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November 3, 2003 12:58 am My weekend in a summary of images: 
 To summarize real quick so I can get to bed, the first picture is Brooky with a Kitty, second is of Bo and my Haloween costumes -- Bo went as a Bow, and I (John) went as a john (toilet, get it? -- john!) huh huh, and last but not least, somehow today I broke the LCD screen on my camera. Not sure how, it was fine all weekend but when I went to look at it today, I pulled it out and found the screen was cracked. Rather annoying... Oh well. A pretty good weekend otherwise. I have of course, many pictures to put up from the weekend and will do that sometime this week. Until then, have a great week! I know my web site has been neglected lately and I appologize. It's been even busier than normal. November 8, 2003 - 2:06 am I do what I ought not do, and the things I autta' do -- are not what I do! 6:56 pm - Wow, I guess there is a lot to write about. It has been a while, as you have probably noticed. A lot has happened and I hope 
that I can cover most or all of it, so let's see where to begin: I've been going climbing a fair bit with Bo, having a lot of fun with that... I've got my new
job... That's probably the most interesting portion of my life right now, so perhaps I'll touch on that later and make you read through all the boring stuff first.
 Ok, remember how the screen on my nice, small, (and still pretty new) camera got cracked? Well, seeing as how I bought it from Future Shop and even had an
extended warranty on it from them, I brought it to their customer service counter to see if there was anything they could do for it. I was informed by the service
representative that a broken LCD screen was not covered by the warranty and that I would be much better off not having Future Shop repair it as they
would charge me the maximum possible amount, perhaps even as much as $600 for the repair! (I've seen the camera retailing for $699 in a flyer the other day,
so this would be nearly the cost of a whole new camera!) Instead he recommended that I go to the Canon web site (which I did) and find a service depot in
or around Calgary. Well what would you know, it's RIGHT up the street from my new place of employment! Literally, I could walk there in 5 minutes! So I stopped in
there Friday morning before work to see if I could get an estimate on the repair. The service technician looked at it there, and they punched up a written estimate
of $85 to replace the screen! I couldn't believe it! They also figured it would take about two weeks to be completed with their current work load, and that they
would give me a call when it is ready! How sweet is that? So the lesson here is: "If it's covered by warranty, take it back (to Future Shop.) I've had GREAT
experiences with their warranty system, in the case of my old camera -- they simply replaced it with a newer model! So that worked out awesome, but don't have them
repair ANYTHING if it's not covered by the warranty or you WILL get ripped off!" Christmas is quickly approaching and plans for this year's holiday season are starting to form. It looks like (my) family will be cutting back from our usual 3 Christmas Celebration format taking into account the forcasted absense of at least 5 family members this year. Consequently, we will be concatenating two of our traditional days of celebration into one day. Of course, I am looking forward to Christmas. I don't think there are many people out there who do not enjoy this festive season as long as they don't get caught up in the rush and bustle that can catch us up... Traditionally a last minute Christmas shopper I can give first hand testimony to the mayhem that ensues on Christmas Eve... This year I am planning on having all my shopping done early, so send me your wish lists... (Kristin, I still have your birthday list and I will probably buy something for you off of that unless you speficy otherwise (And NO, it will not be the CAR! ))
-- So far she's the only person to give me any sort of a wish list and I want to give out presents but I need to know what you want! Someone analyzed me once and
told me that I tend to show my affection through the giving of gifts. I show people I love them by buying things for them. Of course, a risky extension that someone
could draw to that would be that if you don't recieve a present from me this year, I don't love you. More than likely, this is not the case. But yes, give me
your wish lists! I will see what I can do. 
