JRP's Stag In Calgary! I have decided to break my usual 3 topic form for a blog post. I think that my best friend's stag party is deserving of it's very own section! I think there will be enough information to fill an entire blog. Just imagine if I could remember everything that actually happened that night! ;)

Saturday morning we dropped John off with Danphy. The boys were going paint balling in Cochrane. Heath has a torn MCL / ACL so no paint ball for him. We went shopping and tooled around Calgary for a while. I picked up a few things I needed to get and we killed some time. Everyone was heading back to Danphy's for the BBQ. We had some burgers and a keg to get through. It was a show and go party, and about 16 in total for the Stag. It was great to see some friends from Saskatoon, John's family, friends from work. It was a crowd for all parts of John's life. It was the makings of a great night.

Apparently the paint ball was a blast. Jaman had a huge red welt very visible on his head. It looked ouch. John had to run the gauntlet, he said his body just collapsed and the rest of the crew had their way with him. Sudzy didn't appreciate getting shot in the nuts by Curtis ... but we laughed at him anyways. It was an accident ... so says the man.

So we were all well fed, well thirsted, and entertained (*wink wink to the boys on that one*). Kudos to Danphy, Scott, and Curtis for organizing and leading the charge for the bachelor party! The party machine mobile picked us up and it was off to the Yardhouse. We had shirts made with a _GREAT_ picture of Johnny P. on the front. People were really digging the shirts at the bar. We had a bunch of drinks, sang a little song at the Yardhouse and it was already time to go again. There was an old style Texas showdown on the buss between Danphy and Alexis ... "No chicks on the bus ... but you can stay if you take your shirt off!". na na naaaaaaa na ... na na naaaaaaaa na .... hey hey hey ... good by! The next stop was the Mynt admist the wrestle mania that occurred on the bus. This is where the night really starts to get crazy. There were a few stagettes at the Mynt already, and when our crew showed up it got pretty insane. The rounds of shooters started coming out. We consumed an extreme amount of alcohol, danced with the ladies and hung with the boys. It was right before we left that I realized I did not have my cell phone anymore. I was worried.

Kristy the bus driver helped me find my phone on the bus when no one was there. She is a life saver. We were chillin on the bus and all of a sudden there were hot girls there too. Whomever managed that ... well done. As Scott said to me "All these girls that just got on the bus just bit off _way_ more than they can chew!". I would agree with that statement for one group as we really didn't see them after we got to the Whiskey. But the other group of girls I spent some time with. I promised them I would write about them and as promised :

Jesma : Jesma was one of the first girls I was talking too. Jesma is a rather unique name and we discussed that for some time. Apparently it is "James ... just all mixed up". Jesma is a geomatic engineer? The girls knew each other from school in Kingston (?) and they were just out for a girls nite reunion. Jesma and I were cutting it up on the dance floor, and she seems to be all about the hip hop and fiddy cent. Gorgeous, super smart (geomatic engineer remember?), funny and easy going. Plus the cool name is a bonus.

Rhonda : Rhonda and I got along absolutely fantastic. Of course we did ... we are both computer geeks. It turns out she is an Oracle DBA for Nexen. She works in UNIX all day long. I was in shock! It's not often I run into a girl uber geek ... who knows UNIX to boot!. Her favorite command is the "kill" command. Kill -9 Kill -9 she said. People just don't understand that you don't _kill_ the user ... you kill the process! Lets just say the we got ignored a few times when we got into the techy stuff. The groups eyes just rolled and we happily ignored them back. She is apparently quitting soon and moving to Italy. She's been taking Italian for 4 years and is heading over to find the next adventure in her life. I'd say that night was an adventure ... only here second time drinking so they tell me? Sexy DBAs are _awesome_!

