Andy Kopciuch's Blog
Monday, November 29, 2004
Extra Filled Wraps & Foxpro
Well it's been a while since I wrote. I've just been so incredibly busy lately. I'm getting ready to travel back to Victoria. This time I will be staying for an extended period of time. I'll be there for around 2 weeks.
I'll be driving out this Saturday. I'll be stopping in Vancouver for a couple of nights to stay with my good buddy from back home Heath Horejda. I haven't seen him since around Christmas 2 years ago so I'm pretty excited about staying with him. He's bar tending and playing the starving actor quite well. He has a new girlfriend Chelsea. I'm really looking forward to catching up and seeing the guy. He's one of "the boys", you never loose the ties, you know?
Anyways ... I had left him a message earlier this week, and he phoned me back while I was driving last night. I was on my way to grab something to eat and head home. I ended up stopping at the Mr. Sub right on 14th. It was almost closing time on Saturday. And I realized something about eating later than normal. When you go into Mr. Sub right before closing they'll really dish out the chicken for a Louisiana Chicken Wrap! I was shocked! Normally you get a tiny portion, but the guy was like ... it's closing time ... we'll probably throw it out anyways ... load him up. I was getting two wraps (because they are normally pretty small), and the girl looked at him kind of weird. He was like ... never mind, just make his wrap ... flicking his hand at her. I realized what was happening then ... I was getting the biggest king kong style chicken wraps to ever go down in Mr. Sub history! By the way ... they were SUPER DELICIOUS!
So I have 5 days to tie up all of the loose ends around here and get out to B.C. I pretty excited about going. It'll be some cool work. They are a windows shop, and I know I'm not going to convert them. They use Fox Pro in the back end of things. At least I'll be using PHP which is a bonus. If it was VFP with ASP and VB then I probably wouldn't be overly interested. I've been doing to VFP research (with what limited time I have), and it seems alright. It's not a full RDBMS like PostgreSQL would be, but they have the existing work in Fox Pro already. It would take a whole lot of effort, and work to port something into another DB model. I'm not really up for that today. Maybe someday I'll convince Chris of the OS world. ;-)
I've been researching ADODB somewhat. I don't know if it is currently what another developer out there is using or not, but it looks like the way to go. Apparently you have to Connect to VFP with the OLE DB, and not just ODBC, otherwise the stored procedures will not be accessible. Alright ... that seems pretty gay to me ... but I'm not concerned. The ADODB seems like a pretty good DB extraction layer. I prefer my own framework (because it includes much more than DB extraction), but I'll probably use a subset of my framework, and interact with ADODB. I mean ... it's not that hard to figure out the concept of
1. make a connection
2. execute commands
3. go through the results somehow
ADODB did have a cool feature which executed a command to retrieve one row (like I end up doing all the time e.g. you get an ID and you need other fields corresponding to that field). I thought that was cool, it's not hard to do long hand, but it would save about 5 lines of code every time I did that. Someday I'll come up with something better for myself ;-)
¶ 1:56:00 PM 0 comments
I'll be driving out this Saturday. I'll be stopping in Vancouver for a couple of nights to stay with my good buddy from back home Heath Horejda. I haven't seen him since around Christmas 2 years ago so I'm pretty excited about staying with him. He's bar tending and playing the starving actor quite well. He has a new girlfriend Chelsea. I'm really looking forward to catching up and seeing the guy. He's one of "the boys", you never loose the ties, you know?
Anyways ... I had left him a message earlier this week, and he phoned me back while I was driving last night. I was on my way to grab something to eat and head home. I ended up stopping at the Mr. Sub right on 14th. It was almost closing time on Saturday. And I realized something about eating later than normal. When you go into Mr. Sub right before closing they'll really dish out the chicken for a Louisiana Chicken Wrap! I was shocked! Normally you get a tiny portion, but the guy was like ... it's closing time ... we'll probably throw it out anyways ... load him up. I was getting two wraps (because they are normally pretty small), and the girl looked at him kind of weird. He was like ... never mind, just make his wrap ... flicking his hand at her. I realized what was happening then ... I was getting the biggest king kong style chicken wraps to ever go down in Mr. Sub history! By the way ... they were SUPER DELICIOUS!
So I have 5 days to tie up all of the loose ends around here and get out to B.C. I pretty excited about going. It'll be some cool work. They are a windows shop, and I know I'm not going to convert them. They use Fox Pro in the back end of things. At least I'll be using PHP which is a bonus. If it was VFP with ASP and VB then I probably wouldn't be overly interested. I've been doing to VFP research (with what limited time I have), and it seems alright. It's not a full RDBMS like PostgreSQL would be, but they have the existing work in Fox Pro already. It would take a whole lot of effort, and work to port something into another DB model. I'm not really up for that today. Maybe someday I'll convince Chris of the OS world. ;-)
I've been researching ADODB somewhat. I don't know if it is currently what another developer out there is using or not, but it looks like the way to go. Apparently you have to Connect to VFP with the OLE DB, and not just ODBC, otherwise the stored procedures will not be accessible. Alright ... that seems pretty gay to me ... but I'm not concerned. The ADODB seems like a pretty good DB extraction layer. I prefer my own framework (because it includes much more than DB extraction), but I'll probably use a subset of my framework, and interact with ADODB. I mean ... it's not that hard to figure out the concept of
1. make a connection
2. execute commands
3. go through the results somehow
ADODB did have a cool feature which executed a command to retrieve one row (like I end up doing all the time e.g. you get an ID and you need other fields corresponding to that field). I thought that was cool, it's not hard to do long hand, but it would save about 5 lines of code every time I did that. Someday I'll come up with something better for myself ;-)
¶ 1:56:00 PM 0 comments
Saturday, November 20, 2004
VPN & Cigarettes
I know I'm a little bit late writing about this latest episode, but I've just been too drained to think about rehashing this experience for a few days. Let's just say I wanted to bask in the glory of completely disintegrating, and re-implementing a 6 node VPN that spans over 500 KM from furthest point to point. :-D
As any good system administrator knows that when dealing with _anything_ that involves upgrading, changing, installing etc. for a corporate environment, it automatically moves your working hours to outside of the regular business hours. That doesn't mean that you get the day off, it just means you work late. Sometimes you work really late.
