I'm scheduling this post for when I'm out tomorrow for a while, so it's possible the US may find some common ground on the current US debt negotiations. I don't it though.
Right now things aren't looking very good for the United States, and the time is almost out where a solution can be reached and implemented before the debt ceiling expires. Negotiations continue to stall, and both sides seem unwilling to deal with some of the harder issues, like coming up with a long term financial strategy that will reduce the deficit and the debt.
I actually thought there was only about a 10% chance that the ...
I recently returned from a one week impromptu trip to Oahu, Hawaii, and wanted to share my final thoughts.
The flight time from Vancouver was around six hours, so it was still a relatively short jaunt. Not as short as flying to the west coast of Mexico mind you, but about the same amount of time as flying to Cancun or the Dominican Republic.
The Island
During the Lost Legends tour we drove over the entire island in the course of a day. I'd say it takes less than an hour to criss cross the island in any direction, so Oahu is fairly tiny. The eastern side is called the Windward side of the island, ...
I'll probably do a summary post on Buenos Aires the night when I leave, but this is my last weekly update from Buenos Aires.
My little widget says that I'm leaving my apartment in four days, at which point I'll be migrating to a hotel for my final night. I've been trying to get my landlord to commit to a time to do the final walkthrough so I can get my damage deposit, but he hasn't responded to me. I'm not worried, since I do hold the keys and he can't really rent it until he gets them back from me. But it would be nice to have that all in place for peace of mind. I'll send another email in a ...
I've always been fascinated with baseball. Back when I was a kid, my dad and step-mom took me to a few Mariners games in Seattle. While prices have changed, back then you could get VIP tickets for around $30. While it's not as popular in Canada, I do appreciate the game, the stadiums, the hot dogs, the peanuts and the entire atmosphere that goes around with watching a live baseball game.
James Earl Jones' speech in Field Of Dreams regarding baseball is a great one. Throughout all the turmoil in the states, the Great Depression, the multiple recessions, the shanty towns, there was one constant ...
I've been blogging a fair deal about my upcoming trip to New York City, and how one of the highlights for me is undoubtedly going to be visiting B&H Photo in New York City. B&H is an extremely well known photography store, and it's been on my list of places to visit for many years now.
Thanks to the power of the Internet, Hershel Waldner, Supervisor of the Online Marketing Department for B&H Photo, contacted me and asked if I'd like a private tour of the facilities while I'm there. Obviously, I said yes!
So, I'll be visiting B&H Photo while I'm in town and also getting a full ...
I've been blogging a fair deal about my upcoming trip to New York City, and how one of the highlights for me is undoubtedly going to be visiting B&H Photo in New York City. B&H is an extremely well known photography store, and it's been on my list of places to visit for many years now.
Thanks to the power of the Internet, Hershel Waldner, Supervisor of the Online Marketing Department for B&H Photo, contacted me and asked if I'd like a private tour of the facilities while I'm there. Obviously, I said yes!
So, I'll be visiting B&H Photo while I'm in town and also getting a full ...
As the title says, I've been in Buenos Aires now for 37 days. After next week, I will have officially crossed the half-way mark here, at which point I'll be winding down and starting to get in my last sight seeing before leaving. I still have almost seven weeks here though, which is still quite a bit of time.
This last week was mostly uneventful, other than a very late night out at the pub last Saturday night. Unlike North America, most people don't even go out on the weekends here until midnight, and often later. I was in a little pub at around 5am and they were still serving drinks to a packed ...
This was one of the things I was afraid of. About six months ago I decided to sell off most of my camera gear. Part of that decision was due to the fact that if I was going to go on this trip I would need more money, and my camera gear represented a significant investment ($5,000+) that I could tap into. I could always buy another camera, but I may not always be able to do a trip like this. The second was that I was originally planning on traveling with just a backpack, and there really wouldn't be any room for a big SLR or lenses.
About a month before I left for Buenos Aires, I decided it would ...
Despite having a relatively positive outlook about the economy previously, the Fed today just downgraded all its forecasts and even mentioned the taboo "D" word, deflation.
I thought it would be fun to post a few of the more educated comments from CNN here.
Keynesian versus Austrian economic theory. Keynes 0, Austrians 1. Now pull up a lawn chair, pop a cold one, and kick back to the soothing hissing sound of every asset class deflating... ~ Jim Koutras
I got my beer chilling in the fridge.
You do realize that the only reason we're in this mess is because the Fed flooded the economy ...
