Hotels are expensive

For the first time ever the internet connection at the hotel was pay as you go! $9.95 for 24 hours! Needless to say, I didn't pay that since I had access to "work" stuff at the Boston office and I'm certain that the expense would be approved. At $199/night I expect that internet access is included but apparently the Westin chain of hotels doesn't share the same opinion. They also charge $25 for the first minute of a long distance call and $15 per minute after that... yeah, those are fair rates (rolleyes). The other issue I ran into while at our Boston office was that blogger is blocked by websense so I wasn't able to post from the office... what a sucky thing to have internet access restricted. I can't remember the last time I experienced that.

Boston was nice... I enjoyed morning walks along the harbour front with the sun coming up and the architecture is neat too... the really old buildings along side the newer office towers... I wish I could have spent more time touring around.

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My work computer did a reboot after installing some patches yesterday so this never got published. I'll see what I can do about putting up some more later but in the event that the day gets hectic I wish everyone a great weekend now.

g.

Headin' off to B-town tomorrow...

I'll try to get some internet time at the hotel but I'm not sure how much free time I'll have.

Have a great week everyone!

g.

11 years ago today...

I was watching Marie walk down the aisle towards me to begin our life together.

Who would've thought that she'd put up with me for this long?

We're gonna have a romantical night after the kids are in bed... a nice BBQ dinner, some candle light... I'm lookin' forward to it.

g.

It's always interesting to see what brings people here...

with the sitemeter software you get to see what the referring URL is that brought someone here. I've had hits from all over the globe... India, Germany, England, all over the U.S. and now I've had a visitor from Turkey. Now, I couldn't help but wonder why someone would be visiting my blog all the way from Turkey so I took a look at the URL that brought them here. It turns out it was a search and there were keywords that obvious appeared in my blog that popped me into the list. What was the search you might be asking? Well, the person searched for "neighbour wife"

Well, I'm not going to rush to judgments but um, what kind of things would they be expecting to find with a search like that? Hmmm.

Moving on.

Suki had quite a scare the other day. I can't imagine how she must have felt waiting to hear back from her friend. Keep her and her friend in your thoughts and prayers please.

WARNING: Camping content ahead

I thought I'd give you a warning since I haven't talked about camping in sooo long... Jim set up his Hennessy hammock the other day and I tried it out... two words:

FREAKIN' AWESOME!

I'll never have an uncomfortable sleep again. It looks fairly easy to set up and man, it's a really neat design. I contacted Hennessy to see if they had any "seconds" or blemished product that would sell at a discount 'cause as much as I liked the product, I didn't think I could swing $200 (Cdn) for one. I wanted to get the model that would handle 300lbs so that I wasn't too close to the weight limit and there was potential for having my pack in with me to keep it dry. I'm not sure if I'll keep the pack in the hammock but the extra weight rating gives me some options. The unit they sold me has been used a couple of nights by a customer who wanted to get a lighter, smaller model. It has a little tree sap on it but I can live with that for the savings of $60.

This past weekend I took the boys out for a bike ride. I actually ended up going out three times; the first with all three (one in the trailer on my bike), the second with the two younger boys (no trailer) and the third trip with my middle son only. The third trip was by far the fastest paced one. I thoroughly enjoyed the day and it was great to spend time with the kids doing something fun. On the first trip we biked down the marina and grabbed a table on the patio out back and watched the boats coming and going. We talked about which ones we would want to have. I'm quite intrigued with the idea of sailing. I've never done it but I'd like to try someday.

GeWilli wants us all to smile. He has me worried that he's losing it... not because of the smile thing, but because he started to write about himself in the third person. Perhaps he's still high on the fact that the World Cup Cyclocross is opening in R.I. :)

Jim and I are going to look for iridium flares on our trip to Algonquin this year. I've never hear of them before but it makes sense that it'd be visible from earth if you were in an area with little to no light pollution.

We're also thinking of doing a video review of the hennessy hammock to put up on our website. We're going to site down and redesign the website too. It's not anything like we wanted to have but it's just a matter of setting the time aside to do it. Neither of us are web developers but there's lots out there to help us out.

I still don't have a replacement window buddy. It turns out the boxes I saw were my previous buddy's and she was still moving stuff out. I did see some guys in the condo painting so I may have a new buddy soon. I hope they're as um, interesting as my previous buddy was... specifically, I hope the buddy is a "her". :)

Well, I gotta get going. Lots to do here at work and the afternoon is quickly vapourising.

Have a great day everyone and help GeWilli out and smile at a stranger on the way home tonight!

g.