Eleanor : Eleanor is a sexy sweet girl who flew in from L.A. Thank goodness for that because the night would have been incomplete without her there. I told here that her name is very elegant. And elegant is the word for Eleanor. It turns out she works for a record company in L.A. She is the "Director Of New Media". I personally think that is a SUPER COOL THING! How often do I get the chance to meet someone like that. James seemed to think she was pretty cool too. She was only in town for the weekend, and I think she may have moved her flight to later on Sunday (Saturday was a good time). She is a true blue Canadian though. She's been missing her poutine down in the states that's for sure! I promised here I would write about the night, and Eleanor is too awesome a girl to not follow through on your word.

Courtney : I fell in love with Courtney at the bar. Not the stalker kind of love ... the drunk smitten kind of love. She is a landscape designer who works for her dad in Edmonton. She is with BF which is too bad ... because she is the woman of my dreams. Totally sweet! Super Sexy! Smart, Easy Going. That seems to be the theme with all 4 of these close friends. Gee ... I wonder how lucky us guys were? We hit the jackpot with these ladies!!! Courtney also plays div 1 soccer, and was showing off her bruises ... which looked as ouch as Jaman's head from paint ball! She was very certain that her long trip back to Edmonton the next day would surely be interrupted while she was on the side of the road puking. Apparently this has happened before? It doesn't matter what she did ... nothing is knocking her off the pedestal.

By the end of the night this stag was completely de-railed. People were out of commission. Some managed to escape without telling anyone else. Some simply disappeared. Some exploded inside the bar, some outside, some both. We traveled to the Husky House (Gerry's) for some late night grub. Poutine was in order. We did have a few rowdy's ... high light's include : Danphy and Blair choking each other, Jaman arguing with the girls, Sudzy almost throwing a ketchup bottle at Curtis, Danphy climbing over the balcony and wandering around naked, Jaman braking the flower pot, people getting kicked out like 3 times. I've never seen an entire group's order canceled after it was in, and then kicked out ... but it happened to us!

A few of us sweet talked that staff with some coinage, and we stayed with the ladies. We got Eleanor's poutine ... We all got the grub, and now at 4:00 in the morning it was time to crash. After a whole weekend of like 3 hours sleep my body was shutting off. It has taken me until today to semi-recover from the best weekend I have had in many many years. As I said to John ... thank God you best friend only gets married once ... well 2-3 times tops ... cuz I don't think we would survive another one of your bachelor parties!

The next day was hangover central ... a group went to Joey Tomatoes ... we were the saddest looking crew you ever laid eyes on. Basically an embarrassment to all. We did not care however. Curtis apparently has some rather humorous 5 A.M. video. He injured himself while filming. After lunch John went to face the music with the new wife, the rest of us settled in for a day of poker, and cracking into the remaining keg. Some minor appearances from some crew, but after 9:00 on Sunday I had to shut it down. Heath made his flight, and he'll be back in 2 weeks for the wedding. I can't wait for that party.

Johnny P ... you are a good man! To Jesma, Rhonda, Eleanor & Courtney ... you are the most awesome girls ever! Jaman, Danphy, Scott ... best party in years. Heath ... buddy thanks for flyin in ... and to everyone else there ... see you in two weeks!  ¶ 1:01:00 PM 0 comments

  Completeness, Travel & Best friends After the first week of August things were almost to a complete state for the COM object. I know Chris had been doing some work, and I had been providing him with any help I could offer. Samples of my XML, ways I would do things. It helps just talking about nothing at all sometimes ... just yak about work and the solution sometimes presents itself.

I had already walked through the COM object deployment some months ago. It was a new thing for Chris and somewhat for Mik. Chris did shed some light on the DLL deployment though. It's not that the COM must be compiled on the other machine, you just need to be an administrator and register the DLL manually with regsvr32. I realize we should have know this. I don't know windows technology at all. I have never claimed too. I have learned a tremendous amount over the course of this year.

The final testing setup is to build on your machine. Have TS open to the dev server. Shut down IIS. Copy the DLL and web services files across. Register the DLL manually. Restart IIS. This does seem to be a simple procedure, yet it is very time consuming. There is some waiting involved, and if you miss a step, or in the wrong order ... *boom* the web service fails.

