as some would lead you to believe, but now that the location is tagged on the photo I never have to worry about it again, which is nice.

Another fun part of owning a GPS is tracking the rides I do at lunch. Every Wednesday my boss has posted a 'meeting' consisting of a mountain bike ride. We try to fit it in to an hour. Who am I to say no to my boss when he calls a meeting?

The trail consists of heading down in to the valley next to work and taking a series of trails. The photo I'm hoping to link in has the standard run. There are some very nice downhills that we are attempting to work in to the lunch ride. Sadly our office is on the top of a hill so the start is downhill and the end is uphill. I prefer the opposite. The gap in the bottom left of the green track is my building.

As most of you know, I have a subscription to the Economist (this will get relevant to the vacation, give me a bit). The Economist will always take the time to trash the EU policies on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) saying it is a waste of money and messes up the proper economic flow of things. After traveling around the south of France I have to say Hooray for the CAP! We had all kinds of local cheeses and produce available, there were loads of lovely farms and wineries as we drove around, it was pastoral paradise. I'm sure that would not survive the advent of corporate driven agriculture. If well paid bankers all the way to ordinary people in Europe have to pay to keep the farms and small towns running, so be it. Perhaps with the beauty of the countryside and slower pace more people may migrate to the country and reverse the flow of people to the city.

Perhaps part of the fix for France is to move people out of the banlieue and to the farms of France. Yeah, that'll get me in trouble.

That being said, and all irony aside, we are back in the U.S.A. and I'm back at work. I now have zero vacation time left, so yay for public holidays (since that will be all I'm getting for a while). I think I can say without breaking any rules that this year will not be horrible for my employer. We've been forced to cut temporary and contract people, which I think it is good idea. The credit crunch may be mauling other companies (think automotive and banks) but we have no debt and oodles of cash in the bank, so the credit crunch has no direct impact. It has impact on our customers, but I think we will get through this stronger.

I have finally passed motorcycle puberty (as my friend Kevin told me) and moved to a real motorcycle. My initial motorcycle was a third hand cruiser that treated me well. It's acceptable and boring. I used to describe cornering with it as 'falling' in to the corner. You could feel the weight of the bike move around and settle. The new one ... carves. Of course the big yay for me is now I have a gas gauge. On the last bike I reset the odometer after every fill up and rode it to around 120 miles before I filled up again. As you can tell from the photo, it's a BMW F800S and it was a demo bike, so I still don't have a 'new' bike, but it's close. The exhaust is after-market installed by BMW and it sounds much better than the stock ones :)

I'll take another photo after the rear storage gets delivered and installed.

So now the annoyance of putting the Yamaha and the scooter up for sale will start. I've never sold a vehicle in California before, well, I've never sold a vehicle ever. I'm getting set for large amounts of annoying red tape.

That's it for now. Hope everything is going well for people!

 Happy New Year!

 According to the Chinese calendar, 2009 is the year of the Ox.  Well, after January 26th that is. In the meantime, we're seeing the  tail end of the Rat in 2008. Yes, the pun was intended... apologies.

 As I mentioned in my previous update, Phillip and I spent the holidays at home this year. It was a first for us: no plane tickets to buy, no car to rent, no packing, no travel. That part was nice. Less nice was not being able to see everyone, but now that we have our Green Cards, the hope is that we will be able to visit with much less fuss anytime we have a free week or so to do so.

I also mentioned that we were mostly just gifting each other this year. Phillip's “big surprise” was a wetsuit and surfing lessons with a buddy of mine and my “big surprise” was a pattern copied from my favourite skirt. I can now take it in to the designer, choose new fabrics and have as many versions of that skirt as I want. We were both rather pleased with the gifts and with ourselves. Christmas morning we had a delightful brunch with mimosas and even the pets got treats. It was a very nice and relaxing day.

The big news for January is that Joan and Paul are visiting us in what has become an annual tradition. The weather seems to be cooperating wonderfully for their holiday; it has been sunny and warm almost every single day, allowing long daily walks with Maverick (boy is he going to miss those) and enjoyable excursions to the local attractions.

