Luke WINS!

A couple of weeks ago I entered a contest at one of my rally news websites, Rally Planet.
Well I won a 1 year subscription to WRC+ which is worth about $92 Canadian.
Very cool, this is currently the best way to keep track the WRC rallys during the weekend before its on TV, or in my case on the internet to download.
It has live stats, interesting articles, and tons of video and pictures. All of it exclusive.
I haven't gotten the log in info yet, but I was asured I would get it soon. As long as its before Rally New Zeland next weekend.

Also, I found out that the time share my parents have in Mexico is a meer 2 hours from Rally Mexico which happens in march. I am definaly going to have to squeeze a vacation in over then and make the trip.

Looking forward to that Pennsylvania Rally in june. I hope this unemployment thing doesn't mess it up :(

Unemployment - Day Two

Today was pretty busy. Slept in to about 9am and then got ready to go to work for 10 to ask what my options were regarding pension contributions as well as get my personal belongings.
Also there was Lea, the person from the Grey Bruce Health Services who will be looking after the local stuff there. He is a pretty nice guy but not the best technically. He let me clean up my personal stuff off of the computer there and server before anyone else could get at it. Also got password and other server stuff cleared up.
Then I went around and said goodbye to all the departments, most of which I spent a lot of time in over the 3 and a half years I was there. Most people were pretty shocked and more then a few tears were shed. I found the whole thing quite amusing from my perspective (I don't know why, I believe the Lord has given me a lot of peace regarding this whole thing) and laughed a lot and didn't feel sad at all. I was surprised at the amount of anger from others though, a lot of people couldn't believe that the hospital had decided to get rid of me, and a few also suspected they were on the chopping block soon to. We will see.
It's pretty a much a given that a few hospitals will be closed up here in the next few years. There just isn't enough patients in the system here to make it viable for the number of hospitals in the area. A lot of nurses are leave in the next few years so maybe they will work with that. I may be really fortunate to be let go when I have been.
I worked the afternoon for my friend Nathan who runs a consulting business, but he can't really afford me. This prevented me from doing any job hunt stuff. There were no computer jobs in the paper.
On Monday, things really going as far as the job hunt. I will get a few things done over the internet in the mean time while Anne is working nights this weekend.

Hospital Cut-backs...

Me.. :(

So this afternoon I got laid off. It's been kind of a surreal experience so far.
Anyway, I am going to be looking for a job, anything computer technical anything will do. So if anyone knows of anything, please let me know.
I am waiting for a call back from Bruce Nuclear about a Senior Computer Tech job that I was apparently on the short list for, so hopefully that works out. If it doesn't I will be scrounging around the area to see what I can find.
I will keep you guys up to date.

P.S. Don't tell my Mom, I don't want to deal with that.

The Hockey Season is over :(

Today was the final tournament for church hockey and we lost. We figured we would lose the first one and did. We were pretty confident about the second one, but couldn't see to click as a team today and could do it. It was a tie at the end and so there was a best of 5 shootout which was cool. The best of 5 was tied and so it was sudden death shootout and we lost.
I think I have one last game next weekend, but since its Easter, who knows.

Now the snow can go away and it's on to Mountain Biking and Soccer!!

New Developments

This week has been an interesting week as far as Maya goes. Here is what she has learned this week.

• Go down the stairs. SHe just decided that she can . She backs up to the steps, crawling feet first , and goes down fairly quickly. We have tried to teach her this in the past, but it wasn't very successful. Its quite nice and reasuring to not be worried about her tumbling down the stairs trying to walk down them.
• Climb up into her high chair. Now we can say, "Maya, it's time to eat!", and she will run over to her chair and pull herself up into it. Its pretty neat to see. She doesn't have a 100% success rate yet so we do have to watch her, but she does a good job of knowing when she isn't going to make it and lets herself down.
• Climb into the bed. This is probably just an extention of the high chair climbing but its nice not having to pull her into it all the time.

Long weekend...