That's probably the hardest question to answer nowadays for me when crossing the border. My life and my job are pretty intricately mixed nowadays, that it's often hard to differentiate between the two. For example, when I went to WordCamp San Francisco, I was asked that question by the border agent. The conference I was attending definitely interested me on a personal level, especially since I have a personal blog, but clearly I can extract some business value out of it as well. So is it a business trip, or one for pleasure?
The problem with going down the business line is sometimes the border ...
This is an open letter to the people of the United States, namely those people who think universal (or government run) health care is bad.
In November of 2006 four idiots I had never met threw me through the plate glass window of a 7-11. Apparently, it was a fun thing to do after a few beers. I ended up in the hospital that night with five fractures in my face. Approximately two weeks later I had surgery to repair the damage to my face, and ended up getting a piece of plastic surgically fitted under my left eye. Without it, due to the lack of bone, my left eye would probably hang down into my ...
It's been a few days now since president-elect Barack Obama won the election, and I thought I would share a few thoughts. The day of the election I saw an interview with a prominent African American on CNN who said that should Obama win, you would literally be able to divide the history of the United States into two time periods: the period before Obama, and the period after. He said from that moment on, you would no longer be able to say that certain things were not possible in the US if you were a person of colour. For the first time, he would be able to tell his son that he could become whatever ...
On September 11th, 2001, I was working in the middle of a clean room in a tiny building somewhere in the middle of Ottawa. Upon walking down the hall, I learned from a co-worker that a plane had just struck the World Trade Center. Thinking it was just an accident, I continued on with my job without any more thought to the event. Upon learning that another plane had hit the second World Trade Center building less than an hour later, I began to realize the magnitude of the day's events.
A few hours later, I would find myself across the street on Hunt Club, watching history unfold on a small television ...
It's finally here. After over a full year of campaigning, tomorrow the United States will be voting on who will be the next president of the United States. As I've blogged about many times before, I'm hoping Barack Obama wins. Compared to most politicians in this day and age, he seems upfront, humble, intelligent, and with an honest desire to improve the state of America.
I'm probably going to hole myself up tomorrow near a TV and watch the coverage as it happens. Without a doubt, this is bound to be the most important political event that I've witnessed in my lifetime. Whoever wins tomorrow will ...
I got bored tonight and threw on a few episodes of 24 Season Four. The whole season revolves around a nerve gas attack. While watching it, I thought I would google a bit and find out about the history of nerve gas and its use in warfare. While scanning the Wikipedia entry for nerve gas, I read these paragraphs:
In 1972, The United States Congress banned the practice of disposing chemical weapons into the ocean. However 32,000 tons of nerve and mustard agents had already been dumped into the ocean waters off of the United States by the U.S. Army. According to a 1998 report created by William Brankowitz, ...
Tonight I found myself down in the gastown area, having a few beers with old pal Boris Mann down at the Bryght offices. He was nice enough to invite me to some of the Thursday night BBQ lovin at his offices, and introduced me to the ever-sought-after "Save On Meat" store around the corner from the offices.
Photo by Roland Tanglao
Afterwards, I stuck around and hung out for the Drupal monthly Vancouver meetup and learned both about Drupal 6.0 and some of the Install Profile work that the guys at Bryght have contributed back. I'm in the process of setting up a new website with a different ...
When the humidity finally woke me up in the hostel, it was around 11am (I had to ask scary hostel-buddy #1, since I didn't have a watch anymore at this point). I felt a little hungover, but nothing compared to the morning before back in YVR. I thought about showering, but my I-need-to-get-the-hell-out-of-the-hostel-as-soon-as-possible thought process eventually won. I strolled down the street in New York City, smiling as I walked into Ray's Pizza, knowing full well I was about to destroy his little toilet in the back-room with my post-hangover blues. I read through my Lonely Planet for a few minutes, ...
Unfortunately, the night before I left for New York City turned out to be a gong show. Mark, Donovan, Chris and myself went out to the bar for a few drinks, but we didn't stop until around 2am. I figured, no problem right -- I still have 4 hours to sleep and pack before leaving for the airport. Needless to say, Friday morning was really rough, and I was completely exhausted and hungover.
What made it worse is that our plane was broken. After 30 minutes of waiting past of scheduled boarding time, finally the Harmony Airlines representative comes out and says "due to a minor technical problem, ...
So, this weekend I decided to leave the city life behind and join my dad and Cathy for a few days in the wilderness down south.? The destination was a little place along the ocean called Fort Casey, near Deception Pass, Washington.? I had a great time, consuming an ample amount of alcoholic beverages, and sitting by the fire.
Unfortunately, the one major downside to travelling to the United States is having to go through customs on both sides.? No matter how many times I cross, or how many stamps I have in my passport, I always get grilled pretty hard.? It's gotten worse now that I have a decent ...
