My training has started

So I was a bad boy yesterday and bought myself this: Logitech Formula Force GP Steering Wheel.
Its awesome! Right now I am playing Colin McRae 2005 with it (its a rally racing game) and its like a whole new experience. The force feedback really adds to it. For instance, when I am racing in Sweden on the snow, when I have my left wheels in the snow bank, it pulls to the left, just like in a real car. Definitely the best computer peripheral I have bought this year.

Opposite ends of the scale

Anne is worked 12 hours yesterday and is working 8 today. So what this means for me is that I have to take Maya to the babysitters on the way to work.
The night before last night Maya decided she was going to have none of this. Monday night she didnt' go to sleep until 1:30am, then when Anne went to leave at 7am she woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep and cried....and cried... and cried. She didn't cry while I carried her to Kim's but cried when I got there and apparently cried most of the day. When I picked her up she was pretty happy until Anne go home and then was mostly sad. You would think that due to the lack of sleep she would go to bed early and sleep soundly, but she didnt' go to sleep until midnight last night.
However, this morning although she did initially wake up when Anne left, she went back to sleep and stayed that way. I was able to get dresses, eat breakfast and get all her stuff together in peace! I even got her all bundled up and in the sling and to Kim's without her waking.

Note: I know these posts are probably very boring for everybody. But I am sure I will look at them with interest years from now.

What NOT to get me for Christmas

I stole this off of some other site... Some are sort of techy so understand but its funny.

Worst Gifts for Geeks

11. Coupon for 1 Year of Free Computer Service
10. Age of Office Assistants video game
9. Box of floppies
8. Swiss Army Spork
7. "Sodium + Glass of Water" Gift Set
6. A copy of Windows 3.x For Dummies
5. ie51setup.exe
4. Their very own Bonzi Buddy
3. Year's supply of Diet Caffeine-free Mountain Dew
2. AOL membership
1. "Greedo Shot First" T-shirt

I guess I might actually want the "Greedo Shot First" shirt as its pretty funny to me.

A new link

I have replaced my friend Nathan's blog link with a link to my sister Meghans blog, A Warm Gun. Nate hasn't updated past his first 2 posts so he is getting the boot.
Meghan is a psychology major at the University of Waterloo and in her fifth year I think. She does quite well and that's about all I know about what she does there.
She is also a major Bare Naked Ladies nut and has been to more than a few concerts. Apparently the band members even recognize her by site now. Anne and I think its only a matter of time before she is on stage with them... Even if it is just once.
Meaghan also loves hockey and I think she has got signatures from and met all the major Leaf players at one point or another.

And it was THIS big!

Because I wasn't going to hockey in Paisley last night and to let Anne have a good sleep, Maya and I went to my parents house to visit my Mom yesterday afternoon. Maya was a very happy character and was having a blast.
This gave me the oportunity to play gamecube for a couple of hours (I still rock at Soul Calibur 2).
My brother when outside and started make a snowball. The snow was perfect for rolling and soon enough it got too big for him to roll on his own. So I went out to help and shortly the ball was about the same height as me. To make it even bigger we rolled it down a hill expecting it to break. It didn't, it just got bigger and broke through a fence but the wire on the fence did slice it in half.
So we started another one which also very quickly was as big as us, and needed to roll it downhill. We rolled it down the side lawn him hoping for it to stop at an apple tree by side of the rode. Unfortunatly it went off to the side and crashed into the pine forest there. It didnt' take out any trees which would have been very cool to see, only a couple of large branches. So after a few snowball fights and hand-to-hand combat (John is a black belt in karate and fairly high up in Jui-Jitsu and so is quite a challenge, I had never actually been tossed over someones head before yesterday) we started a third snowball with the intention of a snowman on the front lawn. It made it to the corner of the lawn intact and without major damage to anything, although it did threaten to crush John or I a couple of times. So after a couple of smaller snowballs on it we had a very large snowman for all to see. We took a couple of pictures with my Mom's camera so we will have to wait of pics until later.
My arms are very sore today.

So very tired....

So Anne worked nights all weekend for the first time since we had Maya. Some of the fun I had the first night she worked can be found here.
Maya was quite bad the first night. She went to sleep at about 10:30 but woke up when I went to bed at 1:30 and it took about 30 minutes to get her back to sleep. Then she woke up at 3:30 am and cried for about half and hour and then decide she wanted to be awake. It was 5am before she got back to sleep again. She woke up briefly about 3 times before Anne (and more importantly, her breasts) was home at 8am. We sleep until about 10am and them Maya decided to wake up fully and start to play. So I dragged myself up and got Maya and I breakfast and then went to Owen Sound to do some shopping.
She was better Sunday and Monday nights, as she only woke up every 2 or so hours for a few minutes at a time. But I think that's becase I gave her Tylenol before bed. She also won't go back to sleep unless I let her sleep on my chest and I can only move her once she is sleeping deeply. Needless to say I spend most of the night asleep with her on my chest.
Overall I think she is getting better and after a couple of more weekends of nights she will be fine.

Apparently people actually fall for those things.

You know those ads you see on the internet all the time says things like "your IP is being broadcast" and "You computer has been scanned and is running too slow" and things of that nature.
Well today I was having coffee with one of the Vice Presidents in the hospital and he mentioned how he had gotten a warning that he had spyware on his computer. My mind sees the "You computer is infected with Spyware" fake windows warning message ad that you see on some sites, so I laugh and say "Haha, ya thats such a scam and bad advertising".
HE says "Well I downloaded the Spyware scanning it linked me to and it found spyware on my computer".
I am aghast at this point and just staring at him. I had never met anyone who actually fell for that before.
He continued "And after it scanned it said it couldn't remove it unless I bought it, so I did"
My jaw literally dropped. If he fell for it, how many other people have? My faith in humanity remains very low.
So I'm like, "well as long as you are happy with your purchase I guess. I just always assume those ads where scams", and smiled weakly. I did mention about AdAware and how it was free, but he seemed pretty happy with his spyware scanner that almost certainly is spyware itself. But I guess people can do what they want with their computers and pay me later to fix them :) .

A hard nights sleep

So on Monday night Anne worked her first night shift since Maya was born. The reason this is a big deal is that Maya sleeps in the bed with us and is breastfed during the night. So you can see that not having Anne in the bed when she expects a nipple in her mouth might pose a problem (and possibly a night time surprise for me).
I booked Tuesday off.
The night didn't actually go too bad, it could have been better but could have been much worse. She went to sleep at about 11:30pm for me and didn't' wake up until 1:37am when I got into bed (despite the great pains I went to not wake her). The hysterics only lasted about half-an-hour and she fell asleep again. This time she slept until about 6am which was better than I thought she would do. After that it was just a few minutes at a time to get her back to sleep. She would only fall asleep on top of my chest so I wasn't terribly comfortable but it was a small price to pay really.
Anne also got home from work late (8:30am rather than the usually 7:40ish) which didn't really help but we did get about 1 hour of sleep after that.
When Maya woke up (her happy "its time to get up" wake up) I got up and fed her and we when shopping in Owen Sound while Anne got some sleep.
Unfortuntely it was only one night shift so Maya really didn't' have the opportunity to get used to Anne not being there. She has a weekend coming up soon where works 3 nights in a row which should be easier by the third night as (hopefully) Maya will be a bit more used to it then.
We will see I guess.

Rally of the Tall Pines 2004

Another year, another great rally.
Ian and I went to Bancroft for the rally last Saturday and had a great time. It would have been nice to have more open class cars and have less of the ones that were there to go out in the first half of the day, but thats what makes rallying interesting I guess.
This year we had a different spectating area than last year as the bridge that they usually go over was out last year and redone over the summer. We had a good viewing area that had the cars coming toward us at about 120km/h turning a hard right (their right) then going up about a 500m straight into a hard left. They did that twice and came from the other direction on the third pass. This was over about a 6 hour period.
They then did 2 passes at night at a different location. I think watching the cars a night is the best as they seem to be moving faster and the huge lights on them do add an extra bit of show. There were no mishapsthis year but there were some close calls.
The weather of the day was pretty cooperative except for some rain for a couple hours in the afternoon. We were a little more prepared for it this year though and fell warm.
Overall it was a success and we had a great time. Hopefully next year we can get a few more people to go. We are probably going to go to one more rally in New York in the fall next year as well.

Half Life 2

The biggest PC game of the year, Half Life 2, came out 3AM EST on Tuesday. I had purchased the game via the STEAM network offered by the company that made the game, Valve.
So far the game is definitely one the best PC games I have every played. Its extremely fun, immersive, and graphically stunning. If you want to play it you need a half-decent computer though.

