Vancouver Island Vacation

So, the last month or so we have had a few issues with our car... mostly due to our stupidity in not following our regular service and never having taken it in to a dealer..... after owning it for 3 years. Long story short the car cost $1360 to repair and it wasn't money we had. My father stepped in with the dough and I cancelled the first half of my vacation to work and pay him back. Kate and the kids went on without me to Vancouver Island and my parents home. We had planned to spend 8 days there and house sit while my parents were in Edmonton visiting my brother and his family. I hitched a ride over with my parents on their return Wednesday night and spent the last 3 days with everyone in parksville. It was a good visit and I feel refreshed.

Sebatian, my Father and I went to the Qualicum wine shop where my father has wine made for him. I coaxed a grumpy Sebastian out of the car and in to the 'stinky' wine shop. He had a blast in there... We bottled, corked, labeled and sealed my father's new wine; an Austrailian Shiraz. We stocked our own wine rack over this week as well.
Rigby, Sebastian, my Mother and I went to the parksville beach, dug in the sand and the tide pools. At one point we caught a shrimp in our pail. I can't stand them as food and I tell you, they are not appealling live either. The kids liked it and gave it a shell, some sand and a little crab.

The whole family spent the morning on Saturday at Morningstar Farm visiting the animals, Qualicum cheesfactory, Morningstar Creek Winery and more. The wine was fantastic, we bought bottles of Blueberry and Cranberry wine with an order to my parents to pick up some of the Peach wine in the fall. We also walked away with some super cheeses from the Qualicum Cheese works including a brie and hot n spicy concoction.
We also visited the St Marks fair which is my parents church in Qualicum Beach. Held every year it was a pretty large scale event. We had some mini doughnuts and Sebastian and Rigby both built boats from a craft section.
I painted the living room, living room ceiling, dining room, kids room, office and front door as well as some edging in the hallway prior to going over. It was pretty hectic considering I ALSO swapped the kids room with the office and worked.
Now I am going to sort my records from our office as we are moving them out to the player in the living room. Following this are some pictures from the ferry ride home today.

Them there torches

My project manager brought in the two torches he owns from previous games today so we all did a little photo shoot with them.

From Left to Right....

Athens > Salt Lake City and Vancouver

They make science fun!

I stumbled from reading an article about a Soviet attempt to land on the moon in 1969 and listening to the faded sound of men exploring the galaxy when I ended up at...

Just like my 4 year old they have an answer for everything.

Find out how much daytime is on your birthday or build a mouth! There are quite a few entertaining sections, some fun activities and even the ever popular test sections.

They led me back to the University of Manchester's astronomy sections where there is an interesting article from April 2007 (Just catchin' up on my readin') about Star Wars as seen by the hubble telescope. They have an artist's rendition of how this Red Giant feeding to the White Dwarf star (Which Just exploded!) would look. NowI was impressed; don't get me wrong. But. Something was nagging at me about this image, like I'd seen it before. Maybe I already read this? Nope.

It was on Star Trek.

Remember this episode? Where Wesley Crusher passes out and let loose a horde of super intelligent Nanites? And the Enterprise is sent drifting in to the path of that stellar matter! AND Dr Bob Kelso flat out phaserz the computer core?!?

awesome.

All power to the wolf

There was this post on a friends facebook about the Three Wolf Shirt... It was pathetically awesome! Three wolves in front of the moon on a t-shirt. Now I do think wolf shirts are the most pathetic and god-awful creation in t-shirtery... or T-shitery as it were. This whole page though makes up for it... one of my favorites from the comments (Besides the one that talks about the secret government project to paint the heads of regular eagles white to make the rednecks happy) is this one:

The Power of The Wolf is Yours!, June 10, 2009

By	Norm D. Plume (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

As I slid the shirt over my head, the first thing I noticed was obviously the comfort. They don't make fine cotton products like this in China. "Take that, Chairman Mao", I thought smugly to myself. As I walked out of my bedroom, she looked me up and down, then right in the eyes.

"What is that garbage?"

"Careful, honey," I replied. "That's pure American Wolf Power you're sneering at. The colors never fade, nor does the spirit of Lobo that dwells within me. This shirt proves it."

She shoved the plate of Pop-Tarts in my hand and walked away in a huff. Chalk up another victory for Old Glory and the American Power of Wolf Power.