I started last Friday afternoon at 4:00 P.M. Sent a staff wide email letting them know about network downtime starting after 5:00. I spent some time reading the manual, and researching the Linksys BEFVP41 VPN routers. I had 7 routers sitting on my desk, and in order to re-work the company's VPN setup, it was an all or nothing change over.
The fun thing about VPN networking is you are generally connecting to different physical locations. The two locations I was working from were about a 30 minute city drive apart. So I went slow and got the internet (NAT) working at the main VPN hub, and packed up a router and hit the road. Got internet working at location #2, but for all of my efforts I could not get the VPN connection to properly work.
Back to the main hub location for some more research and testing. Make some changes, try some different things, and back on the road up north to try it again. This cycle repeats for a while, and after 8 hours of research, informed trial and error, I realized that all of the routers require a firmware upgrade in order for the IPSEC-Passthrough to work properly. So at 1:00 A.M I decide to not tackle this now, and I back out my hardware changes and then plug the OpenBSD systems back in and head home. I had to re-apply the old setup as the offices were open on Saturday.
Saturday afternoon at 4:00 I decide to tackle this project for a second round. I updated each router individually, and then I started my configurations again. By this point in time I had created an installation instructions document for other technically savvy people at the company. This served useful as a checklist for me too. Back and forth between points, but not quite as much as the night before. I figured out the niceness of "remote administration".
To make this story short, 13 hours later, lots of driving, phone calls to Linksys support, phone calls to ISP support, and a large amount of cigarettes later, it all boiled down to the fact that the main VPN hub was connected to an older modem which needed to be reset for the modem to allow the public internet to reach the routers IP address.
The saga continued on Sunday as I set up another location which went smooth as silk. Monday morning I hit another location at 9:00 A.M. on 3 hours sleep before I hit the highway to get to another city to install their router. I sent another technical guy from the company to another city with a pre-configured router. I was crossing my fingers that everything would work properly for him. I t was a simple unplug the OpenBSD computer, plug in the router, count to 20 and everything should work. Luckily it did, as I didn't really feel like trouble shooting new router from 500 clicks away.
So my weekend efforts of over 30 hours. A sleep total of about 15 hours in 4 days. And the network has been removed and completely replaced. I am uber happy with this new solution. The routers are $170, and now anyone can configure them, or administer to them. Linksys provides a very very nice web interface for modifications. They offer several cool features (Full VPN, Configurable logs, Email notifications, port forwarding, MAC address cloning, Firewall configurations). They are a very viable solution as opposed to an OenBSD style situation where each firewall runs ~ $1000 for the computer, and I am the only one around who can handle the technically aspect of them. besides the Linksys routers run embedded Linux. That's super cool!
I'm happy, I'm tired, and I want to smoke some more.
¶ 1:14:00 AM 0 comments
As any good system administrator knows that when dealing with _anything_ that involves upgrading, changing, installing etc. for a corporate environment, it automatically moves your working hours to outside of the regular business hours. That doesn't mean that you get the day off, it just means you work late. Sometimes you work really late.
I started last Friday afternoon at 4:00 P.M. Sent a staff wide email letting them know about network downtime starting after 5:00. I spent some time reading the manual, and researching the Linksys BEFVP41 VPN routers. I had 7 routers sitting on my desk, and in order to re-work the company's VPN setup, it was an all or nothing change over.
The fun thing about VPN networking is you are generally connecting to different physical locations. The two locations I was working from were about a 30 minute city drive apart. So I went slow and got the internet (NAT) working at the main VPN hub, and packed up a router and hit the road. Got internet working at location #2, but for all of my efforts I could not get the VPN connection to properly work.
Back to the main hub location for some more research and testing. Make some changes, try some different things, and back on the road up north to try it again. This cycle repeats for a while, and after 8 hours of research, informed trial and error, I realized that all of the routers require a firmware upgrade in order for the IPSEC-Passthrough to work properly. So at 1:00 A.M I decide to not tackle this now, and I back out my hardware changes and then plug the OpenBSD systems back in and head home. I had to re-apply the old setup as the offices were open on Saturday.
Saturday afternoon at 4:00 I decide to tackle this project for a second round. I updated each router individually, and then I started my configurations again. By this point in time I had created an installation instructions document for other technically savvy people at the company. This served useful as a checklist for me too. Back and forth between points, but not quite as much as the night before. I figured out the niceness of "remote administration".
To make this story short, 13 hours later, lots of driving, phone calls to Linksys support, phone calls to ISP support, and a large amount of cigarettes later, it all boiled down to the fact that the main VPN hub was connected to an older modem which needed to be reset for the modem to allow the public internet to reach the routers IP address.
The saga continued on Sunday as I set up another location which went smooth as silk. Monday morning I hit another location at 9:00 A.M. on 3 hours sleep before I hit the highway to get to another city to install their router. I sent another technical guy from the company to another city with a pre-configured router. I was crossing my fingers that everything would work properly for him. I t was a simple unplug the OpenBSD computer, plug in the router, count to 20 and everything should work. Luckily it did, as I didn't really feel like trouble shooting new router from 500 clicks away.