Hockey Afternoon in Rural Ontario

Tomorrow I have my first hockey tournament of the winter. Its just four teams including us (a couple that were droped out earlier) so we are just going to play 3 games and the best team wins. Then we have our regular saturday night game after that. It should be lots of fun.
I am still really pumped about next weekend though. 58 cars are registered for the rally and all the top Canadian drivers are there.

BRAP brap bang BANG VVVRROOOOMMMM

So on the 20th is Rally of the Tall Pines.
This is just an open invitation to anyone that might like to join Ian and I (and Chris?) on a trip to Bancroft. Yes it will be cold and yes there are long waits for the cars, but its VERY much worth it.
This year we will have a video camera as well as my digital camera so there will be lots of clips and pics afterwards.

And the Results are in!

And I was worryed about who would win the election! Thank goodness the good guys won!

Those damn Decepticons are gonna get it good now!

She's too much like her parents...

For the last week or so, Maya has not been tired enough to go to bed until after midnight. She hasn't been having extra naps or getting up particualrly late or anything, but she just doesn't seem tired late at night.
When you try and put her to bed she just sits up and wants to play and is very happy. Its not really that big of a deal but it means that Anne and I really get no alone time which can be rather frustating and makes us snarky.

Hopefully she can get back on track this weekend?

Seriously, it was THAT bad.

So I was working on a problem at someone's desk today and they were away today. This particular person has chronic bad breath. REALLY bad breath.
I had to use their phone and the smell of on the phone was so bad that I could barely hold it close enough to my mouth to use it. I am dead serious too.

Day off

Since the month I took off was parental leave and not vacation, I actually still have 2 and a half weeks I need to take off before the end of the year. I took today off but it doesn't count either as I am just using extra time I have built up with after-hours work. I am very glad to have it off as work has been crazy lately and its nice to be able to be at home and hang out with Maya.
I also have been doing a ton of computer work for people at home. I have had 2 new computers to build and install as well as 3 or 4 one to repair on the go.
Add that up with my purchase of the Half-life 2: Silver package with has got me Counter Strike: Source until HL2 is released and I haven't had a lot of time for stuff.

Heh, right now Maya is dancing to the music I am listening to, its really cute.

The end of an era...

So this week Anne and I got rid of our TV.
We used to have a crappy one but when my brother went into the army we borrowed his and gave away our old one (which we got for free). But since my brother quit the army he wanted his back, so now we don't have a TV anymore.
We are perfectly okay with this as we don't really watch any TV anyway and all the shows we do follow we download and watch on the computer anyway. So here is the plan.
When Anne goes back to work we are going to get a new 22" monitor (from here) to facilitate the computer watching (this will have a nice side affect on my gaming). And in a few years, we are going to get one of the HDTV's that you can hang on the wall.
We are both pleased with this arrangement and it does tidy up the living room a bit. One side affect may be that I will have to build a second computer for Anne so she can watch her shows while I do something else. But we will see I guess.

Julie is Cool

This is my friend Julies blog. She is really cool and practices attachment parenting and has four kids and two of those are twins and she is really thrifty and has a hairless cat that I covet and cloth diapers and is half way crunchy like me and I really like her and wished she lived in Hanover. Sometimes I stalk her to see what she says on MDC but that's ok cause she isn't supposed to know about that but I let it slip all the time- opps.

Computer Upgrade

One thing is new that I forgot. On friday I upgraded by system to an Asus K8N-E Deluxe Motherboard and an Athlon64 3000+ chip. Its not really a great speed upgrade to what I had but it will overclock well. To assist with that I have this Thermalright XP-120 heatsink coming this week and I need new RAM. The heatsink is my price for a computer I am building someone and the RAM I will have to swing a deal somehow with Nathan or something.
I am pretty pleased with the new hardware but I did have to reinstall Windows from scratch to get it to work. Its going to take a bit of work as well to figure out how well its going to OC too. But thats more than half the fun to me :) (yes I am a huge nerd thank you)
The upgrades I have planned (depending on how much comptuer work I do for people) are a new 22" monitor, 2 SATA HD's (in RAID 0), and a new Videocard (ATI Radeon whatever-is-the-newest).
Our current system specs are:

• Athlon64 3000+ (2.0 Ghz)
• Asus k8N-E Deluxe
• Radeon 9700 Pro
• 240 GB Total Hard drive space (80% full, its the Anime and 6 Feet Under downloads!)
• 1 GB Ram
• Audigy 2
  

Nothing really new going on right now. It looks like the fall has arrived.
I played hockey last night again and it was fun. Some cousins and may sister were playing too, and surprisingly well.
I picked up Anne at the airport Wednesday night last week which was uneventful. I did miss them both a lot while they were gone, Maya took a couple of minutes to relize who I was I think.
Other than that there really is nothing really fun or interesting to report...

When the cat's away....

So Anne isn't back until Wednesday and I have been home alone all week. I think I have been pretty productive and I am pretty much accomplishing what I wanted to. It is a lot easier to do stuff when Maya isn't crawling around trying to put everything in her mouth...
The Xbox playing has been quite productive as well. Ninja Gaiden is being quite stubborn and isn't letting me past chapter five (the damn brown ninjas!!) but Rallisport 2 and Burnout 3 just can't contain my driving talent. I think I like Rallisport more as Burnout just seems to get boring too quickly.
Anne in the meantime is looking forward to the remains of Hurricane Jeanne to go through where she is at in North Carolina. IT probably won't be much more than a big storm by that point, but Anne is all about the natural destruction and mayhem. I don't think that girl will be truly happy in life until we have a home destroyed by a tornado. :)

He shoots, he scores!

I played my first hockey game of the season last night, which was a blast. I wasn't sure how I would do as it was the first real test of my knee that I twisted earlier this summer but my knee felt good and strong and is just a little more sore than usual today so I think its pretty much recovered.
The game was just Sunday night pick-up in paisley but the turnout was good and the pace was fast. I scored a couple of goals and felt like I was playing pretty well.
Hurray for hockey season!
Church league starts in a couple of weeks as well and I am really looking forward to that as its a little more competitive and a little rougher. I think the team we have will do well too, we didn't fare so well last year.

Gypsy Dad!

Today my Dad is heading with a group from our church on a missions trip to Romania. They are helping build a commnunity center in some remote town. This should be quite the experience for him as he hasn't done anything like this before. My mom went last year I think, but she was doing more mission type stuff and not construction. It should be interesting to see what my Dad think of the whole thing as its quite outside of stuff he has done before!
So pray for safty and that everything goes well!

So very clean..

Today we had some local carpet cleaners in to do are main living carpet and stairs. They both look so white now! You really have no idea how much mashed food, poop, pee, drinks, and dirt is ground into carpets on a daily basis until you see how clean they could be if you didn't use them!

Airport

I drove Anne to the airport last night to catch a flight to Raleigh, North Carolina to visit her sister for a week.The drive was pretty uneventful.
We met her friend Rebekah there who had arrived on a flight from Winnipeg and whom I was giving a ride home.
Maya really like the airport and apparently really liked the airplane ride as well. She crawled all over the place and was a very happy little girl.

the drive home was just as uneventful, Rebekah and I just chatted about life and got home in a couple of hours. I did stop at my friend Ian's to say hi and grab a recording of last weekends rally in Great Britain. He hadn't acually record (no tape) but he wasn't out of the way anyway.

I did manage to snag Burnout 3, Ninja Gaiden, and Rallisport 2 at the local Jumbo video in town on the way through so that was good. Those are pretty much all I plan on playing while Anne is gone.

So pretty much a very boring post.

Happy belated Birthday!

So yesterday was my 27th birthday. It was fairly uneventful and also my first as a father.
The day started off me calling in sick to work, this was becasue I was actually sick and stayed in bed until about noon. I read a good book for a good majority of the afternoon and played Richard Burns Rally for a while as well. it was fairly quiet aroun the house as Maya was over at Kim's while Anne spend most of the day working on making Salsa.
My parents came over for dinner and we went to Frankies for supper.We plesantly supprised at how good the meal was and how filling. Kim also brought me a homemade cheese cake which is very delicious.
My Dad got me a new helmet for hockey which will be great as mine was getting to be very irritating. And its good as hockey may start as soon as this weekend for me. I just hope my knee can start to handle sports. We will see I guess.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who dropped by and for the cards and everything!