Go see the site for yourself and enjoy.

The original 3 Wolf Shirt

I'm back baby

(Say it with a 'Bender Bending Rodriguez' twist)

Oh-K after going through a number of incantations, spells, hocus pocus and template sites I have chosen this new look for the Banablog. Comments are welcome on the look and feel as always and I may or may not stick with it depending on how I feel about it in 24hours or so.

I found this picture online the other day and was immediately suprised to see my old dog Brodie on the net. I had one of those feelings where I just knew this was her and was not able to shake it all day until I compared the Loldog to the archive of pictures I have of her. Yes it was her. I have now sent messages to the poster of the item to find out where the picture came from, if Brodie is still around and where she is living now? Or is she.

Strange where the world leads somedays.

emergency template ditch

My template for blogger corrupted and apparently had a lot of ads through out it. Due to some creepy code by the designer. Jerk.

So until I get a new look... enjoy Simple Paper.

Bowling and a BBQ

We had our team event on the weekend. A Kansas city BBQ with bowling to boot!! It was an awesome time.

No Subtitles

I watched LOTR1 in the background of of my desktop while working today but alas as I had windows going across in front of it regularily there were no subtitles to get me through the elvish. It almost made it a better experience as I truly had no idea what was going on at times.

Kate just dropped Sebastian off at the ferry dock with Grandma and Grandpa so that he can go on his first double night sleepover! He's gone and I am spending the day tomorrow at home with Kate and Rigby to get some work done on the house and other.

I'm looking forward to spending time alone with Rigby and learning a few things about her which have gone otherwise unseen or unknown. The small amount of actual alone time we have had with Rigby is staggeringly small and now we get a 48 hour window to try and change our attitudes. This isn't to say we've been doing everything wrong or anything like that. It's more an admittance that we have not been doing everything right. :)

Different Topic:

Our downstairs neighbour has been a long term pain in the ass and I can't stand him in so many ways. I want him kicked out and moved to somewhere else so that I can have a quality of life for my family that goes outside of beer, rap and noise. On the other hand I see him wasting his daughter's young life and not giving her the things she so desperately needs to develop and thrive, most of all sleep. I hear now about her mom over napping her (up to 7 hours) just to spite daddy. They are "divorced" and are classically using their girl as a go between for their anger and hatred of one another. It's pathetic. Recently mom (possibly after drinking) got in to an accident that totalled her car but luckily injured no one.

Kate has suggestted to his (Neighbour) current girlfriend that he petitions for the full time care of the girl and that we would then provide the daytime care for her. This would of course involve the complete compliance of him (I hope) to not be constantly drinking, cranking up the music and generally being a complete ass. I don't know where that would go from there.

On yet another hand.... I have to say as much as I want to help this guy out and more so his daughter I really feel he has had enough chances..... but where does that match me and my life? Where did I get all my chances and what if someone drew the line a long time ago?

So? I've already asked my landlord to consider these options as there is the present of what has happened. I guess I'll write about it when something happens.

Hot n Cold extreme

SWING SET!!

We got Sebastian and Rigby a Swing Set for free off craiglist! I'm super stoked.

When I was a kid we had these awesome big wooden blocks in the backyard that stacked up and you could climb around inside them and on top etc. They were the best imagination toy ever. Then we got the swingset and it was also in the range of wicked cool.

I love the basics in play and having these things just makes me feel connected to the play that the kids are having.

That story is sizzlin'

Totally recommend (if you have kids under say......8) that you check out Yo Gabba Gabba. It's intense, awesome and if you yourself were a party kid in your teen/early twenties then Dj Lance and the beats will totally set it off for you. Also when they do they daily beat from Biz... I mean come on! learning beatboxing while dancing and having fun with BIZ MARKIE!! COME ON Plus the Shins and more people than you can shake a frikkin stick at that totally have rocked our world.

My favorite part of the show thus far was when super martian robot girl saved the party from being a dud by zapping up an 80's keytar band that busted out some Miami bass beats.

This links to an outside article but it's the only place I could find a clip of the awesomeness.

That's my Nick Jr plug o the day.

And the boy rides a scooter

We got Sebastian a Vespa LX50 the other day. You may be questioning why we got our four year old son a scooter....