Yesterday's outing was to the zoo. We were disappointed that the new Elephant Odyssey was not yet finished, but were soon cheered by the new “monkey trails” forest and the polar bears up to their usual rambunctious antics. I think we could drop Joan off at the zoo on any given morning when it opens and pick her up at closing and she would be perfectly happy! She and Paul were smart to purchase memberships this year, which will benefit Nick and Colleen and family as well. They are planning to visit San Diego in a couple of week, though thankfully, they'll be at a local hotel. I don't think they'd enjoy sharing a bed with Maverick in one of the rare empty corners of the condo.

Tomorrow I meet with Lotus Theatre Collective to discuss our upcoming production, and I may also soon be busy with weekly improvisation sketches. A buddy came into the store on Thursday and said her group was looking for another female for the group. Since there is not a lot going on the acting side of things for me right now, I accepted. It will be good to stretch those muscles again, especially since I'm planning to teach a mask workshop this year.

Quick note about my store; we're still open. At least for this month. I'm starting to hope it will stay that way since, out of the six-hundred stores in the U.S.A. that were scheduled to close since July, we are one of the last two still operating. The final deadline is March. The owners of the retail spaces around us are lobbying hard to get Starbucks to stay permanently of course, since it's good foot traffic for them, but Starbucks will only stay if there is good businesses around them. It's a circle of life, so to speak.

Hope the weather warms up a bit for you folks. In the meantime, stay cozy and safe.

K & P

Welcome to the U.S.A. or,
“There's a Dead Guy in the Restroom”

Big news! After almost five years, Phillip and I received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services. We have been approved for Green Cards. Our first reaction was “Wow... really? Wow.... so... what does that mean?” For me, it means the joy of traveling without the worry of forgetting some important visa document or delays because a portion of a form that was retained by a border official that was SUPPOSED to remain with my passport. Oh, and not having to remember obscure codes like 'H1B, H4, EAD.... bonus! I'm already planning a visit to Ottawa... just not sure when!

Christmas is fast approaching! We're both as excited as children, since we've decided to spoil each other a bit with gifts. My boss is even in on it; Phillip came into the coffee shop for a drink while I was working today and she took him aside to find out what my 'big' present was. The injustice of it all! She'll be gloating until Christmas.

We have plans to have friends over for dinner on the 25th, and the joy is that one of the guests will be providing the roast beast, so we're just responsible for hosting and the side dishes, which suits me fine. Christopher and Nancy will well remember the twenty-two pound monstrosity I prepared for our little four-person supper. Tasty.. but after five days, enough is enough.

I'd also like to decorate this year, since we'll actually be around to appreciate it. A live tree and a few lights here and there might be nice. I bought a pretty wreath for the door and it feels quite festive. Now I just have to dig out our stockings and the ornaments we've received over the last several years and finally put them to good use.

Okay, so you're probably wondering about the “Dead Guy in the Restroom” thing. True story. My store is known for being a bit rough around the edges at times. While the majority of our customers are everyday middle-class folk on their way to work, we DO have a fringe community of homeless, pimps, prostitutes and downright crazy people. We know a lot of them by name and most of them are fine, however, the result of our 'open door' policy means that occasionally, we're cleaning up nasty messes in the washroom or swearing about stolen tips.

The pièce de résistance came two nights ago, with two experienced partners finishing the last shift of the night. The place was unusually busy and at some point, it was noted that the men's restroom had been occupied for well over half an hour. Since it takes a lot of running around for two people to serve a full store of customers, it was not investigated until nearly closing – when everything must be cleaned to Starbucks exacting standards.

The door was still locked and there was no response to knocks or requests of concern. Finally, one of the partners used a tool to pop the lock, and when the door was opened, they both froze in shock. The sight that greeted them was described as “a dead guy, face down in a Jackson Pollock of his own shit, piss and vomit”. There was a moment's stunned hesitation before he was checked for signs of life (no breath) and 911 was called. The ambulance arrived very speedily with several EMT's. They left behind a plastic bag full of his soiled clothing and messy footprints out the door. The partners stayed late to clean up and fill out an “Incident Report”. The icing on the cake; at almost the same time the first ambulance was summoned, a second call to 911 was rung for one our regulars, homeless Victor, having what looked like a heart-attack on the patio! The second ambulance was close on the tail of the first.