Present #1

Looks like, as far as presents go, this is shaping up to be the best birthday ever! Earlier this week Anne gave me the choice between a new pair of skates, a new audio deck for the Rav, or tickets to a Leaf game. I choose the the audio deck. Here is what I bought myself :

I got the Alpine CDA-9826, which is the model right below this one and differs by not having a remote and only one pre-out, but feature and quality-wise is exactly the same. It soooo much better than the one that came with our RAV; even Anne noticed an immediate difference in the quality of the sound. An added bonus is that we get in way more radio stations too, I had no idea so many were available in this area. It's XM ready as well which is something that I would like to get at some point in the future as well. It also has a feature called MediaXpander which cleans up Radio and MP3s and fills in missing sound to bring it up to CD-like quality. So I am VERY pleased with this purchase. Did I mention how much I love my wife :)
Also, this afternoon I managed to install it all by myself which I didn't know I could do. It really is amazing how my computer skills, in this case all the wiring stuff I do, run into so many other areas of life.

Toronto and back again

So last night, for my birthday, my friend Nathan and I went to Toronto for an evening out. It was his treat for me as a present.We had 3 main things planned, and none of them ended up working out.
We first headed to Markham to visit Canada Computers and buy me a new Athlon 64 3000+ and an Asus A8N-E Deluxe motherboard combo, as it was payment for some computer work I had done for his business. They were sold out. No biggie, as we will order them online instead.
So after getting some noodles and other asian food in the area we headed over to play some laser tag. Unfortunately there was no one else playing, at all, and one-on-one is zero fun. So we played some arcade games and foosball and air hockey while waiting for some more people to show up. No one did so we left and decided to go the movies.
It's only 11:30 by this point so we figure Colossus at Hwy 400 and 7 will have lots of late shows. Nope, the don't have any movies playing on a Friday night after 10:30, which totally blows me away. So we drove home.
Granted I did enjoy talking with one of my best friends during the drive a great deal and we did have some fun but man 0 for 3 is pretty bad for a night out. Oh well, next time I guess.

Slow Down!! *bling-bling*

So yesterday I am driving home from work; one of the streets I often take one the way home goes between the Community Centre and the Casino. The speed limit on the street is 50km which is generally what I go at as there are usually a lot of people around. This is what I as doing as I was going past the casino and up ahead I see an old man (75ish maybe) screaming (spittle and everything), "SLOW DOWN SLOW DOWN" and waving his arms up an down at me. Because I was doing nothing wrong and was kind of amused I stopped sudden in front up him and rolled down the passenger window to talk to him. I think this really surprised him.
Before I can even get a word out he's saying "you are going WAY to fast, this is a casino, blah blah blah." I said calmly with a smirk, "Sir, the posting speed limit on this street is 50km/h which is how fast I was going". While we are talking there cars going around me that are clearly going fast than I was and I can see the old man irritably watching them.
Basically he thought I should be going 5-10km/h and I was rude. I told him perhaps he was overreacting and maybe should concentrate his efforts in getting a crosswalk put in if he was that concerned. He didn't really listen though and lost his patience with me and walked away.
I felt bad for feeling so amused by the situation but I clearly didn't do anything wrong and other casino goers walking by were clearly amused by the goings on as well.

My mouth is bigger then yours, SEE

Rebekah-29 weeks into motherhood

These are the fruit of my four potato plants.

I LOVE PICKLES

WOW I'm impressed with myself, posting a picture indepedendly of Luke. At one time I was quite tech savvy but once Luke and I got married I just let him figure out stuff and I made dinner.
This is Abbi Martin on the left and Maya on the right. My boobs aren't usually lopsided it is just the way my leg is. They are that white.
Using Both At The SAME TIME

Well THAT was embarrassing...

On our phone systems here you dial "9" to get out and then the number. To get a long distance number you dial 9,123-345-2342. Well when you couple this with the arcaic phones that we are stuck with it makes double number presses very common. So this morning I dialed "9" then 1, Oops, it double pressed so I hung up and called the number properly.
Well way to go Luke you just dialled 911. The cops were here in 30 seconds and I had no idea that I had done that.
And the funny thing is that I had just had a conversation with the switchboard on monday about what problem this was as patients do it by accident all the time too.
Do you thing they will ever change the phone systems or the phones here to fix the problem? Hahahah that was a trick question, of course they won't.

Whats going on?

Hmm we havn't updated in a few days so here you go:

• We went to the drive-in on Sunday night and saw Bourne Supremacy and Manchurian Candidate. Bourne sucked, Manchurian was pretty good. Watching a moving in a car with the sub on rocks!
• My knee is still not in good shape. It can use it almost normally for a while and then its quite painful for a bit. I may not be pushing myself hard enough though and I am trying start jogging up the stairs and walking as normal as possible again. I really hope i don't have to get surgery or anything on it.
• Every had one of those weeks at work where everything that can go wrong does? I can't think of any device here at at work this week that I haven't had to look at.

Hmm thats all I can think of off the top of my head. I had some time while doing a server install to fix up the template a but more again. I plan on doing a bit more and creating a new title graphic and stuff later.

In Progress

Well Anne went and unexpectedly changed the template on me so I will be changing the look at bit of the next couple of days. Comments are back for now and I will add everything to the sidebar again. Oh well, I guess we were due for a change anyway.

Oh, the suspense!!

As we are trying to to get Maya used to being away from us we now are going on weekly dates to the movie theatre here in town. We are leaving Maya at our good friend Kims for the duration of the movie which works awesome because she is just one the way (we walk there). Thanks again Kim!
So last week we saw Farienhiet 9/11 which we enjoyed but not as much as Bowling for Columbine. It just didn't present the data in a very coherent manner. It was very interesting the connections between so many people but we found that while entertaining, it just didn't make it interesting enough. Oh well we still look forward to his next movie.
Last night we watched the The Village which was very good. The characters and story drew me in and I quite enthralled the whole movie. Our only complaint was that we had the "twist" figured out about 20 minutes into the movie. I though, "oh M. Night Shamanaylamandabananna (sp?) won't do the obvious thing, we just think we got it figured out." But it was the obvious twist which was a little disapointing. But that was our only complaint about the movie.

Egg!

Monday night someone egged our car! Seriously, what is wrong people! Fortuntely it cleaned up just fine so no damage done, but it really mad me mad.

Grey County Rally 2004...Sort of

So my friend Ian came up from Toronto this weekend ot hang out. We ended up doing 2 things basically, driving on back roads and playing Rallisport 2 on Xbox.
Anne found her map of Grey County (that's the county we live in FYI) which has all the known roads and some unassumed roads as well, so Ian and I took it and went driving. It was a blast, there are so many single lane, twisty and unused roads out here that I had no Idea about. There were some great puddles/small lakes that we went through at high speeds too. We did this both Saturday and Sunday afternoon and apparently the car on sustained a small dent in the oil pan which is amazing considering some of the roads we were on and the rocks we hit. I marked them all on the map for later reference. Ian's car is only a '99 (I think) Volkswagen Golf so something a little higher up would have allowed to get though some places we weren't able to this time through. Of course the Golf is a good rally car once you make a few modifications to it which could quite possibly be the case some day. :)
Saturday night and some of Sunday we spent playing rallisport 2 on the Xbox. I have never playing a racing game as good as that one. The graphics were astounding and the variety of races kept you wanting more, it just felt like you were going so fast. I will have to play it a great deal more when it comes out for PC at some point.
Overall an awesome summer weekend spent. I can't wait for next time.

Its a miracle!

I saw my family doc this afternoon to get my knee checked. He said it looked good and I appeared to just have bruised the cartlidge in my knee. So I am officially off of my crutches now. I was pretty much expecting this as for the last couple of days my knee has felt pretty good and the swelling has pretty much gone away. I didn't wear a tensor bandage this week either. So know I am limping a bit but I think I will be able to play soccer again in a couple of weeks.
I just wish my doctor had been a little nicer though. He saw me with the crutches going in and after looking at my knee was looking at me like I was nuts for still using them. Uh ya buddy, like I want to wreck my knee by walking around with it becaue I think it might be okay before I get any knowledgeable person look at it. Better safe than sorry when it comes to knees.
I am very glad to get rid of the crutches though, what a huge pain in the butt they are.

The Back Roads of Grey County

I had a meeting in Owen Sound all afternoon and Anne did some errands while we were up there. She got a new car seat for Maya as she had totally outgrown the old one. Its pretty cool but not nearly as reclined as the old one. We will have to see how Maya likes it I think before making a judgment at all.

On the drive home we took at backroads, it was awesome. I think we went on 4 "no winter maintenance" which were a ton of fun. There are so many single lane twisty and hilly roads out here. Anne and I really want a detailed map of the area that includes these roads. They are a great deal of fun to drive on.