So my weekend efforts of over 30 hours. A sleep total of about 15 hours in 4 days. And the network has been removed and completely replaced. I am uber happy with this new solution. The routers are $170, and now anyone can configure them, or administer to them. Linksys provides a very very nice web interface for modifications. They offer several cool features (Full VPN, Configurable logs, Email notifications, port forwarding, MAC address cloning, Firewall configurations). They are a very viable solution as opposed to an OenBSD style situation where each firewall runs ~ $1000 for the computer, and I am the only one around who can handle the technically aspect of them. besides the Linksys routers run embedded Linux. That's super cool!
I'm happy, I'm tired, and I want to smoke some more.
¶ 1:14:00 AM 0 comments
Thursday, November 11, 2004
New Adventures, Pumpkins & Jiffy Markers Pt. 2
So if you haven't read the previous posts, this one might not make so much sense. Get the background first folks. Then this nonsense will all become sparkling clear.
FRIDAY NIGHT
So now that AJ and I were so excited about the way our business went. It was time to play. We got back to Marshall's house, and had a real interesting time parking the truck backwards into the driveway. Our sincere apologies to Marsh's neighbor with the red fence. Step one was to get ourselves a drink! So we relaxed, had a couple of bevies, and told Marsh about our day as we planned the evenings events.
Karen had invited us to the pub she works at for super. We discussed our plans, and Marsh drove us on up. The "Knockan Back" was CRAZY BUSY. I think the three of us got the last table in the place. It wasn't even in Karen's section, but she stole it from another server so we would be at her table. The guys ordered a pitcher of beer, and I ordered a pitcher of Rye and Diet Coke. Karen regretfully informed me that they can only serve 2oz to a person. So doubles it is!
We ordered several appetizers, and full course meals as well. We were starving! The meals were sensational. The food was so great Marshall ordered again after we were done eating. Victoria is entirely non-smoking, so we had to keep running outside to smoke. This created what I'll refer to as "opportunity". As I explained in the previous entry about "battling" between AJ and Marshall. This night was exemplified by the amount of alcohol we consumed!
We were sitting at the table and from out of no where AJ picked up the candle on our table and dumps it into Marsh's beer. Marsh had nothing to say but "good one". So now the game was on for the night! You can just imagine the beer fight continuing for a couple of hours. Our table was getting rather wet. Since we were out of napkins we just grabbed the napkins close at hand. Not thinking that the cutlery inside would now have to be re-washed, and re-rolled. Karen informed us of this fact as she laid out the new roll-ups on the tables beside us. Moments later we needed more napkins as Marsh stuffed a second glass into AJ's beer as pay back. So after the double look over each shoulder, off comes the cutlery roll ups. So Karen was pissed again ... but she couldn't stay mad at us because we tried to fix it for her. Just imagine three drunk guys trying to make cutlery roll-ups from used napkins. So basically you'd have two knives and a spoon tied in a big napkin knot. It was classy. Karen loved us so much! Actually she couldn't even be mad it was so funny.
At this point in time we have a pile of wet napkins on our table. Which make excellent weapons when you are battling a friend. I can't imagine it feels very nice to be whipped in the eye with a wet napkin. Maybe we should ask Marsh to fill us in? Needless to say the fight was on again, and I became sprinkled with soaped up beer. Good times.
Around this point in time AJ and Marshall decided it would be a good idea to have a lime eating contest. But they wouldn't server us a plate of limes. So of course to drunk people, that is ridiculous. Why can't you serve us a plate of limes? You have a whole bunch over there by the bar? "Well I don't have time to cut them all up right now". We did realize that the joint was busy, and the staff were running their cute little heels off. AJ got the bright idea to just give us the limes and a knife. We'll cut them ourselves. I don't remember when this got dropped but the whole lime eating contest just fizzled out. All the talk about limes did make AJ hungry so he ordered a desert from the menu. Then he went to the bathroom ... what a bad idea.
Going to the bathroom again created "opportunity". We decided that the desert was the perfect hiding place for the candle to hide. After some gentle reconstruction work, the small cannister of wax was firmly planted inside the mocha cheesecake. Now I realize this was probably not the most fun AJ had been privy to, but Marshall and I had a blast. It took him a bit to figure out we were dropping hints. He knew we did something ... he just couldn't figure it out. I swear he stabbed the candle about 4 times, and almost ... I mean almost ate the whole thing. It fell off his fork, and it just appeared to be part of the cake. He did finally figure it out. He found the candle after making a ginormous mess. At this point in time ... there are much less people in the bar, and it is rather peculiar that there are no more cutlery wraps on the tables ... well the tables that surrounded us anyways. So we had to _ask_ for napkins, and get cleaned up.
Let us move on to parking lot jousting. Lets just say by this point in the night none of us were driving ANYWHERE. So we took a vote and determined that we would stay at the Knockan Back until Karen had closed out, and then head to some bar downtown. Cool. This decision however gave us all a great "opportunity" to consume larger amounts of alcohol. One of our save the world discussions led us outside, and eventually we took part in parking lot jousting.
Here's basically how it would work. AJ on one end, Marshall on the other end. Five parking barriers in between them. Me in the middle making the call. Ready Set GO! While attempting to maintain some balance they would charge forward, meet in the middle ... let me rephrase that ... crash in the middle trying to knock each other off. I realize this sounds like an episode of "Jack Ass", it it's probably been done before, but this was _very_ entertaining.