My ass is too small

I went for a ride this morning and I came to the conclusion that my ass is too small to support the weight of my body on the bike seat. Since I can't change the size of my ass (and I don't really want to make it bigger), I had better loose some of the extra weight I've allowed to creep back on.

Okay, that sounded real chick-like... "Hey honey, does this bike make my ass look bigger?"

My day started out good and bad... good that I hauled my lazy ass outta bed and went for a fairly intense 12km ride... bad in so far as I put my bike back in the garage, shut the garage door, walked around to the front door of the house and realized that I had exited the house directly into the garage (which was now locked) so the front door was still locked from the night before.

Damn.

I rang the door bell a few times and knocked on the door but no one was stirring in the house so I just sat on the front porch and listened to the neighbourhood waking up. I knew it wouldn't be long before someone in the house woke up. One of my boys finally woke up and came down and very cautiously unlocked the door for me.

The drive in was... well... the drive in. Nothin' exciting to report on there other than that a car had broken down in the middle lane of the highway and they had abandoned it right where it stopped. I assume they'd gone for help but you'd think that they would have tried to get the right lane to let them push the car to the side or something.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about my neighbour's plumbing adventure. I won't name names but one of my neighbours was trying to replace his broken kitchen faucet but he didn't know anything about what he was doin'. Now I'm one to encourage expanding one's knowledge but I also believe that if you find yourself in unknown territory, you should do a little research or ask some questions.

Now before I deliver the punchline to the story you would know that they just finished their basement (and it looks great). Here's what went down:

neighbour (wife) comes running across to our house: "do you know anything about plumbing?"
me: "umm, a little... why?"
neighbour (wife): "well, tried to fix the kitchen tap and now there's water running everywhere!"
me: "oh my gosh!" and I ran across to their house (okay, maybe I said something else but I don't remember exactly what it was but it was prolly more like "HOLY SHIT!")

I ran into the house, back into the kitchen and I see kneeling in front of the kitchen sink with a fountain torrent of water blasting him in the face and he's yelling "IT'S HOT! IT'S HOT!" So I yell back "Did you turn the water main off?" To which he revealed his lack of plumbing 101 by responding "WHAT WATER MAIN? WHERE'S THAT?"

Nice.

So I turned to his wife, and asked "Where's you water metre?"

She replied "I don't know... maybe it's down here" and she took me down to the hot water heater. I said "No, that's not it... where's the thing that you take your water metre readings from for your water bill?" to which she replied "Oh that thing... it's over in the other closet"

I got the water main turned off, ran up and check with him to make sure the water flow had stopped and then went down to survey the damage. It was bad. Water was streaming out of the pot lights in the basement and I was concerned that it might make over to the *very large* plasma screen at the other end of the basement.

I stayed around for a bit helping clean up and then installed a new faucet for them (the wife went to the hardware store while we cleaned up as best we could). I figure they're gonna have to spend $2000-$3000 dollars fixing the damage but that would have jumped by another $3000 if it had made it over to the plasma.

Hey, how do ya measure for proper bike fit? I'll go google it later today but I thought I'd ask since I know a few of you out there are bikers and know this schtuff.

Well, back to work. Have a great day everyone!

g.

The world of blog is a neat one...

I often find myself readin' the blog of some stranger because I've followed link after link starting from the blog of someone I know. That's what happened to me this morning when I stumbled across this: Rocking the suburbs...

Take a read, I'm positive you'll chuckle like I did. Suki has some real funny shit that she writes... like this recounting of her internal conversation she had while out for a bike ride:

all told I spend ONE WHOLE hour (yeah. I still rock the hardest) with this internal dialogue:
self 1: dood. stop being a pussy. go for the hill.
self 2: um...es'cuse me! don't be a dumbass. sore quads make for shitty climbing. you DO remember kaymoor mines, don't you?
self 1: seriously. you're being a pussy.

Read it now... because I said, that's why.


g.

How Exciting!

I can see a moving box in the condo next door! Stay tuned...

Surprise! I'm headin'to Boston...

Well, I got approval for my trip to Boston. I also managed to get my passport ordered and it'll be ready for pick up in time for the trip. I was going to drive down 'cause I didn't have a passport but since I'm able to get it in time, I'm flyin' down.

Travel update

So it seems it's more a cost issue and a difference in the prespective. The Corporate group that "owns" the application that I would go to Boston for thinks that we should find our way down to where the sessions are being held... my boss thinks they should pay for the vendor to do several sessions around the globe. I can see that perspective and it looks like if I do go I may end up with a mark against me if I try to get education dollars for a course later in the year. I don't think that's fair since this is a mandatory tool that I have to use in my job versus education that will broaden my knowledge. Oh well, what can ya do eh?