Just ask Chris about recompiling because he forgot about some junk variables named 'QQQ'. Or some other variables were unused. Or the case sensitivity of the DLL is not patrolled by case-insensitive VFP? Since VFP is basically a free for all on the code syntax (even more so than PHP ever could be ... which is hard to believe). When you compile the DLL in VFP ... no warnings or errors. It's just when you deploy it that case and variables cause you problems. It was funny for me because I am used to all sorts of linking, and C style problems like that. The FoxPRo experts out on the Island were not however. Made for some good times.

Needless to say we made great headway this time. On my last night there I even wrote a utility page to parse the old style data files into valid XML requests, and then another utility to send the XML requests. Just for testing purposes really. Rudy can make it all pretty ... I just wanted it to work. It was good to leave on a high this time. We actually hit a huge milestone. I was quite pleased and I think they all were too. I had to rush out of the office to catch the ferry back to the mainland. It was a great trip!

I stayed in Vancouver with Heath for a night. I ripped down to the English Bay Boathouse where I had a few drinks waiting for him to finish work. Two rather intoxicated girls came in. Sometimes you can just tell that trouble is brewing. They pulled up next to me, and we shared a table for a while. 15 minutes there and they already spilled drinks. Evelyn apparently works there, but was on her night off. The other girl was dressed in pink. Mini skirt and ball cap. She apparently took a liking to my Flyers hat and wanted to trade. So there I was with too hot girls, spilling their drinks, pinky telling me she loves me and wants to know if I love her, all the while wearing a too small pink cap. Heath just shook his head.

Things started to escalate on the unsoberness scale. The other staff were trying desperately hard to get her out of there. It got really bad when pinky almost told of the manager. I was sitting right there, and if looks could kill. That girls was almost a little pink stain on the Boathouse deck. I just shook my head. Talking with the sous chef later about the incident I found out that pinky's nick name is "nightmare" ... becuase she is one? She is a little bit trashy and has a rather large liking to needles. Not very surprising for Ganville Island I guess.

I had breki with Heath the next day after a great sleep at his new apartment. I wanted to hit the road as early as I could. I was flying back. I left downtown Vancouver @ 10:30. I was back in Calgary @ 10:00. The roads were great. I stopped as little as possible, and I left Golden while it was still much daylight out. That was way better than hitting Kamloops at dusk last time. I must say the trip is quite boring when you do not have someone to play cards with. ;-)

I recovered for a day, and did the usually mail / laundry / cleanup (I actually vacuumed!) / shopping thing. Heath flew in on Friday and I picked him up. I dropped him with John down at Ceasars for steak. I bolted up north to see Rene for a haircut (she was a doll for squeezing me in ... I love you too). She gave me a totally nee wicked style since my hair was super uber long. I hadn't had a cut since like February! I met H&J at Original Joes for a few drinks and talks of old times. There is nothing like your buddies stories, and growing up with these guys ... it was a good feeling.

We hooked up with Danphy later, and headed down 17th. We worked our way into Melrose right where the red mile is. It was crazy packed in there. We spent a couple of hours there having drinks and whatnot. John was pretty hammered. I was driving so I had to keep it easy. We left Melrose around 1:00. It was off to the casino. We went into the poker room. got on the list and eventually sat down. Heath bailed on poker and went to play slots. I cleaned up at the poker table. The other locals were not liking me at all. I had trips 3 times, flushes, two pair on the flop. I was the kill for like 4 hands in a row. People don't like it when you raise to 16 pre-flop on a 4-8 table. I walked out up $300 after a couple of hours. I played a heads up with John ... and we were both like ... "why bet ... it's all the same money?".

So after a late night Denny's run we got back to my place at 5:00 A.M. I crashed ... the boys watched Tombstone. And Johns wife phoned at 9:00 A.M. Who phones at 9:00 A.M.?!!!!! It was a long day ahead of us. John's stag party was Saturday night. This is going to be a treat. What kind of night will 3 best friends have?  ¶ 12:00:00 PM 0 comments