So my friend Adrian is a really smart guy. I think he's completed four or more years of post secondary education, and managed the entire IT department singlehandedly at my company. I put him up to a challenge to see how long it would take him to figure out how to get the case off my iPhone 3G. Here's the end result. Only took him 43 seconds. Not bad. This entry was written for Blogathon 2008, and in support of the Union Gospel Mission charity. If you'd like to donate to the cause, please visit the blogathon donation page and fill out the form near the middle. You can also follow the blogathon ...

I love camping. It's perhaps the second most enjoyable thing in my life these days, the first being a nice, toasty warm plate of nachos. There's something magical about a campfire next to a lake, or sitting around drinking a few beers under the stars with people you care about. I have always, for as long as I can remember, had trouble sleeping. Part of the reason is that I have a bad back (due to an injury I obtained in high school), and frequently wake up when I have an achy back. I also find that most city noises wake me up, and that I generally toss and turn most nights. The only time I find ...

First off, I'm going to put together a Blogathon-wide RSS feed so that people can follow what everyone is doing on blogathon without having to visit each site individually. You can subscribe to it by clicking here. Also, if you're part of blogathon, please drop a comment and I'll add you to the feed (I'm going to do my best to add everyone I know about), but given that time constraints of writing posts, it may take me a few hours. Raul and John at my place Raul and John are currently keeping me company at home. My laptop LCD broke a few days ago, so instead of committing myself to spending 24 ...

Blogathon is a team effort, and as such, I'm happy to be blogging along side of some of Vancouver's best bloggers. So, here are some shouts to some of my fellow bloggers participating in Blogathon, not all of who are on the sunshine shift tonight (but will be checking in at various times during the weekend): Tania Morrison (Ottawa), Raul, Shane Gibson, Karen Hamilton, Ayeza Garcia, Isabella Mori, Danny Dang, Mehnaz Thawer, Jenn Lowther/Nadia Nascimento, Barbara Doduk, Chris Richardson, and Colleen Vince. I had a little nap after work tonight hoping that it would give me a bit of extra leverage ...

It appears that things are almost back to normal with regards to my blog. I had to juggle the DNS entries around a bit the other day, and that caused a period of time where both versions of my blog existed on the internet for a while. I think for the most part most people will be directed to this one, which is the way it should be. I went out last night to a roof top patio BBQ, courtesy of Invoke Media. I went along with Arieanna, Raul and Ianiv, and eventually we met up with Jenn for some good conversation. Invoke has a pretty cool office, complete with a nice view of the North Shore mountains. Afterwards, ...

Well, thus marks the end of my first two-week vacation stint. This vacation saw me bounce from San Francisco, to Los Angeles, back up to Vancouver, to a Matthew Good show, then to the North Cascades, up to Whistler, and then back home. Not bad for just over two weeks. Golden Gate Bridge, taken during my trip It was great getting to hang out with my sister, brother-in-law, and their two kids down in Disneyland. Despite only being an hour and a bit away, I don't get a chance to head home that often. Plus, I haven't really spent much time with my niece and nephew (although I was there in Chilliwack ...

Here's a shot I took the other day while camping with my friend Rob. It was a great trip, and I had a really good time catching up with and old friend. ...

Birkenhead Lake, last summer At the Matthew Good show the other night I ran into a good friend of mine from high school. We ended up chatting and drinking beers over at Doolin's after, and it was great to catch up. Rob and I became friends back when I was working at Bonanza when I was 16, and I haven't talked to him in a few years. Birkenhead Lake, photo by wenno on flickr It turns out that both Rob and I are on vacation this week with not a whole lot to do, so we decided to head up to Birkenhead Lake tomorrow and just chill out over a few beers. Birkenhead was the biggest surprise of last summer, ...

I got home from Canada Day tonight and spent a bit of time on IM chatting to people. My friend Jeff, who is one of my best friends from high school, was online so we ended up chatting for a bit. Despite living only a few blocks apart, the sad thing is Jeff and I rarely get to see each other due to both our crazy schedules. I found out tonight that Jeff is moving to Victoria with his wife Michele and his daughter Maya. To be honest, while I want the best for them, it made me feel bad that I've been out of the loop so long with them that I had no idea they were moving away in a few weeks. I'm going ...

Ok, ok. I'll take a break from writing about the iPhone. But business has been great lately - my traffic has nearly doubled in the last few days. Not like I really pay attention to those things, but it's pretty clear when there's a big prolonged spike -- clearly people are excited about the iPhone. To be honest, while talking about web traffic, I'm actually surprised mine has stayed up. I used to host all my plugins here and sort of assumed when I finally moved them over to BraveNewCode that alot of my traffic would disappear. But for whatever reason, my traffic has actually increased quite a ...