No we didn't get an extra day but it felt like it to me.
Anne was working nights all weekend and Maya was sick. This meant that Maya did not sleep well at night and we had to make ourselves scarce during the day so Anne could sleep. Maya coughed a lot at night and kept waking herself up, and then wouldn't let me put her down so I could sleep. So I was very tired at work yesterday. At least this allowed me to watch the first 2 days of the Mexico WRC and the first 3 episodes of Last Exile, but I think I would have rather been sleeping.
Saturday was a good day though, I bought this bike, a Brodie Brat. I can't wait for the snow to clear up so I can ride it! Of course I am not allowed to spend any more money for a couple of months now :)
Also, my church team won our second playoff game which mean we are garanteed a least 2 games in the tournament this coming Saturday. We play the #1 team first and we haven't won against them this year so it will be challenging for sure.

A sad trip...

On Monday Anne's grandmother, Christina McCutcheon died, it wasn't unexpected and she had lived a long life so it wasn't a terribly sad occasion. The funeral was in Huntsville on Wednesday which was a long drive but it was nice to spend time together and get away from work.
An Anglican reverend gave a nice eulogy, and the family gathered afterward for snacks and fellowship. It was nice to see people, most of whom I have only met once or twice before.
On the way back we had a very nice visit with my Grandad and Nana in Stayner and drove through very bad weather from there to Hanover.
Maya was sick at the funeral, but still well behaved and somewhat cheery. She slept pretty much the whole time she was in the car.
That was about as exciting as this week got.

Full Metal Alchemist

Last night I finished watching the last couple of episodes of Full Metal Alchemist. It was one of the most enjoyable anime series I have watched. The important characters were fully fleshed out and there was a great blend of action, comedy and drama. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get into Anime.
Next up is the Naruto series, I have the first season downloading now and I have heard a lot of good things about it. Plus it has ninjas! You can't go wrong with that, becuase they are the Real Ultimate Power.

Hockey Day in Hanover

Had one of my end of year tournaments today. This weekend it was an invitational church tournament in Flesherton. There were 3 or churches from the immediate area, one from Owen Sound and one from Barrie and I don't know about the other. We did not do very well :( .
We lost the first game, tied the second one, and lost the last one. It was still a lot of fun and there were no major mishaps or incidents which is suprising as there usually is.

However the big one was tonight as it was the first game of our church league playoffs. We have lost the last 2 or so games and so needed to get back on track. The game was extremely close and if we hadn't been so tried from playing 3 games earlier in the day I think we would have destroyed them. The game was very tight and tied 1-1 with 1 minute remaining. We got the puck in their end, I fed it to a winger (I was centre as usual), he fed it back to the point who got just in the bottom corner of the net with a slapshot. We hung on for the win!
So we have one more playoff game next Saturday, then the tournament the weekend after. I think we can take it this year for sure.
The only incident was when a guy who had really been harrasing me all night, (pushing, holding my stick, hooking, etc.) really shoved me after the whistle in front of their goalie. He got in my face about my stick in the goalies crotch and I relpied that I was just trying to get the puck through because thats what you're supposed to do before the whistle goes. ANyway, I was hoping the guy was going to shove me or take a swing so they would get a penalty. But then one of our guys come roaring in and totally rocks the guy into the boards. Fortuntely they didn't score on the power play and the guy stayed off me for the rest of the night :) Lot's if fun.

Toronto

Tomorrow we are going to Toronto. The primary mission consists of 2 parts. One is to go the the International Bike Show and the second is to visit the Whole Foods Market. I think you can guess who is excited about what. We plan on getting bikes for ourselves if we can find good prices. It should be fun.

Let it snow, let it snow...

So we are going skiing tonight and I don't know why but I just can't seem to get into it this year. I know I will have lots for fun once we are out on the slopes, but I just am not excited by it like I have been in the past. I don't' think its the fact that we have to bring Maya along, because she is a lot of fun when we are there.
Anyway, I hope there is lots of snow and lots of good jumps. So far this year I have been getting huge air off some jumps and I am getting better at the half pipe. I am a little wary however of my right knee because I still don't think its 100% from when I hurt it last August. On top of that the season is going so fast, I don't know how many more times we are going to get out.

Anne's Thoughts- It just makes a long night. Fun but long.

And the Oscar goes too...

