Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Snow, Umbrellas & Stuffed Animals
Well it's been a while since I last wrote. I have good reason for neglecting my writings. I was terribly busy getting ready to leave. And most of my travelling I have had limited access/time to a computer.
Friday Dec. 3 was insane. The day before I leave and everything went haywire. It started with a power outage in the north early in the morning. I was awoken to several phone calls, and a trip to the office to restart all of my servers. Apparently a scaffolding took out a power poll. As it turns out, the city is trying to collect $301.16 for repairs to a guard rail I did not hit in my accident last winter. So after several phone calls to re-explain everything to my insurance company, and the city's law department, I am waiting to see what happens. Then it turns out I was not getting a laptop to bring on the road trip. Not that I cared ... just more things changing last minute. And finally I spent most of the night cleaning and doing laundry. 3 hours of sleep before a 12 hour road trip is always good.
Saturday I slightly overslept. I was driving to Vancouver and I finally left Calgary at around 10:00. I did manage to pick up two XL double doubles from Tim Hortons ... and man did I need them! The roads were terrible. Blowing snow and rain for most of the highway between Calgary and Kamloops. They even shut down the highway for an avalanche check or something outside of Revelstoke. I hit the Coquihola highway outside Kamloops and arrived in Vancouver around 9:00. So the total trip took me about 11 hours with stops.
I met up with my buddy Heath at his apartment, and after a short break we promptly headed out to a party. The hosts were Chad and his fiance Kate. I met several of Heath's friends. I believe his friend Ben along with his grlfriend and brother were there. I can't remember all of the names three days later, but I can say they were really uber cool people. And for some reason they kept trying to feed me. The coolest thing I noticed in Vancouver was that _everyone_ always had an umbrella. On our way into the party, there was a big pile of open umbrellas in the hallway. I asked about them, and apparently that's what everyone does ... to dry them out ... just leave umbrellas lying around. Maybe bic should make disposeable umbrellas. Good idea right?
So we headed out for a bite to eat at Denny's, and headed back to the apartment, and Heath's girlfriend Chelsea came over. Chelsea is _TOTALLY AWESOME_. Well done Heathcliff! They work together at the English Bay Boathouse (well for about 2 more days I think). We went for breakfast the next afternoon, and hung around down on Davie St. We went for a little drive around Vancouver. Chelsea was the tour guide. Kitsilano, West Van, around the downtown, went to UBC. We didn't have much time because they had to work, but it was cool all the same. I did get to see where David Suziki lives, and where David Duchovny lived during X-Files. I dropped them off at work and had a coffee with them. I was returning there later to meet another friend Ara in the deck lounge. It was great to see some old time friends, and make some new ones along the way. I did however totally get my ass kicked by everyone at NTN later on in the night. I wish I could have stayed longer with Heath. I'll be around for his birthday this year I hope.
So Monday morning I got up early and took the ferry from Tswasan To Victoria. It was a quick ride (about 1.5 hours). I was very tired still, and from landing I jumped in the car and headed straight to Sooke arriving at noon. I greeted everyone at Power Soft once again, and we jumped right into the work. I met with Chris Lang, Rudy and Mik. We hashed out how we are going to tackle the new system we are building. I straightened quite a few things out in my head. It turns out I'll be using MS-SQL Server quite a bit too. It's all good ... I'm just starting to have windows flashbacks as I get going again. ;-)
I left Sooke and met up with Marshall in Victoria. We went out for much needed food at 5th avenue. A small pub / restaraunt. It was really good food. Or maybe I was just really really hungry. We headed over to the Knockanbach to visit Karen. We only stuck around for one drink, and Marshall had newspaper in his grasshopper. GROSS! We bolted and headed to another pub called the 6 mile to play some darts or pool. It turns out they had a toy house machine. The game with the metal claw where you try to grab the stuffed animals out. I'm totally addicted to them, and I ended up winning a stuff bear, and a Mickey Mouse. Karen and Melissa are now the proud owners. We played some pool for a while, Marsh won 3-2 eventually. I blew a 2-0 lead. We hung out, smoked, had the waitress make google eyes at Marshall. It was good times by all. We headed back to the house and went to bed.
Today I still have no laptop sent out (it was suppose to be fed exed or something). It's fine though ... I have one here I'm using. Didn't do any coding today. I spent my time discussing things, and writing most of a design document. I made my database schema definitions, and the html form layouts. I just want to be prepared when it gets to the implementation.
I think I'll use my framework, and write an ms-sql extension to the db extraction. I'll probably use a subset of the framewrok (no need for a CMS, DMS, shopping cart here!). Looking forward to getting into some code the next couple of days. I'll have to set up IIS / MS-SQL Server, Install PHP, and customize this envioronment. (prolly install vim, maybe cygwin). I really really really miss x-pasting (middle button) ... :-( It only screws me up around 35 times per hour. I'll shoot for 25 tomorrow. It's good to set goals.