Well it's a 12V version that goes a whopping 5mph in high gear and 2.5mph in the lower. He rode it for about an hour and a half yesterday and absolutely loved it to death!

He looks awesome riding this thing and I am super happy about it all, even if it means less exercise somedays.
Did I mention it has training wheels?

I h@te iTunes somedays

I moved my entire library from my old (3+ years) Lacie Hard Drive to the new Seagate Free Agent Pro 750GB drive I bought yesterday and in doing so was greeted with iTunes choking on the move. I had to readd all of my items to iTunes, create a new library and then it figured since that was all new and dandy that it should reformat all our iPhones and iPods to match! I lost all my applications and now, even though I went through the iStore last night and replaced things I use (and even added a few new ones) my iPhone somehow feels foreign now.... just not the same.

It's an odd feeling, I am out of sorts from it and finding that the whole change over has left me feeling irritable and annoyed with my phone. Is that odd? That a device that is a tool for my day to day can have the same affect on my morning as... say.... not sleeping or waking up in a sea of fire.

I've read about iPhone addiction and people who can't live without their unit for not even a day. I'm not one of those people, I leave my phone on my desk all the time and leave for hours, I've left my phone at home a number of times when going out or to work and somedays I find I don't even know where it is. But now I have to question what type of involvement I have with this device... what is it about this change that has left me feeling so odd.

I think the answer is the mild OCD I have and the change to the design of my phone as set off this annoyance with the lack of control over the change. This would make the most sense considering I just spent 15 minutes moving the blue and grey icons around on my main screen to ensure that the distribution of colour and icon look made a symetrical pattern that was bordered by the brown icons. Maybe I'm just fucking crazy.

After posting this picture in I had to go back and move the weather icon next to the im+ icon and the safari icon up next to app store because the yellow in the weather needed to be next to the im icon. I also looked to see if I had any other blue icons so that I could move the mail app up and replace the ipod icon then add a new blue in place of settings..... yeah I am crazy.

Seattle, Banking and backyards

I drove down to Seattle the other day to pick up some friends from the airport. They just returned from a huge world trip and were gone for 8 months. It was a nice drive, sunny and traffic was subdued to a dull roar.

It occurred to me while driving through Blaine, WA that I had only been in the states for about 2 minutes and I was only 5-6 KM from the border but I feared the country I was now in. The thought of America makes me as uncomfortable as a Seth Rogen movie. I don't know how I feel about this re: relations with Americans et all but I do know that I have very little interest in visiting the southern neighbours. When I was at the airport it felt even more uncomfortable, parents treating their kids like dogs, the way people treated one another, how a guy in a turban freaked out a whole family of mid-west looking folks and the woman at Starbucks who tried to convince me that getting the smaller size coffee I wanted would only leave me coming back as 'folks need more than a grande y'know and a supersized McDonalds drink is barely enough'.

I know that everyone in a country is not the same and I know that there are people in Canada who are far worse than the people I have referenced thus far, but my stereotype of the USA leaves me looking around and seeing them all come true and it just makes me.... well.... not wanting to be there.

That said the drive over the bridge on the I5 as the sun was shining directly on to downtown Seattle was really really beautiful, during the time I spent in Seattle a few years ago for a course at the Mac Store I got over these fears and preconceptions quickly and enjoyed my time. I guess I need to shake the mental view of America as such a police state where people all tote guns about and the smallest thing will spark an injust act. (yes I know that my comments have ticked you off.)

The drive back was nice ( I missed you guys ) and ( to my surprise ) we were over the border in less than 10 minutes and back in to Canada. Drove home and dropped them off and went home for some sweet sweet sleep.

Backtracking.... before I went to Seattle I stopped off at the Citi Financial where I was going to refinance my loan and maybe get a little Doh-Ray-Mi for other bills n such. Well after going through all my information I was wondering why the loan officer and underwriter had been talking out of the office for the last 30 minutes... The underwriter came in and let me know I had qualified for my new loan and that I could sign the papers and be on my way....but.

But?

But. I'm legally obliged to tell you ( he says ) that due to an error on our part you have been paying an interest rate of 2.8% for the last 3 years instead of the predetermined 25.7%.

Say Whaaaaat?

And due to new banking regulations within our structure we can not claw back the amounts.

Fuckin sweet dude.