I also thought I had missed the WRC Rally of Finland as my friend Ian had been unable to record it. But fortunalty it was on Suprnova last night and I was able to download it! Hopefully all the subsequent races will be on as I have no other way of seeing them right now. Japan is next and its new so I very much looking forward to it.

Its a Sign!

I have been thinking quite hard about looking for a new job. But i have been conflicted because I also want to try and do a better job here. However, all the signs are pointing to new job. Its just one thing after another this week and I am getting sick of it. None of it has to do with catch up work from when I was gone either, its all people attitiudes and actions.
Its going to be tough though as we really do want to stay in the area and finding another job that pays close to this one will be tough.

The Knights of Knee!

So tonight into about 20 minutes of soccer I twisted my knee pretty badly :( When it happened I looked just like one of those guys in a soccer game you see falling down and grabbing their knee, except I wasn't faking it. I tried walking it off to no avail and so left and drove the hospital. Apparently I have to put no weight on it for a week and use crutches. Its going to be a huge pain the butt. They weren't sure how badly or if at all I had damaged the cartlidge in my knee.
Oh well, at least I will be good for hockey. I personally don't think its that bad and should be playing sports again in a couple of weeks at least. But we will see I guess.

Trip pictures

The West coast trip gallery is now up. I have had to take down the rest of the gallerys in the mean time, I will put them up again later.
So enjoy the pictures, some require an explanation and others are sideways for some reason. Ask any questions in the comments.
Enjoy!

Weeeerrreee Ba-aaack....

Just to let everyone know that we made it back safe and sound Saturday about about 3:30pm. We drove about 13 hours on friday and made it to the ferry dock on Manitoulin Island at about 2am to make the morning ferry to Tobermory.
We haven't really unpacked or anything yet as we have mostly been doing things with friends and stuff, but I am sure we will get to it soon enough.
We will have pics up as soon as we can, but we have just uploaded them all the the computer and looked a them. There are a lot of incredible pics of the mountains and the animals, we just have to decide what ones to get developed.

We spent all last week in the mountains, Anne hadn't seen them before and was very impressed. We did some hiking, went in the hot springs, did lots of sight-seeing, and generally ran around like tourists. It was a ton of fun and something I would highly recommend visiting the Rockies to anyone. We spent most of our time in the Jasper region.
In Vacouver we climbed Grouse mountain (ibuprofin and a hot tub enabled me to be able to walk today) and wandered around Stanley Park and the Aquarium. The aquarium was really really good, we caught a few of the shows which were great and very interesting. Maya loved it was well and was hyper the whole time we were there.  I don't thing she has laughed so much in one day before. People loved her.
Today we caught the ferry  to Vancouver Island  plan to tour this week before we start on our way home again.

A Close Call

We left the Elk Island National park Saturday around noon and headed toward Edmonton. After hunting down the Visitor Centre we tracked down a campground which ended up being half-way between Edmonton and the park! The park sucked as well, with crappy camp sites, no water, only 2 bathrooms, and pay showers it was and probably will be the most pathetic camp site we use this whole trip.
That evening we headed downtown to check out the Street Performers festival. We were pretty impressed by everyone we saw there, especially the robotic guy. He even did sound effects to his movements.
The camp stay was uneventful and we left the grounds in the morning and headed for the West Edmonton Mall. I thought it was pretty good but it didn't totally meet Anne's expectations. We were waiting until 3pm to go in the waterpark to save a fair bit of money but Anne was still too excited to check out any of the cool stuff in the Mall, so we mostly just wandered around. At 3 we finally went in and had a great time for about an hour and a half. While Anne was going down slides and I was wandering around with Maya I noticed that the drains at the entrance to the change rooms had a very large amount of water coming up from them. In fact ALL the drains in that lower area did. Shortly after that we were evacuated from the waterpark. The changerooms had about 3 inches of raw sewage in them, so I took Maya to the closest bathroom and changed her. Anne stood in line and got a refund which will be mailed to us (hopefully). On the way back to meet her I heard the mall was being evacuated. So there went out plans for supper at hooters (best wings EVER). One guy said the water was knee deep in some parts of the parking lot. We wandered around a bit and took some pictures and then went to find the van. Fortunately the water was only up to rims of the tires, however a minivan about 20 feet awat had water up past the bottoms of the doors and a Mini close to it was half submerged. We got out of there and consoled ourselves with a night at the Hilton and supper at East Side Marios. We had gone through all the flooded underpasses just a couple of hours before they got flooded. We only saw a bit of the hail.
Certainly made this portion of our trip interesting!!!

Three more weeks of this stuff!

So what have we seen since last time:
- inumerable bison, 1 was 4 feet from the van
- many elk, no wild ones though, only on elk farms.
- one wolf waiting to cross the highway
- one beaver trying to cross the highway
- very many prarie dogs, man are they small and very cute
- a few deer

Not to much exciting has happened other than in Edmonton. We have mostly just been touring around, checking out parks and other areas, done some hiking and walking. The driving has been good and the roads pretty quiet. The speed limit for highway past manitoba has been 100km/h which would be great except that we are sticking to 100km/h to keep our gas mileage bearable.
We are just heading into Jasper now which we are quite looking forward to hiking aroud. We will probably spend a couple of days in the Jasper and Banff area, then onto the coast and Vancouver after that.

Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday was our 6th anniversary! Holy Crap! In a few days we will have been "together" for 8 years!! Crazy.
Certainly was an interesting day for one...

Terror in the Mall

Here is a post that Anne tried to make from the Hilton last night that didn't work:

Today was our exciting day at the West Edmonton Mall. I was super excited to go
into the water park (I LOVE WATERPARKS), and just too basically see it. I know
I know materisitic but I grew up poor and it was one of my dreams to go. So we
get there when it opens at noon, look around a bit, go into odd stores, and
price the water park. It is $30 regular but $20 if you go for the last three
hours - which is what we decide to do (Still am poor), we happily play for an
hour noting that it is really raining outside- infact it is hailing. Then we
note there is bit of excitement near the change rooms. It seems that the sewer
has backed up, oh well we aren't leaving yet. Then we hear the park is closing.
So we wade though raw sewage to get our things from the change room, and
attempt to leave the mall because now it is being evacuated. It seems that the
rain was a little to much for the aging mall (I did think it was rather shappy
in appearance). Along the way we could see water running down walls and the ice
rink melting because the power went out. We also talked to an Edmonton Journal
reporter about our expenernce. We get to the van which was parked in about a
foot of water. We were lucky; other cars were up to the tire wells and soaked
inside.

The really sad thing about this is it is our sixth anniversary, so to console
ourselves we checked into the Hilton for the night- Thanks for the anniversary
present Paul!

Testing...

We tried to post from the hotel last night and couldn't, so this is a test.

So what we have seen so far..

Well its day five of our trip and so far we have seen so much its hard to quantify well. So I will so a quick run down of what I remember anyway:

- 2 Moose, one with big Antlers
- Anne saw a Lynx run and kill a squirrel 10 feet from our camp site.
- 1 Parade in Wawa, it was for the 50 year the Highschool reunion. We didn't' catch any candy
- Many big animal statues: 1 goose, 1 sheep, 1 happy rock (don't ask), couple of others)
- the ferry ride Saturday morning was incredibly beautiful
- some of the views heading across the top of lake superior are breath taking, granted you don't drive a off a cliff looking.
- the sunset over the prairie is very nice, its amazing the difference in the colours from the sunsets back home. It really is amazing how flat the prairie is.
- 1 sculpture garden in Winnipeg, it was actually a lot of fun.

That about sums things up right now. I know there is stuff I have forgotten, but Ann will remember later. Maya is actually really have a very good time aside from the intense hate for her car seat. We will have to buy a new one in Edmonton for sure.

And They're Off...

We are just heading out now. I think Anne has got the Van packed, and we got everything we need so off we go.

If anyone wishes to get a hold of us while we are gone, please e-mail us at luke.bellamy@sympatico.ca. And don't forget we will be updating our blog as we go.

I think I hear the west coast calling to me........

2 more days...

I am at work today and tomorrow and then we are off!!! We leave friday night for Tobermory to catch the Chi-Cheemaun to Manitoulin Island Satuday morning.
I think I have everything documented and organized for work. I know they have enought information that they can figure things out while I am gone at least. I just have too many things to finish up before I am gone, I just can't wait till I am outta here. I really need a vacation I think.

That was close...