¶ 9:50:00 PM
Friday Dec. 3 was insane. The day before I leave and everything went haywire. It started with a power outage in the north early in the morning. I was awoken to several phone calls, and a trip to the office to restart all of my servers. Apparently a scaffolding took out a power poll. As it turns out, the city is trying to collect $301.16 for repairs to a guard rail I did not hit in my accident last winter. So after several phone calls to re-explain everything to my insurance company, and the city's law department, I am waiting to see what happens. Then it turns out I was not getting a laptop to bring on the road trip. Not that I cared ... just more things changing last minute. And finally I spent most of the night cleaning and doing laundry. 3 hours of sleep before a 12 hour road trip is always good.
Saturday I slightly overslept. I was driving to Vancouver and I finally left Calgary at around 10:00. I did manage to pick up two XL double doubles from Tim Hortons ... and man did I need them! The roads were terrible. Blowing snow and rain for most of the highway between Calgary and Kamloops. They even shut down the highway for an avalanche check or something outside of Revelstoke. I hit the Coquihola highway outside Kamloops and arrived in Vancouver around 9:00. So the total trip took me about 11 hours with stops.
I met up with my buddy Heath at his apartment, and after a short break we promptly headed out to a party. The hosts were Chad and his fiance Kate. I met several of Heath's friends. I believe his friend Ben along with his grlfriend and brother were there. I can't remember all of the names three days later, but I can say they were really uber cool people. And for some reason they kept trying to feed me. The coolest thing I noticed in Vancouver was that _everyone_ always had an umbrella. On our way into the party, there was a big pile of open umbrellas in the hallway. I asked about them, and apparently that's what everyone does ... to dry them out ... just leave umbrellas lying around. Maybe bic should make disposeable umbrellas. Good idea right?
So we headed out for a bite to eat at Denny's, and headed back to the apartment, and Heath's girlfriend Chelsea came over. Chelsea is _TOTALLY AWESOME_. Well done Heathcliff! They work together at the English Bay Boathouse (well for about 2 more days I think). We went for breakfast the next afternoon, and hung around down on Davie St. We went for a little drive around Vancouver. Chelsea was the tour guide. Kitsilano, West Van, around the downtown, went to UBC. We didn't have much time because they had to work, but it was cool all the same. I did get to see where David Suziki lives, and where David Duchovny lived during X-Files. I dropped them off at work and had a coffee with them. I was returning there later to meet another friend Ara in the deck lounge. It was great to see some old time friends, and make some new ones along the way. I did however totally get my ass kicked by everyone at NTN later on in the night. I wish I could have stayed longer with Heath. I'll be around for his birthday this year I hope.
So Monday morning I got up early and took the ferry from Tswasan To Victoria. It was a quick ride (about 1.5 hours). I was very tired still, and from landing I jumped in the car and headed straight to Sooke arriving at noon. I greeted everyone at Power Soft once again, and we jumped right into the work. I met with Chris Lang, Rudy and Mik. We hashed out how we are going to tackle the new system we are building. I straightened quite a few things out in my head. It turns out I'll be using MS-SQL Server quite a bit too. It's all good ... I'm just starting to have windows flashbacks as I get going again. ;-)
I left Sooke and met up with Marshall in Victoria. We went out for much needed food at 5th avenue. A small pub / restaraunt. It was really good food. Or maybe I was just really really hungry. We headed over to the Knockanbach to visit Karen. We only stuck around for one drink, and Marshall had newspaper in his grasshopper. GROSS! We bolted and headed to another pub called the 6 mile to play some darts or pool. It turns out they had a toy house machine. The game with the metal claw where you try to grab the stuffed animals out. I'm totally addicted to them, and I ended up winning a stuff bear, and a Mickey Mouse. Karen and Melissa are now the proud owners. We played some pool for a while, Marsh won 3-2 eventually. I blew a 2-0 lead. We hung out, smoked, had the waitress make google eyes at Marshall. It was good times by all. We headed back to the house and went to bed.
Today I still have no laptop sent out (it was suppose to be fed exed or something). It's fine though ... I have one here I'm using. Didn't do any coding today. I spent my time discussing things, and writing most of a design document. I made my database schema definitions, and the html form layouts. I just want to be prepared when it gets to the implementation.
I think I'll use my framework, and write an ms-sql extension to the db extraction. I'll probably use a subset of the framewrok (no need for a CMS, DMS, shopping cart here!). Looking forward to getting into some code the next couple of days. I'll have to set up IIS / MS-SQL Server, Install PHP, and customize this envioronment. (prolly install vim, maybe cygwin). I really really really miss x-pasting (middle button) ... :-( It only screws me up around 35 times per hour. I'll shoot for 25 tomorrow. It's good to set goals.
¶ 9:50:00 PM