So now if you sign the new loan the interest rate will be 26.5% and you'll go back on to a $300 payment etc etc etc

Thanks guys.... I'll talk to you later. ( psst... I didn't sign the new papers because I'm not a moron )

So now the payments I had been making that were supposed to be only interest over the last 3 years have paid down over %60 of my loan principal and we owe very little on it. For the first time ( in a long time ) the bank has helped me and I like it! The reason for the screwup? Well the last two digits of my phone number are.... 28 and the interest field follows the phone field.

Lastly - Backyards....

I have spent a good amount of time cleaning up our new property and getting the area cleared. This guy rents the garage at my house to build his El Camino and other cars in. Apparently he had some cars parked in the pad out back at one point and is super happy I have cleared all the trees out and made space so he can park more cars there now. Yeah...

Listen, I didn't clean out this whole area so that you could put more obstacles and worry items in it for me. I cleaned it out so that the dangers that WERE there are now gone and my kids can play in the backyard. So the push to build the fence across the back yard and create a separate parking pad is now ON. I want to segregate out the cars from the kids and make my life somewhat more easy and calm.

So there's the news that's new and improved.

/end

So yummy in my tummy, so yummy, so yummy

This I found last night and tried it out. It is probably the best dessert I have made in a long long time.

Crumble:
1 cup flour
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 cup melted butter or margarine

Fruit:
2 cups diced rhubarb

• Make sure you soak the Rhubarb in cold water for 30 minutes first and remove the outer coating to negate the stringiness
  

2 cups sliced apples

Thick n Gooey Centre:
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup water
2 Tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp vanilla

Mix together flour, oats, brown sugar, spices, and melted butter.
Press half of the mixture into the bottom of a 9" square baking pan.
Arrange the rhubarb and apples evenly on top.

Cook the white sugar, water, cornstarch and vanilla until thick - This should be done slowly over about 30-45minutes while you slowly raise the heat. I would not recommend going much over medium in your heat.

Pour over the rhubarb and apples trying to evenly and completely coat them

Sprinkle the remaining oatmeal mixture on top.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45mins - 1 hour.

Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream.

So Sick

Ugh... spent the day feeling like real crap after a couple of weeks of feeling like minor crap.

Hackintosh

I'm oh so happy. I have managed through a few days of work (about 6 hours in total) to get OSX86 10.5.6 running on my Dell X300 laptop. While a little slow due to the X300 being from 2005 and only an intel core single 1.2Ghz Pentium M with 640Mb ram it's still pretty damn good.

I'm super stoked to have a 'mac laptop' again as I really miss the simplicity with which I used to acomplish my tasks at home. I like my ACER Windows based laptop from work but I also feel restricted on it's use as OBVIOUSLY it's my works laptop.

The installation of OSX86 was pretty straight forward and you gotta give some serious props to the folks who have put their time and effort in to making it that way. The forums of infinitemac.com and others really help if you plan on doing this project yourself. I'm super interested in trying it out on other PC's like the IBM T60 core 2 duo.

The project manager of technology has a few IBMs and has been eyeing the project for a while, I showed him the X300 and now he wants me to work with him getting one or more of his units running. lol. Gladly I will do it as he got me the X300 as a write off from work.

This all came after struggling (again) with Ubuntu. I am just a GUI kind of guy and I like the functionallity of this OSX86 over the Ubuntu system for what I do. I spent maybe 14-18 hours working on getting my wireless card working on Ubuntu 9 where the brunt of my time on OSX86 was adding a flag to my com.apple.bootloader.plist file - which wasn't that much time. I do have to say that Ubuntu 9 lives up to the reviews and is an amazing piece of software and runs very very well with many great applications and features. Just - you need to be more of a jump in tech guy who loves command lines, wrappers and all the other things that come along with a pure linux system I guess.

For now tho - WOOT~! HACKINTOSH.

Warm it up Chris

Here's all the news that's news and new and improved.....

We've moved~! I took a lot to get the job done, we packed and were ready on time, cleaned and painted on time and on the truck and over within budget. Then, when the guy came home an hour late to the new house he opened the door and we found he had moved.... his TV. And only his TV.