I haven't heard any news about the Dead Guy and can only hope he was helped. We'll likely never know, since no one knew him (he wasn't a regular) and the paramedics and medical staff won't release information to anyone non-related. Victor, happily, was fine and returned today for his usual small coffee. I think I'll give him a warm scarf for christmas.

After that drama, my recent performance in “Walls” seems so minor. Nonetheless, it was a great success. Only two performances, sadly, but both nights were full, with positive reviews and feedback. I've joined the Lotus Theatre Collective, who produced the show, and plan to help develop a new mask workshop in the spring. Right now, everyone is recovering from the frenzy of the first show and hunkering down for the Christmas frenzy. We've plans to meet and brainstorm in January. More updates then...

Phillip and I have both been very busy; Phil with a good deal of overtime and I with work and theatre and illness. Nothing too serious; a bladder infection, easily treated with antibiotics, and then a nasty cold, thanks to one of the other actors who liked to share. I'll be working the day after Christmas, opening the store (ugh, 4am is going to feel way too early), but we both have a bit of time off before the big day. We plan to rest, relax and enjoy the season. By the way, it's been positively nippy here the last few days, which delights me, since it feels so appropriate and justifies turning on our little gas fireplace for cozy snuggles with the pooch in the evenings.

I hope you are all having an equally happy season. We wish all our loved ones a safe, healthy and joyful season and hope to hear from you soon. Take care,

K & P

Hiatus Endus

There is an old Chinese saying – a curse some say, that goes: “May you live in interesting times.” I have always liked that expression. It speaks volumes, I think, and certainly resonates now.

As most of the world knows, the U.S. has a new president-elect. I confess to being much more interested in the leadership race here than back home, perhaps because – we have to admit – the American president's actions have much broader consequences in the world than our prime minister's.

But I'm not going to talk politics; I don't consider myself to be a politically savvy individual (just occasionally opinionated). I'm just more thoughtful about how we're here in this time and place during such 'interesting times' and only history will tell whether it was a curse or not.

At least one of our neighbours lost her home to the bank. Friends and former co-workers are looking for jobs with flagging optimism, the newspapers quote pundits that predict things as “getting worse before they get better” and even companies such as General Motors are taking drastic measures (pensioners recently had their once-sacred medical coverage slashed) to stave off ruination. The Federal Government is besieged by pleas for bail-outs and rescue plans at every level.

Yet on a personal level, I am very grateful for the soundness of Phillip's employment – Qualcomm has operated and continues to operate without debt and is therefore more secure than most large companies that employ thousands. They are not unaffected of course, and have slowed down hiring, among other measures, but selfishly, I am relieved that we are relatively secure where we are. We have discussed our lifestyle and habits, and perhaps it is because we have always made a point of living within our means that we have never suffered major setbacks. Even when my store closes and I'll join the ranks of the unemployed – hopefully for the short term - we will be alright.

I know there is more to individual situations that we truly see, but the most common criticism I have heard for those who have lost equity is that they were foolish to commit to debts they could not really afford. I am reminded of our first two months here; house-prices were astronomical and rising, banks were offering us over half-a-million in mortgage loans and we were left breathless and boggling at insane frenzy of consumerism. Luckily, we're both cautious people and have learned from at least one 'buy in haste' mistake. We stepped back, took a deep breath, then took our time finding a place that suited our needs. And since neither of us is terribly materialistic, our needs are fairly simple. Only in the last year, with dual income and generous bonuses, did we loosen our purse-strings enough to finally buy a wee car; it's been four years here, after all.

I guess the reason I'm saying all this is because it feels necessary to point out that even amidst the hand-wringing predictions of gloom, and the honest hard times of struggling households, things are still okay. Perspective is everything - that is another favourite expression of mine that I try to apply as often as possible in my life. I believe Obama's brains are his best asset and though no single person can fix this country's problems, he seems to be able to inspire those around him to do their best. One of the things he said in his victory speech was wanting to “bring back the notion of responsibility”. If he shows signs of doing doing that, here in these times, I will remain optimistic.

Peace,

K & P