Well, yesterday was a pretty warm day here in Chilliwack. I think it officially got up to 31 degrees Celsius. My little weather widget says it might rain a bit today, but here’s hoping it’s wrong. I’m hopefully going to go up to the lake for a few hours with some friends. Other than these last few days, this seems to be a pretty poor summer so far in terms of weather. What does everyone else think? I’ve also emailed the TweetMe guys about my widget on the right – for some reason it doesn’t work on this domain properly. It works on my test domains, but not here. I suspect because I ...

While in Cancun back in March, Dale and I had a pretty drunken discussion on our hotel patio, not really about anything, but at the same time, a conversation about everything. We talked a bit about politics, a bit about spirituality, about the past, and about the future. Jump ahead three months, and here I am, on my own patio, drinking a rum and diet coke, surrounded by green tomatoes, looking up at the stars that were absent from my life for the last five years, thinking back on my first five months back home. Yesterday I drove out to Surrey to hang out at a brew pub with some friends. Afterwards, ...

As you can see, things have changed around here a bit. I actually still have quite a bit left to do on this theme, but it’s functional enough that I put it live. I’m going to do a custom template for the upcoming Blogathon event, and also flesh out the content in a few more areas. But it’s definitely getting close. Thanks to Dale for his help with this too. ...

In a perfect world, I’d already be on vacation. But since we have a few client commitments that have taken a bit longer than expected, I’m still working away. My original plan was to maybe go camping for a few days this upcoming week, but that doesn’t seem likely right now. But hopefully by mid week I’ll be in vacation mode, and will be taking a few weeks of downtime (I’ll still be doing a few client related projects during this time period, but those don’t encompass more than a few days a week). I’m hoping to also finish off my new theme for this site, and possibly uprev a few plugins. I’ve ...

I’ve been approved on the official Blogathon website, which means people can actually start pledging for me now. Strangely enough, I’ve already received about $80 in pledges, several of which came in before I was approved on the website. They appear to be legit, but I can’t for the life of me figure out where they came from. But anyways, as I’ve pointed out in previous postings, I’ll be supporting the BC Children’s Hospital on July 25th. So if you’d like to support my efforts and the children at BC Children’s Hospital, then please consider pledging. Thanks for the support! ...

A few weeks ago I blogged about an upcoming appointment to have a few moles removed from my face (the main reason being that I keep cutting them while shaving). Well, today was the day, and they’re officially gone. Strangely enough, I’ve developed a bit of a fainting reaction over the years to needles. That’s weird because needles don’t scare me in the least, and for the most part, I have a pretty high pain tolerance. But there’s something about a needle being stuck in me that elicits some kind of physiological reaction, almost like my body knows something else is coming, and tries to ...

Years ago I was in the lab at UBC when I got a call telling me that my sister was in labour. A few hours later I was back in Chilliwack, and Jessica, my niece, was welcomed into this world. Over the course of her life, I unfortunately haven’t been around as much as I would have liked. But thankfully now I’m in Chilliwack and I can spend more time with her. One time I was back in Chilliwack visiting and decided I wanted to get a Whopper from Burger King. Jessica asked if she could come with me, so we went together. Here’s a photo of Jessica with her jar of bees and her flower. Happy Birthday ...

This year’s Blogathon takes place on July 25th, starting at 6am PDT. As most people know, last year I teamed up with Rebecca Bollwitt to help support the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver. With some help from Matthew Good, the three of us raised around $8,000 I believe for Vancouver’s homeless. Without a doubt, Blogathon is an event that I wanted to be a part of this year. I briefly debated supporting a local Chilliwack charity, but given that I really don’t know of many here, I decided not to go that route. Lately I’ve found myself spending quite a bit of time with my niece and nephew. ...

I had a bit of time yesterday (really, I didn’t, but the creative juices were flowing and I wanted to start dabbling), so I started tinkering with some ideas for a new theme for this site. While I routinely update the theme on this site (I average about every four months or so), I really want the next one to be up here for quite some time, so I’m not going to rush development on it. I have a few basic goals for the new theme: The theme should put more focus on aspects of my life such as photography, and less on my other content The theme will focus more on my life, and some of my passions ...

I’ve slowly been chipping away at my loans these last few years, hoping for that day to come when I’ll be debt free. My net worth is positive, thanks to some RRSPs and the down payment I put into my car, but having debt hanging over your head obviously kind of sucks. I have a little spreadsheet that sort of tracks where I’m at. In April of 2008 I owed around $25,500 in both student loans and car loans. At my peak, I had around $40,000 worth of student loans, a fairly hefty debt load by anyone’s standards. Back in January I finally paid my car off. The payments on that were $400 per month, ...