Maybe the problem is something else... now this is me gettin' all GeWilli introspective-like... perhaps my boss is not happy with my performance/contribution to the team. (he's never indicated that I'm a problem) I gotta think that if I were in his shoes and my employee came to me with this scenario I wouldn't have any issues with sending them unless they weren't contributing enough to the team. I dunno, maybe I'm just bein' too paranoid. Hmm, I should be more confident that this... damn, I need to get a grip. Arrrggg! I'm goin' back to work.

Play by play on the travel request...

Not lookin' good so far... boss is resistant to the idea of travelling so far for 2 days. I don't get it, people do the same trip for one day sessions. I guess it's all riding on how well I made my case at this point... more to come later.

The search for a new window buddy continues...

Well, no one moved in over the weekend so I'm still without a window buddy. I find myself glancing over every-so-often out of habit, lookin' to see if anything interesting is goin' on in the other building. Nothin' yet. Having lost one window buddy I find myself more and more intrigued about the next condo down. It has shutters and sometimes I see a some movement in that unit but I can't see enough to see who it is or what they're doin' 'cause the shutters are tilted enough that I can get the detail I need to make my assessment. Anyway, I think I may go down to the other end my office floor to get a different angle... perhaps I can find out who's behind the shutters.

I've gotta go now... I need to talk to my boss about gettin' approval for a business trip down to Boston at the end of the month. I'll share more details if he approves it.

Have a great day everyone!

g.

It's a sad day today...

I just realized that I've lost my window buddy here at work. Apparently she has decided to move on to the next stage in her life and it doesn't include me. :(

Perhaps a moment of silence to think about all the fun we had... her with her downwards facing dog... me with my nose pressed up against the window of my cubicle...

Seriously though, she's moved out by the looks of things. I guess I can look on the bright side, someone has to move into that condo soon so maybe I'll end up with a new window buddy.

Perhaps today is not so much the end of a (one-sided) relationship as it is more of a era of new hope!

I'm just brewing a cup of coffee, the sun is shining, it's Friday... it's turning into a really nice day. I decided the other week that I was spending too much money buying coffee at Tim Horton's or, even worse, Starbucks. I went out and bought a machine that brews a cup at a time. It only cost $15 so I think the ROI was just over 1 week of 2 coffees a day. Not bad eh? I didn't think I could jump right into the big leagues like GeWilli and have an entire pot to drink over the course of the day. I'll hafta work up to that!

Well, coffee's ready and I'm in need of my fix so I leave it here and say: Have a great weekend everyone!

g.

Fascinating... well, at least I think it is...

Have a read of this:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

If you have never come across this before, it is an excellent illustration of how the human brain understands the written language. While the first and last letter certainly play a critical part in discerning the word, they can not be the only way we decipher a word. Here is an excellent article that looks a bit more in depth at the phenomenon: http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/

If you are interested in creating some of your own jumbled text, Jamie Zawinski has written a perl script here that will convert regular text to scrambled yet still readable text.

I got the stuff above from a cool blog I stumbled across here.

Cool how the brain can work like this eh? The http link above goes into far more detail and debates a little more that it's not just the first and last letters but also the shape of the words and such that allows one to be able to read the jumbled sentence. Still, it's interesting however, like most things I write here, totally not related to my work or my list of tasks for the workday so....

Have a great day everyone!

g.

Good Point

"It wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark."
- Howard Ruff

More Adventures in BBQ

The other night I had a go at smoking the ribs I bought at the same time as I bought the sirloin steak roasts. This time I did a dry rub with homemade chili powder, a little extra cayenne and salt. I started by pulling the membrane off the back of the ribs to make it a better experience to eat. Then I did the rub and, because of the late hour that I got home, I put 'em straight on the BBQ. This time though, instead of mesquite wood I used apple wood for smoke. I figured apple and pork go so well together so apple wood was called for this time. I had temperature issues part way through the smoking process 'cause it started raining and I didn't realize so the BBQ cooled off a little but overall I had it smoking at about 300*F for almost 4 hours. I wanted to get it closer to 250*F but I'll try that next time. I also had too much salt in the rub... in fact I may leave the salt out next time. I would have to say that they were the best ribs I've ever made... no boiling them or anything. I'm quite excited about my new found BBQ techiques since you can't get any good BBQ around my town. I've heard that there's one place in Toronto and another west of Toronto but why drive those distances when I can get fresh, quality meat locally and smoke it myself in my backyard?

Well, back to work now so I'll wish everyone a great day and get back to it.

g.