So today I was biking home from work, and I got hit by a mini-van.
Well not really hit, but I did glance off the front bumper and the front tire of my bike got all bent up. I was fine fortunately but it was a close call. I was going down the hill just outside of the hospital and lady turned down a side street right in front of me. I yelled at her to stop (as I was doing about 50km/h on the bike and couldn't stop soon enough) and I hit her front bumper just as she was stopping. If she hadn't I think I would have slowed down enough to just sort of run into the side of the van and would have been unhurt but I would have dented the van pretty good.
The lady's first reaction was to jump out and give me a hug. I don't know what she would have done had I broken my leg(s) or something.
It was sort of my fault as I was on the wrong side of the road because I was heading to the grocery store to pick up a pizza and I knew my brakes weren't working that great.
Live and learn I guess.

Dentist

Yesterday I got 2 fillings put in at the dentist. They are my first 2 in my adult teeth :( But I guess this visit was the result of having gone to the dentist the other week for the first time in more than 9 years or so.
I opted not to go with the freezing, as I figured a couple of minutes of pain is not worth the hassle of a frozen mouth. To my surprise it wasn't that bad at all, fell like an electric shock sort of and not so much like pain. The dentist we use is a pretty cool guys too. Very laid back and quick, if I had to I would have him do most of my dental work I think. But hopfully these couple of filling are all I need for the next 9 years.

Games

I beat Syberia II last night. I think I enjoyed the first one a little more.
Here's what bugged me.
* They are in the far reaches of the north and the boat gets grounded. Fine, but its an iceflow covered in penguins. Off the shores of Siberia... This really irked me.
*Somehow a long lost civilization is using the same mechanical know-how that the main character just invented. Its never really explained.
* The ending was very unsatisfying.

So the game was an "A" until the last half hour or so of game time, then it suddenly was a "C". Oh well.
Now I need to beat Painkiller before we head west.

Wiring

After last weeks rant about the wiring, I must say that things are going much better than I thought they would. I should actually be done tomorrow.
Also, as far as work is concerned, things should be running very smoothly while I am out west. Its nice when everything falls into place.

Presents?

Anne made me a card for my first fathers day, and that was it. Its not a big deal or anything as I am sure she knows she owes me big once we have some money again :)

Did she ever say what I got her for mothers day? I think we can tell how lopsided the love around here is!

It still doesn't smell like a new car...

Sunday we gave the RAV a good cleaning. I think the last time that we did that it was last summer. The inside got a good vacuum and wipe-down and the outside was scrubbed down, even the tires got a clean and soon silver shiny cleaner stuff on them.
The inside is very nice to get into now, looks good and doesn't smell faintly of rotting food :) . The outside however looks about the same due to the numerous dents, scratches, and chips on it. There is only one bad scratch and the rest are just barely noticable, but enought to make the vehicle look no so new. I personally drive a vehicle like that with honor, as to me is shows that we use like a SUV should be used. Slowing down on gravel roads because stuff might get a little chipped is not an option.
Did I mention we love our car, its just 3K shy of 100K (we have had it 2.5 years) and the only "work" thats ever been done is new brakes (the old ones wore out) and new summer tires (the OEM all seasons wore out as well). And believe me we a no Sunday drivers, even with Maya. I do wish it had a little more power, but maybe some day down the road I can get a couple of performance mods added to it.

Spaghetti!

A couple of weeks ago we had the Ministry of Labour do an inspection of the hospital. The guy who did it was extremely thorough (i.e. paranoid) and took 3 days to get it done. Other hospitals in the area had an inspector there for half a day so you can see that we got the cranky one.
The one area that affects me that he reported on was the wiring around the computers. He said that "it was worst mess he had ever seen in any hospital ever", which of course is a total crock. Its no worse than any other hospital that I have ever been in. But for some reason that has been taken as gospel here and its my fault and so I have to somehow "fix" all of it, and before June 28th. Granted its not real bad in most spots but there a couple of areas where its pretty bad but its that way because of the design of the rooms.
So on top of implementing our new e-mail system and getting all of the network documentation together so the hosptial doesn't fall appart while I am away for July, I now have to deal with this retardation.
Why, oh why, is north america so paranoid about crap like this. Why can't people just be responsible for themselves!? I really don't think someone is going to get hurt or get a disease from a lump of cables behind a desk.
Just had to get that off of my chest.

What do your work places do about cabling? Is it neat and tidy and organized where you are?

Deodorant...

Don't you hate it when you forget to put deodorant on in the morning. Especially when its hot and humid. fI just had to wash my pits out with hand soap in the bathroom. :(

The Rally

The Rally this weekend was a complete success. The awesomeness was only outdone by the even more awesomeness of the whole thing.
I stayed at Ian's house Thursday night with Anne who was going to her breastfeeding conference in the morning. We packed up Ian's car and left at about 10ish to pick up Chris at his fiances house in Mississauga and then we were off. The drive to Wellsboro was uneventfull except for a 1/2 hour delay at the border to get Chris's green card stamped (he's Australian). We arrived about 5:30pm at headed off to our camp site just outside of town. The camp site was very basic (and cramped) but we just needed a place to sleep so it did the job. We got set up then when back to Wellsboro and had supper at Pizza hut.
We then went for a walk. Because the rally was going to start in the morning and there were 59 cars entered they were all over town. WE took some pics and looked inside the cars and compared setups etc..
It rained most of the night and all of Saturday morning. This made the rally very hard apparently because the roads are all primarily clay and gravely so it made things very slippery.
After looking at a few more cars Saturday morning we decided to head out the "Subaru Splash" morning spectator area, which was one of 3 to choose from. We were almost late getting there because we got some bad directions from a fellow Canadian. This sort of caused us to get a not so great spot for what turned out to be kind of a crappy spectator stage. The stage ended right in the middle of the splash so they really didn't have any reason to try and get through it to fast and the people looking after it were not doing a good job. It was alright to see the cars all steaming and stuff but it wasn't very exciting. Next year we will pick a different one for sure. Win some lose some I guess.
It did lower our expectations for the next spectator area we chose which turned out to be very VERY good.We got there quite early and so had to wait around for 5 hours or so but it was worth every second. Take a look at this clip i took with my camera. This is what we saw about 40 some cars do and then some 30 do at night, in the dark. Two cars in the night pass had mishaps in front of us. One just about hit the officials and other crew after missing the turn and sliding about 40 feet and the other tried too hard after the second turn and went up on the embankment. Both recovered okay.
We recorded most of the cars on a DV camcorder which I will have a DVD of soon. Lots of funny stuff on that as well so if you are over here some time I will show it too you.
We are already looking forward to the Rally of the Tall Pines in November as well as next years SPATTER.
I will hopfully have a gallery up some time soon, but I didn't get that many great pics, the video is just soo good it kind of makes the pictures pointless.

I will post about the rally later. Here is one pic from the event.

Rally Race HQ

This friday myself, my friend Ian, and 2 of his friends leave for Pennsylvannia to go to the Susquehannock Trail ProRally! We are camping quite close and are prepared to have a blast. I can hardly wait. And sunday night the WRC Acropolis Rally is on Speed! *head explodes*
A great rally web site covering all sorts rally news throughout the world is Rally Planet. There are some great videos and pictures to download that give you an idea of what we will be seeing.
I will be taking my digital camera as well as a friends video camera, so there will be lots of pics up after the event.
Woohoo!

This is my area of the basement, the pic doesn't do the mess justice. It's where I do my computer work for people as well as build news ones. Thus, there are a lot of boxes, wrapping, packing, old parts, broken parts, etc, etc. So my goal is to have it all cleaned up and organzied by the end of this week. I will post a new pick then. Wish me luck.

This is Annes area of the basement. Apparently its organized. Whatever it is, its much neater than my area.

This is the piciture we ended up showing at the church during the dedication.

We're Sick

We are both sick today. We were both kinda coming down with something yesterday but not bad enough that I could miss work. :( Today we both feel pretty lethargic and generally rotten. Its really hard to entertain a baby when what you both really want to do is sleep. We did manage to sleep in to 11:30 though (Anne was up at 7:30 to go garage sailing though but she cam back to bed at 9:30).

Living with Anne.

I love Anne. Why? Because she is so unique and outspoken sometimes it hurts. How about examples?
1) Anne is passionate about bike helmets. Maybe because she works in emerg? Anyway the other day we are driving to my parents or something and were are on one of the back streets heading out of town. Ahead of us on the side of the road (the wrong side I might add) is 2 kids and 1 adult all on bikes. The 2 kids have helmets and the man does not. Most people might wrinkle a brow at this or shake their head if they disagree with the adult man's decision. What does Anne do? She stops the car abruptly beside the man, rolls down my window and yells, "WHY AREN"T YOU WEARING A HELMET!!" Then continues driving. Granted this hasn't happened with every non-helmeted person we side riding a bike but it was definitely an Anne moment.
2) Anne asked me no less than 3 times if I had made a post about the court thing and had a mentioned her breast feeding in court. I am sorry Jenn, I'm getting brainwashed over here. I counldn't not mention it, I would feel way to guilty.
3) We were going for a walk and we were walking past a house with a baby sitting in a window, it was maybe 6-9 months old. As we were walking past an parent handed the baby a bottle. Anne says loudly ( at last loud enough the people in the house could hear it), "Awwwwww, that poor baby has to drink from a bottle, that's soooo sad." Its not even that I disagree with her, its just that I would never think of doing that. But its all a day in the life of Anne.

