Oahu, Photo By John Biehler I have to admit, this weather has been getting me down. Other than a few days of sun on Vancouver Island last week, I haven’t really seen much in the way of warmth or sunshine since returning from South America. When I looked at the forecast this morning and saw 7 days of rain in the long term forecast, I decided to do something about it. I spent about 15 minutes bouncing around Expedia and Travelocity, and eventually honed in on a flight to Hawaii for a little over $400 out of Bellingham. Given that it’s not amazingly far away and that I’ve always wanted to see ...

I was originally going to spend my day at home researching some stats for my upcoming presentation. Since it’s such a nice day though I decided to come up to the lake and casually drink a bit of rum while working on it instead. I suspect that this is one of the last weekends where it’ll be this warm, so might as well take advantage of it while it’s here. I just got confirmation about a pretty cool little video clip I’ll hopefully be able to include in my WordCamp PDX presentation, so that should be fun. Other than that, I’m just gonna keep plugging away at everything. I’m hoping most ...

I’m just heading out the door to take my car in to get looked at. There’s nothing wrong mechanically with it, but Mazda called me out of the blue last week and asked me to swing by so they can look at my stereo. Apparently they might have put in the wrong one when I had it replaced about a month ago (which is strange, because it works and fits fine). I suspect there’s some recall they aren’t telling me about. But anyways, they are going to replace the CD player I imagine, and they also offered to detail my car for me in exchange for the hassle. It’s supposed to be a nice sunny day out ...

Wow, what’s with this weather? It’s been absolutely gorgeous this winter. I’m lucky enough to have a bedroom with basically a full-wall window view of the downtown core, and every morning the sun reflecting off buildings wakes me up. It’s been rather nice having sunshine instead of the dreary rain Vancouver is known for in the winter. I went out to Joey’s last night on Burrard Street to have some dinner with friends. It’s your typical Earl’s type restaurant with token hot girls and funky music. The food was pretty tasty though, with Cajun wings actually being served with a real hibachi ...

In 1997, I decided to mix things up a bit and took a summer job up in Whitehorse, YT, working at the weather station up there for Environment Canada. It was really my first time away from home in any capacity, and also marked the first time I was in a long distance relationship. Needless to say, when I walked off the plane way up north, I was a bit bummed, and a bit out of sorts. I spent the first three days living in a hotel room, desperately trying to find a place to live, since Environment Canada only offered to pay for three days of hotel. I finally found a small room in a trailer living with ...

Jesus.. My apartment wasn’t made to survive the summer.. It’s currently 26C inside, and I’m sweating to death despite having all my windows and patio door open. I made the big mistake on Friday night of heading down to Bryght for a little party, and ending up drinking myself into a coma. I didn’t wake up until around 3pm the next day, which is surprising considering how hot it was inside.. I guess all one can really do in this heat is crack a few beers, kick your feet up, blare some music and take it all in stride.. Last night at around midnight, while in the middle of watching a pretty ...

On Friday night a bunch of us from work took Jari and Seppo out for one last night on the town in Vancouver. Since we basically accomplished everything we set out to do this week, we started drinking at around 4pm Friday afternoon at work. From there, we made our way to the Yaletown Brew Pub for dinner and some more drinks. I wasn’t really sure what these guys would like to see (apparently at the end of the night it turns out they kind of wanted to see a strip club, affectionately called “The Titty Bar” in Finnish), so I sort of did a mini pub crawl with them. After YBC, we decided to hit ...