For the past couple of weeks Anne and I have been practicing for a skit we did this past Sunday at Church. It was about irresponsible spending and the premise was Anne and I arguing about how she was spend too much money and didn't really care. It only took about 3-4 minutes to do on the stage and was quite fun. We did it in front of each of the three services right before the sermon and then Pastor Claran tied it into the message which was about tithing and Godly spending.
What made it interesting was that Anne worked Saturday night and didn't really get any sleep that afternoon. She got 2 hours while on her shift but was pretty tired but the time we showed up at the church to do the skit in front of the 8:30am service. So by the end of the morning she had be up for most of the past 36 hours.
Regardless, the first run through was the worst as we missed a middle chunk of the play but the congegration didn't' notice. The second run through we felt was a best one was we didn't miss any line and acted (we felt) quite well. The third time went excellent as well. People laughed a lot more then we expected (we didn't think it was that funny)
We are hoping that from this we can do a few more of these type of things a year as they are quite fun and can be our contribution to the Church.

Out with the old and in with the New

To me a blog is a great way to keep in touch with peoples lives. I can quickly find out what is going on in the bloggers life with a quick glance which to me sort of creates a type of community amongst a group of people that might otherwise not have any reason to keep in touch. Sure, sometimes posts are mundane or boring and other times they can be riveting or interesting but in the end it's a journal and a window into someone's life that you often care for.
So when someone thinks their blog is a burden or crutch and deletes the whole thing with very little warning it really pisses me off and makes me sad at the same time. I'll leave it that.

That said, we had an empty spot in our links and have added our niece Courtney's new blog! Its like totally new! So u peps should like go visit it rite now, K. I g2g now cause we r going to watch the totally nu ep of Carnivale . OMGWTFBBQ

Rally Vids

Here's some rally crashes I have on our web space that I had posted on the shack last week. I should let you guys enjoy them too.

Solberg crashes but recovers at Monte Carlo 2004
Anonymus Subaru WRX crashes coming off a hill at high speed (awesome)
Skoda driver Swartz crashes (almost off of cliff) at Monte Carlo 2005

Just a reminder that Ian and I do plan to go to Pennsylvania again this June for the STPR this year. Its on the first weekend of June, so anyone who might be interested in going with us please start thinking about it now.

I'd like to thank the following people for this free time...

Many, many, many thanks to Brenda and to Cheryl for looking after Maya yesterday so I could join the Superbowl festivities! I really apprcieate. I will get you tokens of that apprcieation later this week :)

Another lonely weekend *single tear*

So Anne abandoned Maya and I this weekend because she was working nights again. We managed to cope pretty good and found a good source of food by prying open floor boards with Maya's toys. I would lift them up just enough for Maya to fit her hand in and get a handful of termites for us to mash into a paste and eat with a straw, that was it was more palatable. She only lost 2 fingers but I glued them back on so I don't think anyone will notice.

Maya did sleep really good this weekend though. Friday night was bad but last night was the best ever. She only woke up 3 times (that I noticed anyway) and one of those times she put herself back to sleep. Its quite apparent that she understands that Anne isn't there so just deals with it by using the sippy cup and going back to sleep. I hope she is still used to it when Anne works Wednesday and Friday nights this week.

Because of this development I am not going to drink coffee anymore; it's back to tea for me. I started drinking it regularly after Maya was born to help with the lack of sleep, but I really feel it when I don't have it for a day or so now. Even as I type this I have a headache and feel fuzzy headed which I am sure is caffeine related.

These are two movies I can't wait to see.

Sin City - Its based on a popular graphic novel. The style of trailier is unbelievable. Plus, its got that chick from Gilmore Girls! you can't go wrong!

Kingdom of Heaven - The Crusades, epic battles, and Legolas is leading them! you can't lose with this one either!

Look! A Post!

Sorry we haven't posted much this week. A small hardware change on the computer at home that was supposed to only take a couple hours ended up taking 2 days.
On the plus side, I now am running with raid 0 (for 240GB total space) on two SATA 120GB Segate drives with 8MB cache each. So very fast...