I just don't think the world, or at least Hanover, could do without Anne. :)

Titles

Hmm I just enabled titles. Was this option always there?

Today was my first time in traffic court. It was not really fun but was kind of interesting I guess.
I was there to finally clear up my traffic ticket that I had got last May which I had paid the local police station for but the province didn't think so and wanted me to play again. This is why I had my license suspended for a time in March.
Anyway, Anne and I got there on time at 9am and found the court. There were probably 30 or so people there to dispute various traffic offences.
So from 9 to 10, Anne and I (she breastfed Maya in the court room heehee) watched various people give their sob stories to the Justice and try and get the fines and/or demerit points reduced.
At 10:15 they declared that the office related to my ticket had not shown up and thus it was thrown out. I said thank you to the justice and left.
Luke 1 - Court 0

Played Wednesday night soccer tonight. It was good as usual with about 7 guys per side. Good fun!
The interesting part was that tonight I hitched a ride on my buddy Darryl's sport bike! Its a pretty sweet bike (the exact model name escapes me sorry) with lots of power. I thought I would be a little more worried as a passenger on it but I actually felt quite safe and secure, which really surprised me. All in all a good experience.
On a completely unrelated note, I went the fastest I have gone in a land vehicle at 210 km/h today. The previous record was 205 in a 2003 Golf Turbo.

So the last 3 weeks have been very aggravating as well as a little humbling at work. Most of you probably won't understand a word of this next bit why.
I purchased Small Business Server 2003 for my network to have the updated Windows Server 2003 platform and its Exchange 2003 software. But it turns out that, I didn't' know the limitations of it and I couldn't actuatly add it to my network, that took about 3 days to figure out.
No big deal though, I had a copy of Windows 2000 Server for the machine I was installing it on and so I returned SBS 2003 and decided to by just the plane-jane Exchange 2003 Standard by itself and install it on the now reinstalled Win2K server. Since the copy would be a while in coming I downloaded the trial version and installed that. Everything SEEMED to go smoothly until I went to set up the Internet mail server portion of it. That's when the fun starts. I got an error, and not just any error. Oh no, its an error that no one on the interet seems to know how to fix and Microsoft doesn't know about yet. Also because I hadn't actually purchased Exchange yet, they refuse to help me. But I don't want to buy it if its not going to work, so its a catch 22.
So after 2 and half weeks of screwing around trying to get help from MS and looking in every nook and cranny of the web for answers I finally figured it out myself and and got it all installed and working today! HURRAY! It will probably take a month or so to get everyone in the hospital on it but at least I know the server is running now.

Anyway I had to get that off my chest. That was very frustrating.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Work has been very busy and I have had problems in a number of the capital projects I am working on. The last 3 weeks have been a perfect example of a 1-step forward 2 steps back senario. Oh well, it looks like I will be getting all the stuff I have been working on going in the next week or so and thus I should have a bit more time to post. Basically any extra computer time I have had at home (not much lately as the playoffs are on) I have spent playing Colin MCrae 2004, which I must say is a superb rally racing game.

nnnnnnnnn7nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnsgb bvvvvvvvvvv h8j9b b
;,,x m,,,,;',

Todays blog post is was done by Maya playing with the keyboard. I think she way trying to say hi or something... I had to add some "enters" but otherwise she is getting good! :)

After I logged into blogger.com to make that last post as I greeted with the ability to sign up to Googles "GMail", which I promptly did. I think it will probably be one of my main e-mails that will (hopefully) last a long time. Also because I get to be an early user I got to create an easy to remember address (lbellamy) that I can use for personal and professional reasons.
This brings the total number of e-mail addresses that Anne and I have to 7 and probably 8 once Anne signs up for Gmail as well.

Yesterday Anne went to visit her friend Andrea in Barrie and stayed overnight, thus leaving the house for me. The most exciting part of it was the way the house stayed clean for a day with only one person there! So I did my chores and played on the computer, got to watch some anime I had been trying to find the time for and got the whole bed to myself. I slept well :)
I also had my last game of indoor soccer. It was awesome. We had just the right number of people for each side and the level of play was very high. So it was very fast paced and a lot of fun for the full 2 hours. Unfortunately my team was creamed and I don't even know what the exact score was.
Next week we start playing outside which will be very strange, outside sport is almost like a different sport compared to indoor. It should be a lot of fun though.

The WRC rally in New Zealand was on last night and I forgot to tape! AARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGG!!!! Stupid Leaf game and Ninja Gaiden.

This weekend my friend Ian came up from the city for a visit. We managed to get everything we had hoped to do done, which was great considering how much it rained at night and in the early mornings.
We played a lot of Project Gotham Racing 2, Tiger Woods PGA 2004, and Ninja Gaiden for the XBox. All of the games were enjoyed immensely, Ninja Gaiden by me especially. :)
Saturday afternoon we went and saw HellBoy at the theatre which was great. It was lots of fun to watch, but needed to have a more coherent plot. The characters went to places and you didn't' have any idea why and Hellboy did things with no explanation on why he had that power, etc, etc.. Overall it gets a B+ from me.
Sunday we went mountain biking at the Brant Tract near Paisley which obviously had a LOT of work done on it last summer. There were a lot of new trails and they were well thought out. It does need a bit of spring cleaning but I think I will go a few more times this summer for sure. Unfortunately Ian hit a big stick right close to the end of the ride and broke his derailer right off. So we had to take turns pedaling one bike and pulling the person on the other. I had to borrow my brothers bike to go as I still don't have a new one after ours got stolen last summer, and it worked okay considering I am used to a full suspension bike and this just had front shocks. We, and the bikes, were absolutely caked in mud at the end as well; good fun!
All in all a great time was had by all. Thanks for coming up Ian!

Edit: My grammer and spelling are so very bad....

Work related post:
AAAAARRGGGG!! Why don't people return messages? Yesterday I left messages for sales reps at 4 fairly well known, large companies. The messages weren't urgent but did ask they call back quickly. So far NONE have called back!! Why do I have to hound every single person for every single company deal with?! They only person who is prompt is Jimmy at Insight.ca. Calls me or e-mail within MINUTES of any contact. I guess thats why they get so much of my business.

I got my new Sympatico Highspeed hooked up this morning and so far it lives up to its name. The latency is very low (23ms to New York servers)so my online gaming will be good and the download speed is maxed at about 3Mbps. I downloaded a 165mb file in 8 and a half minutes which is an average of about 300KB/s or more. Soooo very sweet.

I hope everyone had a happy Easter!
Due to Anne's birthday I neglected to pick up an easter treat for her, but she was nice enough to get me one (a kinder box dealie thing) as well as one for herself. She is very wise.
On Sunday we had 2 dinners. The first one was a bit of an unorganized affair at my Nana and Grandad's palce in stayner which was okay, but a couple of hours later we had another big meal at Anne's aunt Bonnie's in meaford. Sooo very full. Anne's cherry cheesecake was a big hit (as usual) though.
The Sunday church sevice was quite good as well, there was a cantata (sp?) and everyone sang very nicely, I enjoyed much more than I thought I would.

Tomorrow is Anne's Birthday! I have yet to get (or make) a card but all the presents are bought and ready to give. I think she will be pleased.

Also tonight my parents are over for supper which is nice, and since they are big leaf fans I shouldn't think it will interfere with the big game. But since its also survivor and the apprentice and ER tonight I am goig to have to watch in on my computer.

I am excited that am going to be switching our internet access to Sympatico highspeed! Apparently its a 3Mbs service with unlimited downloads, which is the best deal you get get up here, so I am pleased with that. We will see how it goes. it will increase our download speeds 6x. I also verified with a tech that we should get very close to the maximum download speeds so I am quite happy about it. SHould get it next week sometime I think.

