Acropolis Rally Video

Acropolis Rally (Greece)
Here is this weeks highlight reel by me.(42MB)

Welcome to another edition of the Sebastion Loeb show! *sigh* With this rally he sets a new WRC record and ties another. He has now one 5 rallys in a row (new record), and one six of eight so far (ties a record). That and this is now just half way through the season.Petter Solberg, his main rival, suffered technical problems and finished 9th so basically Loeb is already looking like he has the season wrapped up. Hopfully he hits a bad streak soon, just to liven things up a bit.

Christian Bale Movie Night

So, two Christian Bale movies in 2 weeks eh?

Last night my brother and I went to see Batman Begins. I had been reading so many post on the Shack about how great it was, "best superhero movie ever", "I want its baby", etc, so I had to go and see it in the theatre like a respectable member of society.
It was awesome. One of the best movies I have seen this year. Bale was great as Batman and I found the rest of the cast quite enjoyable too.
PostDINK Rating: A

Lask week Anne and I watched Bale in the movie, The Machinist. It was quite enjoyable as well, but for entirely different reasons. The movie just flowed quite well and had an interesting story. We just slowly figured out what his problem was an the ending was quite satisfying. Oh and Bale was insanely skinny in it, like 119 lbs skinny. He put on about 50 pounds of right after filming this to be Batman. Crazy actors
PostDINK Rating: A

Post Problem (Scroll doooooown)

According to Blogger support its a problme at their end and they are trying to fix it. So I guess we just have to put up with it for now :(

Live 8

Those Live 8 tickets were sold in 21 minutes! And we got 2 of them!
So we plan on attending the event next Saturday and have my mom lined up to babysit Maya all day. Its should be great. We had to turn down a camping weekend unfortunately, but we will reschedule (call me anyway Andrea).
It's my first real concert, I guess having all the bands there at once makes up for all the ones I have missed, even if they aren't the newest and best Canadian talent available.

Well thats weird.

I am not sure whats up with the post being down below the sidebar. This is just testing it.

Pikes Peak

This weekend is the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.
To celebrate, here is a very cool video. Its actually an award winning short film from 1990.
http://sirx.shackspace.com/rally/climbdance.avi

War of the Cat Jail

We may have mentioned in before, but across the street from us is a house of which the sole inhabitants are seven cats. That number has fluctuated over the last 3 years and has been up to 10 before. The cats all look pretty mangy and clearly inbred. There is no heating in the winter, and until recently there was no ventilation in the summer. It is basically a cat prison.
Once a day a man in a blue car comes and feeds them and does whatever else he needs to do to keep them alive and then leaves. He also tends to the yard and other little things.
The first year that Anne and I lived here we called around to find out what we could to help the cats. The local SPCA came a looked and said they couldn't really do anything because the cats basic needs are looked after and they don't appear to be abused. After they left the Crazy Cat Man (as we refer to him) left a note on the door of the cat prison chastising his "Nosy neighbor's" and saying how he loves the cats, blah blah blah. But he also parked a car in the driveway (which hasn't moved since)to make the house look more lived in.
Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. I mentioned the situation to one of the councilors in town I know becuase the cats were sweltering in that bad heat. A week later an SPCA officer shows up at our door asking some questions. She asks for the cars license plate so they can track the guy down. She then leaves a ticket on the door of the cat prison, which you have to respond to in 24 hours. That evening when the Crazy Cat Man comes he opens all the windows for ventilation and leaves a note on the door addressed to the "Buzy-Bodies" about how he looks after the cats etc.. But apparently he doesn't phone back the SPCA. He also spends most of the next 3 days in the house do something. Maybe making the house look lived in?
So a couple of days later they leave another ticket, saying the cats are going to be taken in 24 hours if he doesn't respond. They are not impressed by the note on the door which has changed since the original note. The Crazy Cat Guy comes by later and then leaves a note for the SPCA saying how he tried to contact them and his partner is in the hospital and sob sob sob.
Since then not much has happened. According to the SPCA, they still have to talk to him personally and they haven't. Nothing has changed at the cat jail either, other than the ventilation. But apparently the Town in interested in finally doing something about this, so hopefully in a week or so we can report a resolution to the war.
It is kind of fun though spying on the house and seeing what notes and stuff he has left.