A while ago I mentioned just how much fun June is going to be, and tomorrow it basically starts for me. Tomorrow after work I'm heading to a campground with a few friends for a weekend sitting around a fire and eating steak. I love camping, and really enjoy the fresh air and relatively peaceful sleeps I have when in a tent. I booked Friday off a few weeks ago, thinking that it would in fact be nice and sunny in June. Unfortunately mother nature doesn't really look like she's going to cooperate, and rain is definitely in the forecast. But no matter -- we're troopers and have several hundred square ...

Last night I had a few beers with the guys after work, and then headed down to Boneta to wish Victoria Potter a happy birthday. Then I scooted home, grabbed my camera, and went down to meet some friends at Plush near the Plaza of Nations. I realized after waiting in line for about 5 minutes that I really don't enjoy clubs like that at all. Once inside, I just found the music and the people somewhat overbearing, so I left. Since the casino is basically across the way from Plush, I decided to head inside and play 30 minutes of blackjack. I haven't been to a casino in a long time. Rebecca and I walked ...

So our pal John Biehler is currently soaking up the rays in Hawaii with his wife. It's been a long tradition of ours (and by long, I mean about two months) of having a nerd camp at my place. We had one today and John couldn't make it, so here's a quick Flickr video showing what he's been up to: ...

I met my friend Keira-Anne for a quick lunch down at Pacific Center a while ago, and then hit the mall hard on a quest to buy some clothes. I rarely shop for clothes, not because I don't like buying clothes, but because I'm really picky and always end up leaving frustrated. Since I only had 45 minutes, I decided to be less picky and just go with the flow. I ended up buying two pairs of nice jeans, and a few cool shirts for the weekend. Pretty much everything I bought was on sale, but it still ended up being around $400 after tax. Not bad for 45 minutes of work. I have so much to do tonight it's ...

The one promise I made myself last year was that I was going to spend more time this summer doing the things I like. Number one on the list is of course my favourite past time, camping. For the first time in most of my working life, I now get *three* weeks of vacation a year, as opposed to two (I should also point out many places outside of North America get four to six weeks of vacation a year), so I'm looking forward to spending more time in the wilderness this year. I sent out a few emails to some friends tonight to try and figure out somewhere to camp. Since I have a few close friends out ...

Tonight was the big Northern Voice social event down at the Waldorf Hotel in East Van. I was really looking forward to attending, and it didn't disappoint in the least. I hardly ate at all beforehand, so the thought of roast pig keep me going most of the afternoon. First of all, I have to say I was the luckiest guy in the house, having been fortunate enough to make an entrance with these two fine looking women: Rebecca and Keira-Anne Unfortunate Rebecca's husband (and all around great dude) John couldn't make it - he was missed, but will be leading a podcasting session tomorrow so make sure you ...

So while many of us suffer from the end products of love, and some of us end up broken hearted, my friend Clay is the only guy I know who actually has, quite literally, a broken heart. Photo from here. Clay is currently down at St. Paul's hospital getting a coronary bypass operation. Not a very enjoyable way to spend Valentine's day. I just called down and he's still in surgery. I'll probably swing by later tonight if he's out of the ICU, or more than likely tomorrow. If anyone has that stupid fish game with the hoops and the water, let me know. I'm sure Clay will swing by my blog in a few days ...

Rebecca fired me off a link this morning asking if I'd like to be a part of Team Blogging for a big bowling charity fundraiser. Since I like bowling and I like blogging, I figured it would be a cool idea. You can read more about the details over on Rebecca's blog. I'm trying to raise $150 to go towards the event, so if you can help out by sponsoring me, I would really appreciate it. You can sponsor me by visiting this page. ...

Rebecca and John swung by tonight for 2.25 L of wine drinking fun. Don't shake baby. Also, my hosting account over on another server basically expired. I did my best to move everyone's websites over, but turns out that it's rather difficult to change over DNS entries for websites you don't own. I tried my best though. ...

One of the changes I made on the site the other day was the inclusion of wordpress related entries plugin when viewing single posts. Unfortunately wordpress has completely overhauled their folksonomy system in the 2.3 version, and not all my posts are tagged properly. In fact, I'd say only about 20% of them really are. I'm going to try and do about 10 of my old posts a day or something like that to try and get them up to snuff, but it's a fairly boring process, only made possible by this bottle of pinot beside me. In other fairly exciting news, Boris Mann, everyone's favourite Vancouver Janitor, ...