I had a pretty good weekend - even with the lack of sports to play. I have managed to get Anne her birthday presents (her birthday is on the 9th) already and not last minute, which gives me ample time to make a card and maybe get one more little thing.
Saturday afternoon we got some family pictures done of Anne, Maya and myself at Sears in Owen Sound which I think turned out really well. We then went and had Wendy's for supper which we both enjoyed immensely.
We then went to my parents as Anne was going to a wedding shower at the Missionary Church in paisley for the pastors son. I stayed home and watched the leaf game after kicking butt in Soul Calibur 2 agaist my cousins and siblings who were all over as well.
On Sunday church was very interesting as we heard from the Youth how just got back from a missions trip in mexico. They had a half-hour video on the experience which was incredible. They were building a church in the mountains in a village that had never seen white people before. No roads or anything. Very hard work and rewarding for them.
Anne had another wedding shower in the afternoon so I got some good gaming time in then. After that she napped and had some quality time with Maya who was in a suprisingly good mood.
We vegged for the rest of the evening watching CSI: Miami and the movie Runaway Jury, both of which entertained us greatly.
All in all a quiet and relaxing weekend.

Today Maya is 4 months old. I am in shock. Thats one third of a year old.

Some pictures from Niagara Falls are up. Enjoy!

Hmm. We need to catch up on blogging!

So I came home on Wednesday and Anne lovingly had picked up Unreal Tournament 2004 SE for me! The SE edition is 2 DVD's (instead of 6 cds), one of which has sixty hours of tutorial videos on building maps/mods/anything with the included content.
Then Anne was cool enough to let me play for 2 hours straight. Its an awesome game and I do believe it will be getting a majority of my gaming time for quite an while.

We might be going skiing tonight and on the way I can pick up my Unreal Tournament 2004 SE which includes the game on 2 dvd's and a free headset. Should be great! Now I just need to find time to play it....

Edit: Scratch that, its shipping today, I can get it wednesday at the earliest.

Saturdays hockey tournament was a lot of fun, but a total bust as far as winning goes. We played 3 games 2 of them were against the #1 team. We played well but they were just a better team than the rest of us. We we lost the game pretty bad but thought we would do better. The second game was very close but we just couldn't get one in their net so we lost 1-0.
The last game against the #1 team again was pretty close but we lost 6-3.

So a little disappointing but we had a pretty good season and a lot of fun which was the point.

Read Gabe's first post on Penny Arcade. I can only dream of doing that with my family one day. Even watching a movie together is a major hassel for most people.

Sunday afternoon Anne left to stay at her friend Andrea's house until Tuesday night to visit her with their friend Rebekah. This left me at home alone without a wife or baby for 2 days for the first time since Maya was born. It was weird at first but I managed to fill my time :)
I had downloaded the anime series Wolfs Rain earlier and so watch the first 14 of 30 episodes of that. It acually quite enjoyable, as the premise is a lot of fun.
Of course I also played a lot of games. Colin McRae Rally 4 is a blast, especially the in-car view. The Painkiller demo is a blast as well, nothing like nailing a zombie to a wall with a stake gun. I have the Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo , it's great fun as well, especially the Onslaught mode. I have the DVD Special edition with the headset preordered at EB, it should come next week. There are over 100 (!!!) maps to play on and over half are new ones. Mafia was the main game I played as the story is quite good and the gameplay a lot of fun, its pretty tough and long so I think I will be working on it for a while yet.
That pretty much sums up what I did for fun.

I am already pumped for the hockey tournament on Saturday. I can't wait.

The hockey tournament on Saturday was lots of fun, our team didn't do that great (won 1 of 3 games) but they were pretty close games.
We did win the important church league playoff game Saturday night though, 3 to 1.
And apparently next weekend is the final tournament for that league and so that will end that season. Also, Sunday night hockey only has 2 weeks left. I really don't know what I am going to do for exersise until the snow is totally gone and we can get some bikes. I hate jogging so I don't think I will do that. hmmmmmmm

Check out the rally videos on this page. This is pretty much what Ian and I expericed last November and plan to in June as well.

Sunday night I played hockey as usual, in Paisley with the "old timers". There were a lot of people (the number varies) and so our bench had 2 full forward lines and 4 defencemen. I played centre as usual. The final score was 11-11. Why was it special? Well I scored 5 of my teams goals! Yay me! Due to the number players it was a nice fast game the whole time and I drove to the net as I like to do (rougher=more fun for me) and I was getting good passes and I seemed to be on my game.
I love playing hockey and I will be very sad when its all done at the end of the month. I do have 2 tournaments in march which is nice, one of which is next weekend with a minimum if 3 games in addition to the regular Saturday night church league game. I am quite looking forward to it. The other is at the end of the month and will end the season. We were totally destroyed at last years but I think we have a better team this year. And our good is probably the best in the league which is always good.

Maya is 3 months old today! Holy crap!
It seems longer than that in some ways and not nearly that long in others.
I think Anne has the exact count on diapers so far....

Thursday Anne and I had to drive to Toronto to take Maya to a Specialist (dermatologist) so they could decide if the skin problem she has on the side of her head was a bad thing or not.
So we (Anne did the driving due to the aforementioned license issue) drove to the office (3 hours), waited in the waiting room (1 hour), saw the doctor (10 minutes) and drove home again (3 hours). You can see the disparity in the time allotment.

It wasn't all bad though. On the way back we went to Old Navy, Jack Astor's, then CostCo. I got some cargo pants at Old Navy, and we enjoyed Jack Astors, but there was something wrong with the pan bread though, I think it was stale.
I enjoyed CostCo much more than I thought I would, their computer stuff its that cheap (I get it cheaper at ncix.com) but the rest of it was pretty good. We got diapers and other baby stuff of course, but also some batteries and food stuffs that were very good deals. Next time I need to take notes as I think there were some VERY good deals on TV's and stuff and we are planning on getting one of those in the next couple years.

Oops, sorry for not posting much. Its been busy.

As a follow-up on the whole license thing, I called around until I found out where I had to get to get the problem dealt with. Apparently it was in the County Administration building in Owen Sound and the person said (I swear they did as I wrote it down and remember it) that is was open till 5pm. So I went to work early Wednesday, and left at 4pm to get to the office in time.

Of course it closed at 4:30! Great! The annoying about this was that it could have been all fixed up on Thursday if I had got it in on Wednesday and so now we had to wait till Friday to go back again. So Friday I left work an hour early and got to the office on time and got everything straightened up and should know what's going on my Tuesday afternoon.

*sigh*

The whole situation is very annoying.

Here's a lesson in procrastination boys and girls.

I got my driving license suspended today.

Last May I got a speeding ticket coming home from the movie theatre in Owen Sound, only going 110km/h in a dry paved back road so its no biggy. The local police let you write a test for $80 and rip up the ticket and the province never hears of it and that's the end of that. That's what's supposed to happen anyway...
In June I get a notice from the local police and they let me know they they accidentally sent the ticket in but not work worry about they will take care of it etc etc. Then at the start of January I received a notice from the province that I had gotten a speeding ticket and I had never paid it and I needed to before March 1st and had a court date etc. I call the local police and ask what's up, they tell me I need to bring the notice into the station and talk with the officer that gave it to me. But the hours are only during hours that I am working and the officer has to be there so its not exactly easy to arrange. That's what I procastinated doing and so never got around to dealing with it today.
So in the mail today is a notice stating that my license is suspended until I pay the fine and pay $100 to have it reinstated.

But I can go to court and sign a form, and explain to the justice (or whoever) the above story and everything should be hunky-dory in a couple days.

In the mean time looks like I will be walking though, good thing I don't have any meetings anywhere this week :)

WANT TO GO TO A RALLY?

On the weekend of June 5th to 6th there is a Rally in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania.
Anne and I are planning on going and I am wondering if a group of people are interested. We probably could drive down the Friday night and camp or stay in a motel for the 2 nights and drive back Sunday.
So anyone who is interested please comment here! I would like to get an idea of how many people would be interested in such a thing. Even if you don't care that much about the rallying (but how could you not) it would be an awesome get together for the people who read this site.
It will be a lot of fun!!!

Edit: It could be a guys weekend out as well....

I think Maya has a new favorite toy. We recieved a stuff yellow duck from someone as a present a while back, but haven't really done anything with it. Last night I was playing with her before bed and I give it to her and she totally loved it. She clutched it like it was going to run away and rubbed it on her face because she liked the feel of it.
She looks super cute with it too.

We named the duck Herbert.

Unfortunately Anne and I did not get any Conan tickets for the shows being taped in Toronto :( . I even tried a sob story about a new baby and being stuck at home blah blah blah. We are going to stay up and watch the shows which start airing tomorrow night, it should be quite good I think.
Anyway, here are some links I could find on the visit:
Toronto Sun Interview
Toronto Star Write-up
Globe and Mail Write-up
CNN International
Vancouver Sun

Thanks Google News Search!