Rally Videos

I now have links to my rally stuff on the side bar under Rally Videos and Links.
After each WRC rally I create a highlights clip that I post on a few forums and sites and quite a few people enjoy. I thought maybe some of you would as well. So check them out and let me know what you think.
You probably need these Xvid and Divx codecs installed to view them, so make sure you do that first.
My latest is highlights of the Rally of Turkey. (135MB)

Rally Video

Here is the video from STPR. Its 250MB in size and you need the Divx codec to watch it.
I don't know if I like how it turned out, so I plan on doing it again some time and just doing the highlights as this one has all the footage of the cars. You need to create a Fileshack account to download it.
Let me know what you think, and ideas or criticism would be great.

That was fun...

The rally was awesome. We didn't really take any pictures but did take video of everything. So I will have that up some time in the near future.
This year was a lot more fun than last year probably due ot the fact that we knew what to do and where to do this time. But the competition was a lot tighter was well. For the first half of the day the top 10 people were within 1 minute of each other and driving like mad. Next year should be even better.

Sunday after we got back, we watched Star Wars Episode 3 and were both kind of disappointed. There were just too many really bad and cheesy scenes for the good ones to overcome. And Lucas totally tacked on bits at the end ot make it mesh with Episodes 4, 5 and 6. It gets a low B- from me.

Then Monday, Ian can up here to get some country air and do some mountain biking. We only got out to two trails. Allan Park was pretty good, but the Brant Tract we did yesterday was great, it has something for every skill level.

Job Update

This week I will have been unemployed for 2 months :(
I called Wightman this morning, who hadn't bothered to get back to me for the last 3 weeks, and I finally got a hold of my contact there. He said that they had put an add in the Kitchener record and by extension the Toronto Star and now had hundreds of resumes. So I guess that opportunity is defunct.
Bruce Power still hasn't done anything with my application there, and they are pretty sure they are going to have to re-advertise the position. So that will be another 2-3 months of bureaucracy.
So that's pretty much all that's going on job wise...

Cool

I don't subscribe to a lot of things, but one subscription I do pay for is a Mercury account at www.shacknews.com . I really enjoy the community of the sites chatty's and visit it at least a couple of times a day and use their fileshack service quite often.
This year the site is doing some major upgrades and enhancements. One of the first things is I now have 1 GB of space online to put stuff, anything, just because I subscribe. So I think I probably will stick some sort of web site on there as well as a few other useful files. Anyway, I just thought it was cool and needed to nerd out there for a second. :)

Growing up

So Maya did a first ever today: she woke up from a nap, got out of the bed, came downstairs, found her sippy cup, and came to the open door where I was working on our mailbox. She was quite content about the whole thing too.
This will be a better accompishmetn when she wakes up from a nap in her own room where she went to sleep on her own accord. But thats probably a couple of years down the road at the soonest.

Calling all Rally Peoples!

In 3 weeks is the Susquehannock Trail ProRally in Wellsboro Pennsylvania on June 4th. I have a camp site reserved about 10 minutes from the rally. We will be leaving for Wellsboro on Friday June 3rd, so whoever comes will have to take that day off to ride with the group.
Right now I think its just Ian and I but more people are definately welcome.
Please call or e-mail me if you want to come. It is a lot of fun and the area the rally takes place is a very nice looking area. The drive is only about 5 hours from Toronto.

Employment Update

Or rather, lack there of.
I still haven't heard from Wightman, I called yesterday and left a message but haven't heard anything. I still haven't heard from Bruce Power, although I am sure I will, it is just taking time due to some problems over there. I haven't heard from either of the job agencies that I have send stuff to, and there still hasn't been anything listed in the local papers or on the web.
That about sums up things for the last week.