FRIDAY NIGHT
So now that AJ and I were so excited about the way our business went. It was time to play. We got back to Marshall's house, and had a real interesting time parking the truck backwards into the driveway. Our sincere apologies to Marsh's neighbor with the red fence. Step one was to get ourselves a drink! So we relaxed, had a couple of bevies, and told Marsh about our day as we planned the evenings events.
Karen had invited us to the pub she works at for super. We discussed our plans, and Marsh drove us on up. The "Knockan Back" was CRAZY BUSY. I think the three of us got the last table in the place. It wasn't even in Karen's section, but she stole it from another server so we would be at her table. The guys ordered a pitcher of beer, and I ordered a pitcher of Rye and Diet Coke. Karen regretfully informed me that they can only serve 2oz to a person. So doubles it is!
We ordered several appetizers, and full course meals as well. We were starving! The meals were sensational. The food was so great Marshall ordered again after we were done eating. Victoria is entirely non-smoking, so we had to keep running outside to smoke. This created what I'll refer to as "opportunity". As I explained in the previous entry about "battling" between AJ and Marshall. This night was exemplified by the amount of alcohol we consumed!
We were sitting at the table and from out of no where AJ picked up the candle on our table and dumps it into Marsh's beer. Marsh had nothing to say but "good one". So now the game was on for the night! You can just imagine the beer fight continuing for a couple of hours. Our table was getting rather wet. Since we were out of napkins we just grabbed the napkins close at hand. Not thinking that the cutlery inside would now have to be re-washed, and re-rolled. Karen informed us of this fact as she laid out the new roll-ups on the tables beside us. Moments later we needed more napkins as Marsh stuffed a second glass into AJ's beer as pay back. So after the double look over each shoulder, off comes the cutlery roll ups. So Karen was pissed again ... but she couldn't stay mad at us because we tried to fix it for her. Just imagine three drunk guys trying to make cutlery roll-ups from used napkins. So basically you'd have two knives and a spoon tied in a big napkin knot. It was classy. Karen loved us so much! Actually she couldn't even be mad it was so funny.
At this point in time we have a pile of wet napkins on our table. Which make excellent weapons when you are battling a friend. I can't imagine it feels very nice to be whipped in the eye with a wet napkin. Maybe we should ask Marsh to fill us in? Needless to say the fight was on again, and I became sprinkled with soaped up beer. Good times.
Around this point in time AJ and Marshall decided it would be a good idea to have a lime eating contest. But they wouldn't server us a plate of limes. So of course to drunk people, that is ridiculous. Why can't you serve us a plate of limes? You have a whole bunch over there by the bar? "Well I don't have time to cut them all up right now". We did realize that the joint was busy, and the staff were running their cute little heels off. AJ got the bright idea to just give us the limes and a knife. We'll cut them ourselves. I don't remember when this got dropped but the whole lime eating contest just fizzled out. All the talk about limes did make AJ hungry so he ordered a desert from the menu. Then he went to the bathroom ... what a bad idea.
Going to the bathroom again created "opportunity". We decided that the desert was the perfect hiding place for the candle to hide. After some gentle reconstruction work, the small cannister of wax was firmly planted inside the mocha cheesecake. Now I realize this was probably not the most fun AJ had been privy to, but Marshall and I had a blast. It took him a bit to figure out we were dropping hints. He knew we did something ... he just couldn't figure it out. I swear he stabbed the candle about 4 times, and almost ... I mean almost ate the whole thing. It fell off his fork, and it just appeared to be part of the cake. He did finally figure it out. He found the candle after making a ginormous mess. At this point in time ... there are much less people in the bar, and it is rather peculiar that there are no more cutlery wraps on the tables ... well the tables that surrounded us anyways. So we had to _ask_ for napkins, and get cleaned up.
Let us move on to parking lot jousting. Lets just say by this point in the night none of us were driving ANYWHERE. So we took a vote and determined that we would stay at the Knockan Back until Karen had closed out, and then head to some bar downtown. Cool. This decision however gave us all a great "opportunity" to consume larger amounts of alcohol. One of our save the world discussions led us outside, and eventually we took part in parking lot jousting.
Here's basically how it would work. AJ on one end, Marshall on the other end. Five parking barriers in between them. Me in the middle making the call. Ready Set GO! While attempting to maintain some balance they would charge forward, meet in the middle ... let me rephrase that ... crash in the middle trying to knock each other off. I realize this sounds like an episode of "Jack Ass", it it's probably been done before, but this was _very_ entertaining.
M - - - - - AJ
A
¶ 2:40:00 AM 0 comments
A
That's basically how it would look. Sometimes the call was pretty easy to make. Sometimes it was just a flat out draw. Like the one where Marsh slipped in between the second and third barriers, got his foot stuck and then AJ leaped across the whole middle parking cinder block and tackled him. It looked like it kind of hurt ... but I was too busy laughing at them. I apparently missed the one where Age got it in the Jelly Beans. I went back inside after a while and it happened right after I left. After quite some time, and my need for a new cigarette I went out side to find AJ just getting up. I think he was down for about 20 minutes. I also missed the one where Marsh ducked out of the way and AJ lunged at him ... and missed. It was apparently just as good.
So for last call we order two pitchers, doubles and a round of shooters. Gotta love that drunken logic right? We discussed the absent waitress with the plastic boobs for a while, and then we perched ourselves by the actual "bar", as Karen finished her cash out. Since we were lucky enough to know staff, they would actually let us back in after closing when we would got outside to smoke again. So after knocking em back at the Knockan Back all night long it was finally time to leave. After another round of jousting in the parking lot, and getting very bizarre looks from K, we went to her car.