It looks like I am going to be the computer tech/network guy for my church. The senior pastor, who is Mac nut, is currently the main guy but feels he needs to concentrate on his primary function more as the church is growing. The trouble is that they are all Macs with on 2 PC's floating around. They are looking at me for setting up a plan for them to move forward as they planning on doing a lot more with video and audio and stuff through the computers.
Anyway its going to be my primary contribution to the church and I am glad to help. The Mac troubleshooting should be interested but I am not too worried about figuring it out. I think the whole experiece will be fun (and look good on my resume :) )
Here is our church's web site, its going to be revamped at some point and offer a number of new things.

I got together with some good friends on Sunday to do the superbowl thing. I am not real big on football but I am big on Xbox and junk food (in moderation of course dear) and Sunday had both in abundance. So before the game we played some 4 player Tiger Woods 2004 which was surprisingly fun! It was a close game all the way to the end. Unfortunately it was game time so we never did finish 18 holes, next time I guess.
So we watched the game and found it pretty boring until the end of the second quarter and the 4th quarter. I, as always, cheered for the underdog which happened to be Carolina this year and they put on a great show considering.
The interesting part was the whole half time controversy. The house we were watching it at had the high-end expresvu model where you can pause and rewind shows so when we realized what had happened with Janets boob we rewound the show and checked it out (for scientific purposes only of course). It was definitely done on purpose, but way to hard to make anything out. The whole uproar is stupid because people will cry the blues when they see Janets boob, but then they will turn on CSI where you see a guys head mashed in with brains hanging out in vivid detail and think that's fine. *sigh* The U.S. is sooo screwed up.

I took the day off on Friday and we went skiing at Blue Mountain. Unfortunately I would rate the day about a "B-". The drive up there wasn't that great, with blowing snow and bad roads. But when we got there we realized that Friday was a fricken PD day! ARG! So its super crowded. The I get in to Central Lodge and head to our usual spot where Anne had gone ahead to feed Maya while I unloaded the car. I get to the spot to fine a very pissed off Anne and no tables. Apparently on a very busy day they decided to get rid off all the tables in the quiet hallway area! So Anne "talks" to some mangers and gets some tables for the area and we have a place to look after Maya and keep our stuff.
So while some of this is going on I head out to the slopes. Because of the cloud cover the light is very flat and its nearly impossible to make out the rough stuff and with all the people its VERY rough and choppy. *sigh*
On the positive side though, despite all the problems we both got some good skiing in and had fun. The lines were too bad and all the hills were open. My Dad showed up later in the day and we got some good night skiing in as the night lights improved visibility greatly.
All in all I am glad I took the day off but wish we had known it was going to be a PD day. Next time will be better I hope, we will do this at least couple more times this season and lots more night skiing.

I love small town service. I don't know if they do this in the city, but today I parked our RAV4 at work and left the keys there for walkterton toyota to pick up. I came back out to go home for lunch and the car was in the same spot, the keys were in the driver side visor with the bill. Otherwise you would have never known it had left to get a check up and oil change. That makes me happy.
Though I do have to say that while I really enjoy this part of walkterton toyota, we think that the service of the woodbridge toyota we used when we lived in toronto was better overall. Thats not to say that they did better work, but they seemed to care more about how we felt about the service. They always made us feel good where as in walkerton (and owen sound) you get the "i'm just another customer" feeling.
The RAV4 is happy as always and has 85500Km's on it after just over 2 years (we bought it new). Still feels new to me though.

We went skiing last night at Blue Mountain. Anne's parents were kind enough to watch Maya in the lodge while we were on the slopes, which we are both so grateful for.
EXTREME COLD basically sums up the weather there, but the snow was great and there were lots of big jumps. Going up the lifts was a lot colder than going down. Plus, because there were a lot of roads closed earlier in the day and it was so cold there were very few people there. We only had to wait in line once or twice.
Anne did very well considering she is still not quite 100% and she only fell once and not badly at that.
We hope to get at twice next week as well. I didn't feel 100% either but had a lot of fun and got so pretty big air off of a couple jumps.
The driving there and back wasn't too bad, just a bit slow as most of the roads up here are snow covered.

I made the following post at Shacknews yesterday morning.

"As a Canadian I have to say I that I am more scared of George Bush than anything a terrorist might do. Anyone else feel the same way?
He is just trying to assert to much power over the rest of the world if you ask me. The bits I watched of the State of the Union address last night just make me sad for the United States.
Not everything is all rosey in Canada but at least Paul Martin is mostly normal... "

Nothing like a politically oriented post to stir up a rats nest. First time I ever posted something that got more than a hundred replies. Fun to read though.

I have the Monster Jam 2004 Gallery up now. I will put a couple more videos up later. Most of the pictures didnt' turn out that great, the lights in the stadium seem to reek havoc on the lens. They do get the point across though, so enjoy.
Monster Jam is sort of the same format every year, the was one cool addition this year though. This is the order of things this year, after the big enterences by everyone: 1)Monster Trucks Race 2)4x4 Trucks Race 3) Quad Runners Race. They do that twice to quailfy and try and beat each others times. Then there is an intermission. The new thing this year was that after the intermission they had a human cannonball. It look like 20 minutes to set up and Ian and I weren't really expecting it to be that cool, but HOLY CRAP the guy went extremely high (200 feet apparently) and wowed us mightily. You can see him in the one picture in the gallery as he is on his way down. Then the races take place again to se who the winner is in each of the catagories. The quad wars are like the WWF really and are totally rigged, and blatently so. Still fun to watch, but they would be better if they just did real races and made them longer.
Anyway, after all that there is the monster truck freestyle where they just try and do the coolest stuff, thats where the vid from the last post is from. And the finale is the demoition derby.
All in all lots of fun had and we plan to go again next year.

The Monster Jam was super fun, just as it has been every year. They put a little more effort in it this year I think, which is nice. I will get a gallery up later, but don't get too excited as most of the pics didn't turn out that great. The videos are pretty good though.
Here is the best one I got to get you through the work day :) Keep in mind the video is about 5 Megs big and you need the Divx codec to play it.

I post the details later.

New Gallery of Maya from around the last week or so. There are a couple of our other child in there as well.
Enjoy!

I am looking forward to Monster Jam this coming Sunday (...SUNDAY, SOMEDAY) at the Skydome. My buddy Ian and I are going for the 4th year in a row. No video cameras allowed so I will just have to take some with our camera :)
It should be good, the new thing this year is some guy being shot out of a cannon. Hopefully they have better things to crush this year than that have the last couple. The first year they had a TTC bus in the middle of some cars and vans. Nothing since then has topped that. Should be awesome.

P.S. This is another favorite "One" from Homestar.

Hmmm we are getting lax with the blogging again. We are bad bad bad.

Not much going on though, I am amazed at how much less time there is to do play old every day stuff with Maya around (I hope you are listening Brock) and gaming time is very much lessened. Fortunately Maya is cute enough that I don't really notice and have a lot of fun with her. We were just sitting here head banging to treble charger and she was liking that, she didn't like Linkin Park though.
I did try and make a quick video with our camera of her "chasing" George but Anne didn't know how to press a button so I did the show and there was no video. Next time I guess. I will try and have a newer gallery up soon to make up for it.

On Monday the streets and ground were bare. Today, for the second day, everything in the area is pretty much closed and we have like 2 feet of snow. We are supposed to get around another 50cm tonight as well. I love weather like this, its a lot of fun to drive in as well.
The point of this post is that I think skiing is in order :) It looks like Blue Mountain is recovering from the lack of snow and deluges of rain nicely.

Maya is exactly one month old today!! Holy crap! I will get a happy "you are a month old" pic of her up later.

Its something I hardly ever do but I watched TV almost all day yesterday. Why? Well Speed TV had rally racing on all day and so I watched as much as I could. Overall I found it very enjoyable and will probably do the same thing next year.
However I have a couple of nits to pick. 1) The stupid "Speed TV Rally-thon" logo in the bottom right of the screen covered a lot of important info about the cars. Such as speed and times. ARG!! 2) because its an american view of the races I found the commentary boring and to technical, I really wish they would just rebroadcast the euro airings.
Other than that it was great. Unfortunately this year there weren't really any huge spectacular crashes or anything. The most exciting one was a car that caught fire and rolled into a ditch (after the hand brake burned out) and burned out ten acres of land. Another car snapped a tree in half that they hit, that was kinda nasty I guess. Other than that I was interested to see how the drivers got to the top of the leaderboard and how emotional they were etc. The sense of speed you get watching these cars on public roads is very satisfying, espeically on the tarmac races.
So anyway this definitely go me revved up for possible going to that rally in Pennsylvania in June.