Last night I had the choice of staying up at my campsite, which was all set up, or staying in my nice air-conditioned apartment. Given how gross it was outside, I actually decided to stay here and get a good night’s sleep. So this morning I had to wake up, do an hour long client call, and the head up to the lake and tear my campground down, which is thankfully all complete now. So I’m back at home, and definitely looking forward to a semi-normal weekend around the house. The last few weekends have been fairly crazy, either because I was driving down to Oregon, or because I was involved in ...

So, I don’t want to be known as a party pooper, but as I was sitting here in my bed, looking at live web cams of Vancouver’s Celebration of Light, it suddenly occurred to me that shooting off fireworks into the sky when there’s essentially a province wide fire ban on doesn’t strike me as a particularly bright idea. Sure, it brings people together. And I understand not only the amount of planning that goes into the event, but also how hard they would be to postpone or call off. But it seems strange (and obviously hypocritical) that all of us little people are told not to light any fires ...

I’ve been trying to get more work done during the days lately, mainly so that I have less work to do in the evenings. One thing I’ve been trying to curb is my Twitter and Facebook usage. Some days I hardly use either, but sometimes when there’s a good conversation going on, I find it hard to pull away from. In addition, I do a lot of things on the computer almost instinctively, one of which is saving files after every small edit (at the end of every line of code I usually hammer on command-S, which saves the file — I don’t even think about it, it just happens). Similarly, if I have a ...

With regards to my post from yesterday regarding c. diff. First, I want to thank my mom for the eighty or so phone calls and emails she’s sent me regarding the subject since that blog entry went up: thanks for caring, mom. Don’t worry, I’m ok. Second, I’ve decided to change my diet in the short term to see if I can find a food trigger. Pretty much the only time I’ve felt normal again for a period of time was actually when I was in Cancun in March. For basically a whole week, my stomach problems went away and I felt pretty much 100% for a while. I spent about 30 minutes today making a ...

I gotta say, this week has been fairly insane in terms of heat. Given that I live inland now, it’s been a few degrees warming than in Vancouver. The other day, while camping, the humidex hit 45C up at the lake, which is actually hotter than the hottest day I experienced back in Ottawa when I lived there (which was 43C). Let me tell you, it’s hot. I just tossed some burgers on the BBQ here. I briefly debated just tossing them on the ground, as I’m pretty sure they would have cooked just as well down there. I just finished watering my tomato plants for the second time today, as they were starting ...

Almost two years ago, I was at work one day, banging on the keys and writing some code. Suddenly, I felt cold, and realized that my hands and my fingers were shaking. I tried to stay at work as long as I could, but after a while my hands were shaking so bad I could hardly function at my job, so I went home. I curled into bed, and wrapped my duvet as tightly as it would go around myself. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t stop shivering. I ended up eventually falling asleep, and slept most of the night away. When I woke up, I was drenched in sweat, feeling like absolute garbage. Six ...

I briefly went into town this morning to water my plants, take a shower, and get a few groceries. I also managed to hook up with the guys and gals down at Hawk FM for a follow-up interview to the blogathon one I did on Friday. Other than that, I spent most of today sitting shirtless on my picnic table, trying hard not to melt in today’s heat. Thankfully I was in the shade most of the day, but man oh man, when that sun hit it sure was hot. My sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew came up for dinner, and just left a few minutes ago. So right now I’m catching up on a few emails, and probably ...

Yes, that’s all I’ve become. I wake up, I go outside, my plants get mad at me, and I spend the morning watering them and looking after them. For those who are just joining the saga, I planted a few tomato plants on my patio at the end of May. I’ve watched them grow, seen them fall down a few times, nursed them back to health, and in return, I’ve been rewarded by the growth of a pile of little tiny tomatoes. One of the challenges with growing fruits and vegetables on your patio is that it’s really hard to get them enough water, especially in this kind of heat. With a normal garden, you ...

About a year ago, I was down in the United States attending WordCamp San Francisco. While there, my friend Jason lent me a little USB dongle that let me basically surf the web from anywhere. It was a CDMA device that basically piggybacked data onto the wireless towers such that you could use the internet wherever you could get cell access. I was so impressed by it (remember, this was before the iPhone came to Canada) that I’ve been constantly on the lookout for something like that that I can also use down in the USA, since the Roger’s roaming data rates are fairly absurd. When I looked last ...

Well, yesterday was an interesting day. It started at about 8am for me when I went up to the campground site to check in. As I pointed out, checking in was an hour long process, made longer by a few people who for some reason thought they were privileged campers. Unfortunately I was stuck in a wireless hole, so I wasn’t able to take the call at 8am where I was supposed to be on the radio. I’m going to be camping up there for three days, off and on, so I thought I’d write a few camping related entries. The strange thing about camping is that you always seem to run into the same types of people. ...