Now Karen's car is not entirely built for large people, but we managed to squeeze everyone in. The door would open form the outside I think. I guess that's just a trend in Victoria. SO we were off for the late nite part of our adventure. zipping through the streets of Victoria @ 1:00 A.M. as fast as we could to get to a place called "The Boom Boom Room". Yes ... we actually went to a bar called the "Boom Boom Room". It's the bar where all the little 19 year old sluts go to get laid apparently. We managed to not break Karen's car, and for the record she did plead with us to not break her seats crawling around like a bunch of apes. We parked in a parkade downtown, and walked a couple of blocks. Some other bars seemed busy and the streets were bustling with people. I was just following the leader so to speak. We crossed the street, and headed down boardwalk type steps to sea level. The Boom Boom Room was in the basement of a building, down the steps, at sea level. Melissa said "Funny how the boom boom room is right where all the sewage comes out from Victoria into the ocean". I didn't become aware of that until after the night.
The bar was small. And we went from drunk to completely _HAMMERED_. I was informed that rye and diet coke is not a very common drink, and at this point in time it all tasted the same to me, so when the bar tenders messed up and kept giving me rye and ginger, I had no complaints. I actually like rye and ginger, I just started the night with diet coke, and kept on track. Then we talked about the smutty girls in short skirts. One of them even befriended Karen at the end of the night ... just chatting her up I guess. We had some gross tequila cranberry shots, and something else. And then last call was over and the bouncers were kicking us out.
We decide our next adventure was to find Mr. Tube Steak. So we started to walk through downtown Victoria looking for the hot dog guy. Age and Marshall still battling as good as ever. All of a sudden AJ is lying flat on his back in the middle of the sidewalk. Onetime punch and AJ bites the dust. It was a very impressive moment in the night. So we ignored the street people, and the cougars asking us for joints. And we made a bee line for the hot dog cart. We managed to get the last 3 smokies he had going. Then we argued about the CFL with other patrons hanging around. mmmmmmmm ... good smokies.
We stumbled our way down the street and poured ourselves into a taxi. Back to Marshall's house. Go to the front door, AJ was kind of wobbly. So the traditional gesture of help is to push him backwards and make him fall down. AJ's retaliation however involved accidently smashing Marshall's head square into a very very solid looking door. The C-R-A-C-K was amazingly loud, and he had to take a breather before we went in. Finally we are home. But the night isn't over yet. We it basically was for AJ because he passed out within minutes of landing on the couch. We ordered pizza.
So with AJ passed out, and the pizza not coming for about 30 minutes, we again had "opportunity". Out comes the jiffy markers. I'm not sure how funny it would have been, but I'm fairly confident the pizza delivery guy would have busted a gut laughing. We couldn't get AJ up to answer the door with "I love cocks" marker-ed on his forehead. Too bad ... it would have been great. The marker thing just went from bad to worse. AJ had entire stories on his legs, black lips, and a huge smiley pumpkin drawn on his chest. "Trick Or Treat". I must tell you that this was a very hard task to accomplish due to two things. AJ kept wrestling around and moving. And it's kind of hard to not laugh when you are drawing on your friends face after he passed out. Marshall had to quit several times because he was laughing so hard. I left the room so I wouldn't wake AJ up. I realized later that wasn't possible anyways.
So I won't include the pictures on here. But I do have copies of them (Thanks Marshall). I stumbled downstairs to crash for a few hours. I did hear AJ wake Marshall up in the morning. Apparently with the biggest charlie horse ever. I heard a few screams and lots of laughing. I knew he saw. Not all of it yet ... more screams came later. He washed most of it off. I doubt he could have flown home that way. Thank God it was washable. It was quite the adventure. We basically killed some time, picked up vehicles, and went to the airport for an early flight. What a crazy time.
Well that brings to a close my adventures in Victoria for two days. I'd like to thank AJ for setting this all up, Marshall for everything he did, Karen And Melissa for letting us stay with them, Chris & Chris & all of the staff at Power Soft. I had a fantastic time and I'm greatly looking forward to being back on the Island soon.
Cheers!
So for last call we order two pitchers, doubles and a round of shooters. Gotta love that drunken logic right? We discussed the absent waitress with the plastic boobs for a while, and then we perched ourselves by the actual "bar", as Karen finished her cash out. Since we were lucky enough to know staff, they would actually let us back in after closing when we would got outside to smoke again. So after knocking em back at the Knockan Back all night long it was finally time to leave. After another round of jousting in the parking lot, and getting very bizarre looks from K, we went to her car.
Now Karen's car is not entirely built for large people, but we managed to squeeze everyone in. The door would open form the outside I think. I guess that's just a trend in Victoria. SO we were off for the late nite part of our adventure. zipping through the streets of Victoria @ 1:00 A.M. as fast as we could to get to a place called "The Boom Boom Room". Yes ... we actually went to a bar called the "Boom Boom Room". It's the bar where all the little 19 year old sluts go to get laid apparently. We managed to not break Karen's car, and for the record she did plead with us to not break her seats crawling around like a bunch of apes. We parked in a parkade downtown, and walked a couple of blocks. Some other bars seemed busy and the streets were bustling with people. I was just following the leader so to speak. We crossed the street, and headed down boardwalk type steps to sea level. The Boom Boom Room was in the basement of a building, down the steps, at sea level. Melissa said "Funny how the boom boom room is right where all the sewage comes out from Victoria into the ocean". I didn't become aware of that until after the night.
