Congrats are in order to Kasia, for finally leaving behind the dusty world of PCs and embracing the world of Mac! Enjoy your new toy!
PS – somebody sure is spoiled this year! ...
On Monday I made the trek to Chilliwack out from Vancouver. The timing was actually perfect, since the roads were fairly bare when I left Vancouver, and are now pretty clogged up with snow. It’s been snowing off and on here in Chilliwack, but at least driving around is feasible. The forecast is currently calling for rain for the next few days, followed by more snow probably on Monday. That basically means I’ll be making the journey back into Vancouver sometime this weekend, hopefully before the next wave of God’s winter-fury hit’s British Columbia.
So far, it’s been a very relaxing time ...
I started playing with a new look and feel for my blog last week, and finished most of it off tonight. I had hacked my other one quite a few times and ended up breaking a few things on it. Hopefully this one will stay lean and mean a little while longer.
I still have to fix up the content on many of the subpages, but the main pages should be working mostly. I’m also going to be modifying the content to reflect my move out to Chilliwack in a few weeks, and of course going full time with BraveNewCode.
I have a few more ideas with regards to showing images and what not, but this is a pretty good ...
The landlord let me have the key to my new apartment for a few hours this morning. Traveling from Chilliwack to Sardis was a bit tense as there’s so much snow. But once we got there, I had a little bit of time to inspect my new place. Here are a few shots.
First, a shot of my office (on the left), and the living room (right), completed with gas fireplace and 12 foot ceilings.
A shot of the living room from the dining room.
A shot of my step-mom in the kitchen:
A shot of the ensuite bathroom and the walk-in closet.
I’m definitely looking forward to moving in. Only a few more weeks. ...
Well, the financial crisis is probably going to lead to one good thing -> less divorces. Apparently couples realize that it’s cheaper to stay together. ...
So, I had to wear a pulse oximeter over the weekend and ended up back in Burnaby this morning to go over the data recorded by the machine. The final verdict is that I have a mild form of sleep apnea, which basically means that I stop breathing from time to time during the night, and it usually causes enough stress on my body to make me to wake up so that I can breathe.
Given that I’ve had high blood pressure most of my life, and that high blood pressure is often a symptom of sleep apnea, it’s possible that they are all related. For now, I’ll probably manage it conservatively, which means ...
I was out visiting a friend in Maple Ridge last night, and had to drive back home as it was snowing. I haven’t driven in the snow in a while, and frankly, my car kind of sucks at it. That being said, here are a few things I learned.
Driving in near white-out conditions is never a good idea
The stock tires on a Mazda 3 Sport are complete garbage. Given that they are 17 inches, you might as well be driving a toboggan in the snow
When you blow a single tire, you should replace both at once, and not just one. My front right tire was replaced due to a blow out, and I had to get a different style. ...
So I finally had an appointment down at the Vancouver Sleep Center in Burnaby. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had trouble sleeping through the night. It’s been going on for so long that I can’t even remember if there was a time when I used to sleep soundly or not. I often wake up every hour or so and feel rather anxious, and most nights it takes me at least an hour to nod off. It could be the traffic or some sound that wakes me, but I’ve never really been sure.
I had a consultation with Dr. Dong and he went over my history. Then he informed me that he wanted to take a look ...
I was just doing a bit of casual reading on Wikipedia tonight prior to hitting the sack, and I stumbled upon Joe DiMaggio’s entry. I knew he had been married to Marilyn Monroe at one point in his life, but never really knew how crazy he was about her. I’m an old school romantic, and I thought this was pretty cool:
According to biographer Maury Allen, Joe was so alarmed at how Marilyn had returned to her self-destructive ways, falling in with people he felt detrimental to her (including Frank Sinatra and his “Rat Pack”), he quit his job with a military post-exchange supplier on August ...