I’m up at Cultus Lake now, doing some weird cross between camping and working. I honestly wasn’t too sure if I’d get 3G up here, and had planned to head back into town during the days. But given how I have four bars on my phone, and that 3G is working great, I might just work from up here. To that end, I went back home a while ago and picked up my 15W solar panel and my 75Ah deep cycle battery. Right now my laptop appears to be drawing about 25W, which is fairly awesome considering I’m charging it and also working on it at the same time. At 120V, that means it’s currently drawing roughly ...

So, I’m sitting here camping, and trying to figure out just why it is that most cute girls ultimately end up dating complete Douche Bags. It’s almost universal to be honest, and while there are exceptions to the rule obviously, it’s something that I’ve never entirely understood. A friend of mine actually just got into a new relationship, and I’m pretty sure the guy ranks a nine or a ten on the Douche Bag Scale. It’s so obvious to me in fact that I really don’t understand how she possibly can’t see it. Interestingly enough, the last guy she dated was wearing a t-shirt that said ...

I went to bed last night at around 11pm, and slowly drifted off to sleep. For the most part, I had a decent sleep, and managed to get myself out of bed at around 7am. So I think I’m basically recovered from Blogathon at this point. I was just up at Cultus lake sorting out my registration. There was a line up of cars about 20 deep waiting for the registration office to open, so it took me about an hour to get to the front. Of course, there were a few people who showed up and cut right to the front of the line, thinking for some reason that a re-registration or some issue from the night before ...

Well, folks, Blogathon is over. Most of us left workspace sometime around 6:30am yesterday. I went with Rebecca and John back to their place, and we got there probably close to 7am or so. While everyone was totally fried, there was brief talk about watching a movie for a while to help the brain ramp back down to sleep mode. I laid down on the couch then, and woke up a few hours later to some of the sounds of downtown Vancouver. At that point I adjusted some blankets, and fell asleep again, waking up sometime around 12:30pm. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really sleep anymore, so I decided to just ...

I moved into a new apartment in January, and for the first time in ages, had a decent sized patio. Since my patio faces south (and subsequently, receives a lot of afternoon soon), I figured I would try growing a few different vegetables. When I started, I had just a few planters, and it looked something like this: When things started sprouting, I got excited and decided to plant a few more things. Here’s a shot a few weeks after I started: I haven’t taken any photos of it in a while, but here’s a shot I took a few weeks ago. Since that time, a lot of tomatoes have formed on my tomato ...

I took a quick 20 minute break from blogging, mainly to lay my head down on the couch here at Workspace at try to rest my brain. Compared to the noise levels nearly 12 hours ago, when Blogathon began, one might think that it’s basically over here. People are still blogging away (so much so that when I closed my eyes briefly all I heard was the tappity-tap-tap of fingers scurrying across keyboards), but I think at this point most people are rather exhausted. Most people probably think that writing entries every 30 minutes is fairly trivial. The truth is the opposite — it is extremely demanding, ...

While I was taking a quick break from blogging, Keira Mellis decided to help me out by writing an entry. So, this is a guest-entry by Keira. You can read more of Keira’s writing over Keira-anne.com Jordy and I have been at Workspace for several hours now, bringing candy and cheer to Duane and Rebecca as they blog for their respective charities. The space is quiet – almost too quiet – as everyone keeps their heads down, writing at frantic paces. Despite being so focused, it’s hard not to notice the view out the expansive windows facing north. Living in BC, and Vancouver in particular, ...

Years ago I came across a poem called “Vancouver Lights” that I really enjoyed. Since I’ve down a few Vancouver centric posts, I thought I would also bit a few bits of Vancouver literature up as well. So without further ado, here is “Vancouver Lights” by Earle Bidney: About me the night moonless wimples the mountains wraps ocean land air and mounting sucks at the stars The city throbbing below webs the sable peninsula The golden strands overleap the seajet by bridge and buoy vault the shears of the inlet climb the woods toward me falter and halt Across to the firefly haze of a ship ...

My camera is a digital SLR, and by default captures color instead of black and white images. That being said, once and a while I do take the odd photo that I think would work well as a black and white photograph. I actually converted this photo into a black and white, but didn’t really think that much of it. After uploading it to Flickr though, it became one of my most popular photos — currently 43 people have indicated it’s one of their favorites. Based on the response, I ended up printing out a copy for myself and put it on my wall at home. It should also be noted that the image has a ...

It’s slow, but the sun is slowly going down out here in Vancouver, which means we’re not only past the half-way point, but it’ll soon be dark. I imagine it’ll be a lot harder to stay awake when it gets dark here, but who knows. Here’s my current view in Vancouver: I’m going to venture down to the Lamplighter in a bit and grab some beers. I probably won’t crack any until the wee hours of the morning, mainly because my stomach feels like it’s about to burst from all the food that’s in it. But it would be nice to have a beer or two at the end of the night in celebration of a very ...