I'm serious here, there was all the stuff this guy owns - exactly where it was 3 weeks ago when we viewed the place - dirt and pots'n'pans in the same places. So he starts looking for some boxes. We leave, sleep on the floor at the old house and then head back for 11am Sunday when - he says - he'll be completely moved out as he's going to go all night. So while I ring the bell, call and bang on the door to WAKE HIM UP!! I'm thinking this is going to be a total cluster fuck, again.

He gets up, starts packing his shit - yup, the guy dosed and hit the hay for an hours nap on Saturday night and I woke him up on Sunday. He was finally out by 6pm on Sunday, well he was out on the deck.... all his stuff was on the deck and he moved till about 2am on Monday morning. Then it took till today, 27 days later, to get the last of it.

So we got in to the house and started cleaning, and getting our stuff out. Cleaning and cleaning and cleaning and cleaning and then we had to gut and reno the entire bathroom. So the bathroom reno goes on for about 4 days with the contractor not showing up for two, on the last day I watch him put together the vanity we've picked out from IKEA - y'know, the place that gives you all the parts, pieces, pre drills and gives you instructions.... well I watch him whip out the drill and drill bit and start putting in holes to "make the damn thing fit together".

Anyway, we are now doing the walls and backsplash ourselves, but have a great bathroom in the make.
We went and did our taxes with H&R block last saturday and got a load back, so I went out and bought a scooter. It's a great ride, good power and colour. Nice options including an alarm, remote starter, radio and mp3 player hookup. It's great. So Caio, when you get back to this country we'll have to hook up and form a scooter gang.

Tomorrow is Sebastian's fourth birthday party, today is his birthday. We have a bug themed party coming and lots of guests around for the day. It's going to be a great time and a fun birthday for the kids.

Rigby is the cutest thing ever, and we just put her in to her own single bed. No more crib! So she's feeling happy and free and Sebastian is still king of the room up in his loft.

Kate is cleaning her office up from all the construction junk and various weirdness that got shoved in her room during it. It's nice that we have the space for just adults and all our things. It's mostly for Kate as I have nothing in it and even sacrificed my desk for the coolest furniture arrangement but it's still super awesome in there.

Well, that's what is happening round here - other than work, which is just work now that the sport events are over for the year.

Till next time.

Why not Telus?

Well I spent a lot of time battling SLA's at EA. The Service License Agreement where you have a certain amount of time to respond to and to resolve tickets. Those times are generally reasonable but the are also restraining. You don't have the time to find correct long term solutions just band aid fixes and this means repeat failures and poor customer service.

While EA pushed it's customer care down your throat while telling you that you had 1 hour or so to fix an issue Telus gives you 15 - 30 minutes on the phone. That doesn't fly with me. I HATE Telus customer service, it's the reason I have not had a phone for some 3 years now and I could not become a part of that.

I'm not shying away from deadlines or responsibility in fact I've taken on more responsibility than I have ever had before at VanOC, it's just that I want to do my best, and there's no way to do that when you are pressured to maintain your Metrics.

Update: Dateline Vancouver 2009

Christmas was an interesting time.

We went to my parents place on the island after 2 aborted attempts and a Christmas eve dinner. So much snow we were not able to get the car on to the road and Grumpy dad and the girls trekked for almost 2 hours to get to our house with Turkey. After leaving his car in an intersection somewhere Grumps grabbed the snow tired station wagon of Nancy and headed over. That dinner was wonderful and the evening couldn't have gone better.

We got over to my parents place on Christmas day and spent the time eating, drinking and playing with toys. Kate and Rigby went home early and Sebastian and I stayed until the weekend.

I started in again with VanOC/ACER when I came home and the job (although boring) has been going quite well. I applied with another contract company for a position with Telus and eventually was offered the job. However, ACER decided they wanted me here at VanOC and made an offer as well. This went back and forth for a few days and although I settled on both companies at different times I finally decided to stick with ACER.

It meant that I got a substantial increase in pay (nearly double) and a challenging job where I can spend time getting certifications. They are a pre-requirement for the position so I am on the learning train now.

We are now looking at moving in to a house in the Burnaby/New West area or somewhere similar. The available options to us now are a bit better and we feel that we can get some space while keeping our wonderful home.... homey.

So now that the stress and crazy has settled a little we can enjoy our time and this job while waiting for the workload to increase (I'm told 8 fold) here at VanOC.

Woo!

End of Message.