The bar was small. And we went from drunk to completely _HAMMERED_. I was informed that rye and diet coke is not a very common drink, and at this point in time it all tasted the same to me, so when the bar tenders messed up and kept giving me rye and ginger, I had no complaints. I actually like rye and ginger, I just started the night with diet coke, and kept on track. Then we talked about the smutty girls in short skirts. One of them even befriended Karen at the end of the night ... just chatting her up I guess. We had some gross tequila cranberry shots, and something else. And then last call was over and the bouncers were kicking us out.
We decide our next adventure was to find Mr. Tube Steak. So we started to walk through downtown Victoria looking for the hot dog guy. Age and Marshall still battling as good as ever. All of a sudden AJ is lying flat on his back in the middle of the sidewalk. Onetime punch and AJ bites the dust. It was a very impressive moment in the night. So we ignored the street people, and the cougars asking us for joints. And we made a bee line for the hot dog cart. We managed to get the last 3 smokies he had going. Then we argued about the CFL with other patrons hanging around. mmmmmmmm ... good smokies.
We stumbled our way down the street and poured ourselves into a taxi. Back to Marshall's house. Go to the front door, AJ was kind of wobbly. So the traditional gesture of help is to push him backwards and make him fall down. AJ's retaliation however involved accidently smashing Marshall's head square into a very very solid looking door. The C-R-A-C-K was amazingly loud, and he had to take a breather before we went in. Finally we are home. But the night isn't over yet. We it basically was for AJ because he passed out within minutes of landing on the couch. We ordered pizza.
So with AJ passed out, and the pizza not coming for about 30 minutes, we again had "opportunity". Out comes the jiffy markers. I'm not sure how funny it would have been, but I'm fairly confident the pizza delivery guy would have busted a gut laughing. We couldn't get AJ up to answer the door with "I love cocks" marker-ed on his forehead. Too bad ... it would have been great. The marker thing just went from bad to worse. AJ had entire stories on his legs, black lips, and a huge smiley pumpkin drawn on his chest. "Trick Or Treat". I must tell you that this was a very hard task to accomplish due to two things. AJ kept wrestling around and moving. And it's kind of hard to not laugh when you are drawing on your friends face after he passed out. Marshall had to quit several times because he was laughing so hard. I left the room so I wouldn't wake AJ up. I realized later that wasn't possible anyways.
So I won't include the pictures on here. But I do have copies of them (Thanks Marshall). I stumbled downstairs to crash for a few hours. I did hear AJ wake Marshall up in the morning. Apparently with the biggest charlie horse ever. I heard a few screams and lots of laughing. I knew he saw. Not all of it yet ... more screams came later. He washed most of it off. I doubt he could have flown home that way. Thank God it was washable. It was quite the adventure. We basically killed some time, picked up vehicles, and went to the airport for an early flight. What a crazy time.
Well that brings to a close my adventures in Victoria for two days. I'd like to thank AJ for setting this all up, Marshall for everything he did, Karen And Melissa for letting us stay with them, Chris & Chris & all of the staff at Power Soft. I had a fantastic time and I'm greatly looking forward to being back on the Island soon.
Cheers!
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Sooke
Alright, so I haven't been able to get to this and finish my stories recently. I've been asked to complete it so I don't leave everyone hanging! I've decided to break it up even more and talk about the reason I went to Victoria in the first place in this episode. AJ and I went out to meet with the people from a company called Power Soft. They are a small rising tech company located in Sooke. Power Soft are the creators of the Power quote software used by many insurance companies. The purpose of our meeting was to meet them and discuss some web based application of their current software.
Marshall lent us his truck to drive out to Sooke. AJ had directions from the marketing manager from Power Soft, and he also had directions from Marshall, and he had a map to go along with the directions. Thank god he had me in the truck or he would have gotten lost! Around the right corner, left on Hillsdale, take the right hand turn off on Douglas, then out the highway, and turn 14 to Sooke. Follow the highway. This is a week later, and I think I got it right still. So we were happily on our way. It was a really cool drive, but the fog was so heavy we really couldn't see much further than 2 feet off the sides of the roads. I'll use that as our excuse for driving right through Sooke.
Actually we stopped to grab a couple of McMuffins, and since Sooke is so small that if you spit on the ground you might drown the town. We were looking for the Royal Bank building. Being from Calgary we are used to the sky scraper metropolis type banks. This bank however takes up the main floor of a two story building, and where we wanted to be was the second floor.
We arrived! We met with Chris Lang (president), Chris Dunn (Marketing). We also met everyone else who works there. Steve, Rudy and several other people. I apologize for not remembering all of your names. We had the whole tour of the offices. It's a small shop with about a dozen people. They were all fantastic. What a great atmosphere to be around. The friendliness began by the traditional offering of coffee and pastry treats (donuts). The coffee was again superb, but several LARGE cups later did not agree with the fact to make use of the washrooms you had to get the key first. I sometimes forget how small towns work. ;-)
We discussed the current power quote capabilites, and the new features coming up. We learned about their new web development of a CMS, and other tasks. Basically the group of us just sat around in the board room talking about every topic under the sun. Including Hockey, E-Bay, sports cards, insurance companies, computers, development ... well you get the picture anyways. It was very enlightening for me, and very very productive all around.
We went for lunch at a little wharf restaraunt. It was quaint, and seemed like it was in an old house. The chef came out to meet us and ask how the meal was. It was excellent! We had the biggest vent session over lunch. We ended up just tearing loose on teachers and city workers. I don't know why it happened. Computer people must hold everything in for a while.
