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.