Anne will think this is stupid but

I think this movie trailer is hilarious, it looks like a super fun matinee:
Kung Fu Hustle

Swish, Swish

Anne and I went skiing last night. I think it was Annes second time this year but it was my first. It was a great night to be out on the slopes as the weather was clear and it was cold, but not too cold. The only downer was they had a lot of snow guns going which totally iced my goggles at one point.
I always surprise myself on my first run every year was it feels like I never stopped; I can zoom around, stop and hit jumps just like I always can. Very pleasing.
Anne's parents met us at the lodge and looked after Maya why we went out. They left about 9ish and we took a turn each after that.
Maya loves to run around in the open spaces and go up and down the stairs there and so was suprememly happy with the situation. She is quite similar to the energizer bunny in stamina I think. It was also funny that they guy who works at the bar remember her from last year when I would carry her in my arms and watch hockey while Anne skied and Maya slept.
We are planning on putting her on skis next year to see how she does, that will be a lot of fun.

The Bee's Knees

I am not sure quite when it happened (during Anne's pregnancy I think) but we have been much more into natural type solutions for personal grooming and hygene since.
The major turning point was when we were in the praries on our trip out west and Anne bought some bug repelent from a naturopath in a small town. This stuff was supposed to just help with relieving bits but the guy said if you take it before you go into a buggy area that they would stay off you. The weird thing was that you dropped it under your tongue, so I was half expecting some sort of crazy drug experiece. But lo and behold it worked like a charm.
So Anne on one of her shopping trips discovers Bert's Bee's products. This stuff is amazing and we can't recommend it enough. Our favorite product is the deodorant, as regualr stuff was always made my armpits reacts in various painful or irritation ways. This Herbal Deodorant works great and I have absolutely no reaction to it. So if you have any problems with your deodorant like I do, then use this stuff because its awesome. We also use the diaper cream, shaving soap, cuticle cream, hand cream, and a couple of other products.
You can find the stuff in a lot of health food places and other "natural" and health type stores. Try anything from the company out, its great stuff.

sunday, Sunday, SOMEDAY

Yesterday I went to Toronto to meet up with my City-dwelling friend, Ian, and five of his closest friends to go see Monster Jam at the Skydome. This year it was the regular trucks ( I can't remember what they called them) , Freestyle motocross jumping and of course the Monster Trucks. Curiously missing from the line up was the demolition derby.
The trucks were a lot of fun to watch this year as the drivers were really try and made some spectacular circuits. There were even a couple of cars contending as well but couldn't make the cut. No crashes in this but one guy did an extra lap and almost crashed into the other competitor, and other guy spun out off the side.
The freestyle guys were pretty good and did the whole gamut of tricks except backflips. It was pretty impressive but I think I prefer the Quad-bike racing from the previous years.
The monster trucks did quite well in their racing this year. Most races were pretty close and there were a few close calls. Unfortunately, the one I was cheering for, Predator, blew his transmission in the final against Grave Digger thus making it a bit anticlimactic.
The monster truck freestyle where they just drive around and smash stuff and do tricks and jumps, was okay but "Safe Auto" and Grave Digger went all out. Safe Auto went over every obstacle and then went for an extra minute afterward. VERY nice. Then Grave Digger came and did a similar run but jumped much higher and crashed the truck at the end and thus won.
Overall the show was quite good and everyone seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. The number of lackluster Monster Truck performances were just barely made up for by "Safe Auto" and "Grave Diggers" freestyle runs. I don't understand why they didn't have a demolition derby either, they have been there every other year and are a ton of fun to watch. Oh well, hopefully next year it will be better. Here the official recap.

This is gonna hurt...

So its about 1:45am, Anne is at work and Maya isn't sleeping, She is either scream, crying, or looking sad. I have to go to work for 8:30 as I have a meeting tomorrow that I have to go to as well as some meeting stuff I have to set up for people in the morning otherwise I would just call in sick. I don't think its going to be pretty unless Maya suddenly decides to go to sleep.
She would be fine if she wasn't so dependent on Annes breast throughout the night, I don't know why she is. She would sleep for longer stretches when she was younger. Its quite frustrating.

7:45am update - went to bed at 4am and got up at 5:30, Back to sleep at 6am and up at 7:30 and now i need to get ready for work.

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.

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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! :)