We continued the afternoon with more talks and discussion. The end result is that I'm going back for a few weeks in December. We ended the day with Chris Lang touring us through his computer collections. He collects hard to find computers. He has some very unique Mac computers, and even has some NeXT computers. They were a tad expensive when they came out, but seem to have dropped in price tremendously since the original release.
Phew! What a mentally draining day. AJ and I ended up driving for about 10 minutes and didn't say a word to each other. Our brains were so fried from everything that went on. It's a good feeling when things going well, and your brain hurts from all of the work. The drive was like the calming period, minus the body convulsions from too much coffee. We did have to make a stop to get any sort of drink that was non-caffeinated. Brain feels melty ... must cut loose! And boy did we. I'll leave that for the next episode! ¶ 2:12:00 PM 0 comments
Marshall lent us his truck to drive out to Sooke. AJ had directions from the marketing manager from Power Soft, and he also had directions from Marshall, and he had a map to go along with the directions. Thank god he had me in the truck or he would have gotten lost! Around the right corner, left on Hillsdale, take the right hand turn off on Douglas, then out the highway, and turn 14 to Sooke. Follow the highway. This is a week later, and I think I got it right still. So we were happily on our way. It was a really cool drive, but the fog was so heavy we really couldn't see much further than 2 feet off the sides of the roads. I'll use that as our excuse for driving right through Sooke.
Actually we stopped to grab a couple of McMuffins, and since Sooke is so small that if you spit on the ground you might drown the town. We were looking for the Royal Bank building. Being from Calgary we are used to the sky scraper metropolis type banks. This bank however takes up the main floor of a two story building, and where we wanted to be was the second floor.
We arrived! We met with Chris Lang (president), Chris Dunn (Marketing). We also met everyone else who works there. Steve, Rudy and several other people. I apologize for not remembering all of your names. We had the whole tour of the offices. It's a small shop with about a dozen people. They were all fantastic. What a great atmosphere to be around. The friendliness began by the traditional offering of coffee and pastry treats (donuts). The coffee was again superb, but several LARGE cups later did not agree with the fact to make use of the washrooms you had to get the key first. I sometimes forget how small towns work. ;-)
We discussed the current power quote capabilites, and the new features coming up. We learned about their new web development of a CMS, and other tasks. Basically the group of us just sat around in the board room talking about every topic under the sun. Including Hockey, E-Bay, sports cards, insurance companies, computers, development ... well you get the picture anyways. It was very enlightening for me, and very very productive all around.
We went for lunch at a little wharf restaraunt. It was quaint, and seemed like it was in an old house. The chef came out to meet us and ask how the meal was. It was excellent! We had the biggest vent session over lunch. We ended up just tearing loose on teachers and city workers. I don't know why it happened. Computer people must hold everything in for a while.
We continued the afternoon with more talks and discussion. The end result is that I'm going back for a few weeks in December. We ended the day with Chris Lang touring us through his computer collections. He collects hard to find computers. He has some very unique Mac computers, and even has some NeXT computers. They were a tad expensive when they came out, but seem to have dropped in price tremendously since the original release.
Phew! What a mentally draining day. AJ and I ended up driving for about 10 minutes and didn't say a word to each other. Our brains were so fried from everything that went on. It's a good feeling when things going well, and your brain hurts from all of the work. The drive was like the calming period, minus the body convulsions from too much coffee. We did have to make a stop to get any sort of drink that was non-caffeinated. Brain feels melty ... must cut loose! And boy did we. I'll leave that for the next episode! ¶ 2:12:00 PM 0 comments
New Adventures, Pumpkins & Jiffy Markers
For the first time in my life I saw a pumpkin farm. And then things got a whole lot better!
Just a small warning this is going to be fairly lengthy, just so you all know before you continue.
THURSDAY
Last Thursday I was travelling from Calgary to Victoria. It's only an hour flight, but it was beautiful when we left Alberta, and all cloudy when we arrived on Vancouver Island. AJ's friend Marshall picked us up at the airport. Marsh is totaly awesome! Really funny guy, totally laid back! He gave us one of his trucks while we were there, gave us a place to crash, the whole nine yards.
We were starving hungry so mission #1 was to go for food. So this was the start of our adventure. We were travelling the highway from the airport into Victoria. Along the side of the road was a pumpkin farm. Yes, just a farm that grows pumpkins. Fields of big orange gourds used around Halloween. I'd never seen one before and I knew this was going to be a good trip because of it.
We ate at a totally cool pub called Spinaker's in Esquilmalt. We ate on the deck, which over looked the bay accross to Victoria. Totally beautiful scenery. The food was INCREDIBLE! Halibat was yummy, the nachos were great, the pork dumplings I'm not such a big fan of ... but Marshall and AJ devoured those. Good food, and a few drinks later the heads started to hit the table. The plan of attack was to go for a big coffee.
On the drive from Spinakers to "coffee" I was introduced to "battle". AJ and Marshall seem to have a tradition that when they get together then spend the entire time kicking the crap out of each other. So we were driving through Victoria and AJ was lying down in the back seat of the truck. From out of nowhere Marshall hauls off and swings around while driving, giving Age the biggest charlie horse I had ever been witness too. So now AJ is screeming like a wounded wombat, and Marshall is laughing in an uncontrollable manner. This was just the start of the battle.
We went to the snotty part of Victoria (Oak Bay?) I'm not familar with the sections yet. We went to this quirky little cafe for coffee. It had a sushi restaraunt, an etheopian restaraunt, and thai place, and in the middle, this little coffee bar where we got the _best_ coffee ever. The coast has good coffee and a bazillion coffee shops. Everywhere you turn is a coffee shop, and not redneck donut stores, I mean cafes a plenty, and coffee beans galore. All this talk of coffee made us go in search of cool coffee mugs at Walmart. Marsh got two of the silver fat bottomed stainless steel ones that don't slide of your car, AJ got one too. I ended up buying a hideous mammoth oragne Bubba Travel Keg coffee mug. It was quite the treat. So now we were prepared for the night's activities. We made a stop at the liquor store and then to Marshall's house.