I put together a Facebook photography page a while ago. If you use Facebook, and like some of the photos I’ve taken, then please become a fan of this page. I’m going to be redoing my personal website shortly to be more photo centric and mostly reflect my online photography as opposed to some of my writings. ...

Turns out that my friend Lynn down in Seattle has had a blog for years and years, but for some reason I never knew about it until recently. It’s actually a really good read, with quite a few personal entries as well. So if you’re looking for some new reading material, definitely head on over and check it out. She’ll probably kill me for posting this, but I like living dangerously, so. Lynn was nice enough to send me some fruit flowers for my birthday years ago, and even though I’m not in Seattle very often we’ve kept in touch online (which is challenging, considering she doesn’t use ...

I wrote an article last year about a girl named Megan who committed suicide after a boy named Josh on MySpace told her that the world would be better off without her. The tragic element of that tale is that there was never a boy named Josh – it was always a fake person, invented by a friend of Megan’s and Lori Drew, that girl’s mother. The two of them together gained Megan’s confidence on MySpace, and then proceeded to toss insults at her, eventually leading directly to Megan wrapping some rope around her neck and hanging herself to death. Despite a previous jury ruling that Lori Drew ...

I have an appointment on Wednesday to get a few moles removed from my face. I’ve had them most of my life, and for the most part they haven’t really bothered me. That being said, this last year I’ve found myself cutting two of them while shaving from time to time, which usually results in them bleeding for hours at a time (real attractive, I know). You can see two of them in this photo. The first is the one on my right cheek, and the second is the one on my left upper-lip. The third one is really tiny, and it’s in the center of my lip (I don’t cut it shaving, but I figure I might as ...

Today is also my step-sister Alison’s birthday. Strangely enough, I went through my Flickr photos and I don’t really have any good shots of her, so I had to grab one from her Facebook profile instead. Tonight we’re having a little BBQ over at my dad’s house for her, which should be fun (although I probably won’t be staying too long, as I’m pretty swamped with work). Happy Birthday Alison! ...

I was wondering today just how long my little garden has been growing for. Looking at my Flickr set, it looks like I had moved a few of the tomato seedlings outside on May 22nd. Here’s a shot at the time: I took a few photos today, and wanted to do a little comparison. It’s been roughly five weeks since I started, and here’s what things look like today: As you can see, things are progressing nicely. I had a little mishap about a week ago where I accidentally broke the main stem on one of my roma tomato plants. I actually managed to fix it up such that the wilting disappeared and it started ...

..apparently came and went, and I missed it. I guess that means the days are getting shorter now instead of longer. Strangely enough, while I like summer and am looking forward to a few heat waves, my mind always wonders to the next season. For example, the other day there was a bit of rain, and it reminded me of sitting in front of the fire and watching movies a few months ago. Of course, when autumn rolls around I’ll be thinking of Christmas and of course being trapped in my apartment due to the snow (something that I actually like, probably because some of my best memories from Ottawa involve ...

I had the opportunity to spend last weekend in Victoria with some of Vancouver’s best food and travel bloggers, courtesy of Coast Hotels, BC Ferries, and Tourism Vancouver. The trip started as nothing more than a quick email from Danny Dang, social media coordinator for Coast Hotels, in which he invited me to participate in an all inclusive weekend on the island. Given that I really enjoyed myself last year in Victoria, I thought it would be a great opportunity to spend some time on the Island and visit some of the local attractions. I left my apartment Thursday evening and ended up at Arieanna ...

I’m currently on the ferry heading back to Vancouver frm an awesome weekend on the island, courtesy of Coast Hotels. I should be home sometime later today. But in the meantime, as it’s fathers day, I wanted to wish my dad, Tom, and my step dad, Marty, a happy fathers day! Happy fathers day guys! ...

Some days I wake up and still find it a bit weird that I’m back in my home town. I’m totally enjoying myself here, more so with each passing month, but certain aspects of being here are still strange to me. High school literally feels like yesterday to me, probably because I spent so much of my 20s in school, but when I think back to high school here, I have a hard time putting all the pieces together. For example, I went by my old house I lived in when I was 17. Strangely enough, I couldn’t remember how I got to school in the mornings. I’m pretty sure I walked to school, and I’m pretty ...