Just read this article which talks about how Canada has just increased the CD levy on blank media to 29 cents per disk instead of the 21 cents of the past. This increase, according to Secretary General of the Copyright Board of Canada, Claude Majeau, is due to the following:
Two main factors led the Board to raise the CD levy rate to 29¢. First, the mechanical royalties that record labels pay to record a song onto a prerecorded CD have increased. Second, because consumers now use compression technology when they record music, the average number of music tracks copied onto a CD went from 15 to ...
Heading out to get some rum for a little pre-party I’m having at my place, and then off to my company Christmas party. I did a quick photobooth before heading out the door. This is what I look like when I clean myself up once a year.
...
My friend Stacey just sent me a message on Facebook and told me that her family just opened a new coffee shop on Denman called Dulcinea. Apparently they have really great Spanish Coffee, as well as some great chocolate drinks. Here’s a little blurb on the internet about them from last month:
After my favorite chocolate cafe, Koko, closed it’s doors earlier this year – I was heartbroken. To my relief, it finally reopened on October 1st. Well, not exactly – it’s still a chocolate cafe in the same location – but the new place has different owners, a different theme, and a different name: ...
I was catching up on Tony’s site tonight and stumbled across this photo of Tony from 2006. Apparently he ended up on Hot Chicks With Douche Bags back then, which I think is awesome.
Tony spends his days injecting massive amounts of awesome into the LA Times as the head of their 40-some odd blogs, and his nights attending cool music and social events in Los Angeles, so I think it’s pretty funny he’d end up there. But hey, getting your photo taken with a cute girl is always a good thing.
I hung out with Tony for New Year’s out in Toronto last year, and we had a lot of fun drinking beer ...
We’ve finally managed to pull the shrink-wrap off of the official WordCamp Whistler website, and launch it to the world. So head on over and take a look.
The event will officially take place on January 24, 2009 at the luxurious Fairmont Chateau Whistler in the Whistler village. It’s an awesome venue, and we’re hoping to make this an event that everyone will really enjoy. We’ve secured Lorelle Van Fossen as our keynote speaker, and we’re all really excited that she’s making the trek up from Portland for our event.
We think this is going to be really great WordCamp, and are looking ...
I meant to post this earlier, but I’ve just been slammed these last few days. Today is a special day, as it’s the birthday of two of my good friends.
The first is Arieanna, who I’ve been lucky enough to get to know a lot better over the course of this last year. The first time I really hung out with her was at the 2008 Canadian Juno Awards in Calgary, where her and I crashed a VIP party and proceeded to drink our weight in beer. Good times.
The second birthday is of course Keira-anne‘s. One of the first times I ever hung out with Keira was on a little dog walk out in Stanley Park. Having ...
For two years in a row now, I’ve missed out on going to SxSW. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s pretty much the largest technology / music conference in North America, and it happens once a year down in Austin, Texas. Last year, while watching everyone talk about it online, I decided that I would go this year and check it out.
That being said, I still haven’t done anything about it, nor am I entirely sure I could afford to go to it (although I *do* have a pre-paid flight ticket in the US, so my flight is pretty much covered). Pretty much all my friends from Vancouver end ...
Someone back home just forwarded me this email that was recently sent out by Chilliwack’s member of Parliament, Chuck Strahl. In it, he talks about his views with regards to what is happening in Ottawa right now. I’m posting this for informational purposes, not because I agree with everything he’s saying in it.
Last week I sent around an update on Canada’s economic situation, with the observation that it wasn’t a very enjoyable subject to write about. Unfortunately, this week it appears that our economic woes are morphing into a political crisis of sorts, at a time when we can least ...
I just read this article which talks about how the executives at Ford are willing to cut their salaries to $1 if they receive money from the federal government. Wow, that’s nice of them.
Notably absent in that entire article is a mention of executive bonuses. Bonuses and dividends are typically taxed as investments instead of income, and usually result in a smaller tax burden. In Canada, the tax rate on dividends is roughly half of what it is in regular income, so that’s the preferred method of making money.
So if they reduce their salaries to $1, I gotta ask, what are they planning to do ...