Marsh's house is wicked cool! It was the house Nelly Furtado grew up in. Her father was a mason, so there is lots of cool stone work. Let me tell you something though. Houses in Victoria are not made for large people. AJ and myself bashed and cranked our heads into doorways, pillars, ceilings and I'm quite sure something else along the way. So remember to duck.
Marshall has started a land scaping business (Islandscape Landscaping?) Sorry if I got it wrong. If you live in Victoria then look him up for all your land scaping needs! He totally redid his yard AWESOME! His driveway is very, very narrow. So it was a treat backing into it, and apparently much harder when the trailer is hitched up (like 40 mins to back into your house).
Marshall lives with two amazingly beautiful roommates. Karen and Melissa. These ladies are gorgeous, smart, sweet, funny. They have it all! And it seems as though Thursday nights are ladies T.V. nights. They tape America's Top Model from the night before, and watch it before The Apprentice, but without commercials of course! America's top Model is the cream of the crop show. Hot models, getting half naked, and then someone gets voted out. What gets better than that? And then finding out who gets fired next? It's quite the treat. I must say however that Melissa gets extraordinarily involved in the action on television. I've never seen anyone get so mad at people inside the tele? I think I'm hooked on the shows now just because of you Melissa!
That basically brought to a close our Thursday Adventure in Victoria. It's just too long to keep going, so I will continue my trip in a new entry. ¶ 1:14:00 PM 0 comments
Just a small warning this is going to be fairly lengthy, just so you all know before you continue.
THURSDAY
Last Thursday I was travelling from Calgary to Victoria. It's only an hour flight, but it was beautiful when we left Alberta, and all cloudy when we arrived on Vancouver Island. AJ's friend Marshall picked us up at the airport. Marsh is totaly awesome! Really funny guy, totally laid back! He gave us one of his trucks while we were there, gave us a place to crash, the whole nine yards.
We were starving hungry so mission #1 was to go for food. So this was the start of our adventure. We were travelling the highway from the airport into Victoria. Along the side of the road was a pumpkin farm. Yes, just a farm that grows pumpkins. Fields of big orange gourds used around Halloween. I'd never seen one before and I knew this was going to be a good trip because of it.
We ate at a totally cool pub called Spinaker's in Esquilmalt. We ate on the deck, which over looked the bay accross to Victoria. Totally beautiful scenery. The food was INCREDIBLE! Halibat was yummy, the nachos were great, the pork dumplings I'm not such a big fan of ... but Marshall and AJ devoured those. Good food, and a few drinks later the heads started to hit the table. The plan of attack was to go for a big coffee.
On the drive from Spinakers to "coffee" I was introduced to "battle". AJ and Marshall seem to have a tradition that when they get together then spend the entire time kicking the crap out of each other. So we were driving through Victoria and AJ was lying down in the back seat of the truck. From out of nowhere Marshall hauls off and swings around while driving, giving Age the biggest charlie horse I had ever been witness too. So now AJ is screeming like a wounded wombat, and Marshall is laughing in an uncontrollable manner. This was just the start of the battle.
We went to the snotty part of Victoria (Oak Bay?) I'm not familar with the sections yet. We went to this quirky little cafe for coffee. It had a sushi restaraunt, an etheopian restaraunt, and thai place, and in the middle, this little coffee bar where we got the _best_ coffee ever. The coast has good coffee and a bazillion coffee shops. Everywhere you turn is a coffee shop, and not redneck donut stores, I mean cafes a plenty, and coffee beans galore. All this talk of coffee made us go in search of cool coffee mugs at Walmart. Marsh got two of the silver fat bottomed stainless steel ones that don't slide of your car, AJ got one too. I ended up buying a hideous mammoth oragne Bubba Travel Keg coffee mug. It was quite the treat. So now we were prepared for the night's activities. We made a stop at the liquor store and then to Marshall's house.
Marsh's house is wicked cool! It was the house Nelly Furtado grew up in. Her father was a mason, so there is lots of cool stone work. Let me tell you something though. Houses in Victoria are not made for large people. AJ and myself bashed and cranked our heads into doorways, pillars, ceilings and I'm quite sure something else along the way. So remember to duck.
Marshall has started a land scaping business (Islandscape Landscaping?) Sorry if I got it wrong. If you live in Victoria then look him up for all your land scaping needs! He totally redid his yard AWESOME! His driveway is very, very narrow. So it was a treat backing into it, and apparently much harder when the trailer is hitched up (like 40 mins to back into your house).
Marshall lives with two amazingly beautiful roommates. Karen and Melissa. These ladies are gorgeous, smart, sweet, funny. They have it all! And it seems as though Thursday nights are ladies T.V. nights. They tape America's Top Model from the night before, and watch it before The Apprentice, but without commercials of course! America's top Model is the cream of the crop show. Hot models, getting half naked, and then someone gets voted out. What gets better than that? And then finding out who gets fired next? It's quite the treat. I must say however that Melissa gets extraordinarily involved in the action on television. I've never seen anyone get so mad at people inside the tele? I think I'm hooked on the shows now just because of you Melissa!
That basically brought to a close our Thursday Adventure in Victoria. It's just too long to keep going, so I will continue my trip in a new entry. ¶ 1:14:00 PM 0 comments