Anne is on the cutting edge of hip.

Last week an opportunity came up to buy a 4th-gen 20GB iPod from a friend for a very good price. Even better, he was willing to wait until I had a job before I actually paid for it.
So Anne got an iPod for her birthday!!
So far its really good. We filled it up half-way with the songs we had and I am sure it will be full before long.
Anne's only complaint so far is that I have more songs on it than she does. :)
I am sure we will post more about it as there are so many things you can do with it besides just music and its really really cool and easy to use.

Unemployment Update

As of today, I have been unemployed for one month. I am not sure how I feel about this as I still am enjoying my time at home. Unfortunately I do feel as though a bit of despair is creeping in as I still don't have any more prospects than I did two weeks ago. Wightman still hasn't decided what to do about a possible position for me, and Bruce Power still hasn't gotten organized enough to have interviews yet.
There was a career fair in Walkerton last week where I did talk to a local furniture company that may be looking for someone sometime in the future but didn't know more than that. That's really the only new job thing.
There has been absolutely nothing in the local papers or the government job sites either.

I still feel pretty good about things overall I guess. I don't miss working at the hospital at all. I haven't worried about it or really thought about what's going on there for more than a few seconds here and there, which surprises me and makes me realized how dissatisfied I was there.

Sping Activity

For Anne's birthday on April 9th we went for a hike on the Bruce Trail, we went on a portion that goes through the Beaver Vally. These are the pics, enjoy.

On a side note, Picasa 2 from Google is great, I don't know why anyone would pay for an album program with that one availble. You can make any changes to pictures that you need, and it even created the above album nicely, and you can post pics on your blog through it. Gotta love Google!

Unemployment - Week 2

If I learn one thing from this experience, its that things are really out of my control and in God's hands.
The Senior Computer Hardware Technician position I am waiting for an interview for at Bruce Power is still in limbo over there. They don't think they will even start scheduling interviews for a couple of weeks. I still think this is the position that I am meant for and I am curious to see how it works out. Pray about this one.
However, one interesting development this week is that when I sent my resume to a few local companies I received an excited reply from a manager at Wightman Telecom. This was someone I had dealt with in the past and he had always been kind of impressed with me, so when he realized I was looking for a job he was quite keen to find me something there. The job he has in mind really wasn't within my experience, abilities or interest, so he passed me on to another manager with high recommendations. This is where it is interesting, Wightman as some very cool stuff coming up in the future that I think would be awesome to be involved in. However, they seem much more interested in getting me in to a supervisory role and I want more hands on. Ideally, I want a good mix of both (because you get paid more this way). I will probably meet with them this week and see if they can fit me into what they have planned. We will see what the Lord works out for me.
Unfortunately, there has been nothing available in the way of jobs listed either online or in local papers.
In the mean time, I really enjoying being at home, doing things with Maya and being with Anne more. Its going to be hard to go back to work when it does happen.

Unemployment - Day Seven

It's really day three of a concentrated job search, and of that I have only had today as a full day to do it because of computer work I am doing for a friends business. He can only afford me on a very limited basis though.
So far the job search has not been successful at all. When looking in the paper and sites in the past I have noticed that IT jobs seem to come and go in clumps. One week there will be like three or four computer jobs listed and than none for a couple of months and it sure seems like its a dry spell right now. There has been nothing listing on the local sites, local papers, monster.ca or anything else. But it hasn't even been a week yet.
The one thing that I do keep hearing is that Bruce Nuclear is highering and as far as I know I am still expecting an interview for a computer technician job I applied for there in December. So far that is the only lead to anything.
The one thing that is hard is the fight down the rising panic. Questions like, "What if I can't find anything, what if I have to take some crappy low paying job just to make ends meet?".
Overall I think the Lord has really put me at peace with the whole thing, and I know He has something good in store for me as long as I follow the path.