Haloween came and went this year, another fun get-together at Bo's house. Once again they went all out and decorated everything, even made custom costumes for
themselves. (Lynne went as a giant recepticle and Sean dressed up as a giant plug) I will have the pictures up from this night and others shortly, but the computer
I need is tied up at the moment and I'll probably forget for at least another day or so. There were some very well done costumes this year, I'm not sure how many
attended but the house was full. I'd guess about 30 people were there all said and done so it was pretty big. Lynne even made tombstones for each of their friends,
and a witty eulogy for every one of them was written upon them, each applicable to the named. I haven't really dressed up for Haloween since that one year when
Jason was up north cutting trees and Kaylee, Jaimee, Jeremy, Jon O., and several other of his friends (I'm thinking Colin Sutton and Doug Cousins but I could be
mistaken) went trick-or-treating. I think I have a picture somewhere from that night, Kaylee the Duck. That was pretty fun but every year since then I've gone
trick-or-treating with Ed's kids, usually draped in a sheet or something of that calibre so nothing fancy. I hadn't even planned on dressing up at all this year
and neither did Bo but once we saw some of the effort the guests had put into their costumes we figured we'de at least better try something. Last minute shopping,
cheap haloween costume, needed in a hurry, where do you go? Wal-Mart! We looked through their surplus Haloween wares but the only 'costumes' were many sizes too
small for most children, let alone us so we started searching elsewhere. They had quite a few isles of Christmas decorations already so we looked up and down those
isles when an idea hit me! I suggested a "costume" to Bo and he liked the idea and immediately following that I was struck with another idea for a costume, so
we headed to a different department and I found what I was looking for. Hence our costumes, Bo went as a BOW and I went as a JOHN. Even though we
were still mostly in plain clothes, our clever disguises earned us the praise of everyone at the party, often accompanied by hearty laughter. It was a good time.
I watched Super Troopers this morning, man what a funny movie! I'd seen bits and peices of it several times but never watched it all the way through and I laughed out loud as I sat alone in my room watching it. The humor, as well as one of the characters in it remind me of a very funny friend of mine, Jay, and also one of the guys I work with now, Marc - who both seem to share the same kind of dry, subtle humour. I realized as I watched it that I haven't sat down and watched a movie by myself in a very long time! I really hardly ever watch TV or movies for that matter. There's usually far too much else to do, and this morning was certainly no exception but for some reason I just had NO motivation or energy to do anything today. I was working pretty late last night on a new song, but when I listened to what I had created last night this morning, I have no idea what I was on... I barely even remember writing some parts of it, and actually thought that somehow the file had become corrupt or something because I didn't recognize my own work. I was a little bit scared too because it seemed like something was really wrong with me to have not remembered something so recent in my mind. I don't know, it's now quarter to eight and I still have no energy. I could use a good sleep I guess, I've been having a lot of late nights but it always seems like there is just so much to do! Pam made her famous baked macaroni and cheese this evening for supper, oh what a treat! It is SOOO good I'm half-fallen out of my chair as I type this because I am SOOOOO full! I couldn't help but laugh as I took my first bite of it though as I remembered that one day so long ago when Jessica had helped Pam make this delicious dish. She was intently watching my face to see my reaction to it's taste (Ever seen Wedding Singer? Not much unlike that) and when she found out that it met my approval, proceeded to announce that the reason it tasted so good was because she had cut the cheese. Well of course she meant it in the context of "because I helped prepare it by cutting up the cheese, one of the main ingredients." Unfortunately the choice of words she used also carries the better known translation of "because I farted." I nearly spit the food out of my mouth as I burst into laughter and could not stop no matter how I tried. Whenever I would almost get back under control, I'd hear her state so matter-of-factly that she'd cut the cheese and again I'd lose all form of control. She got quite upset and apparantly thought I was laughing at HER (maybe for her efforts or for trying to take credit or something. I don't know why she was so offended, but it was funny. I guess she'd never heard that phrase before and I felt bad after because I guess it came across that I was laughing at her, but tonight as I got ready to eat my first bite and brought the fork up to my mouth her words rang in my ears and I laughed again and reminisced with Pam about that day. It was too funny. So Jessica, if you read this, I was never laughing AT you, it was just what you had said in the context it was given in was really, REALLY funny! "Your food tastes good because I farted." Well, that's about all I have time to write about for now... I know I left out the part about my new job and I'm sorry. I will get to it one of these days. There is quite a bit to write about I guess, so please be patient. Rest assured -- unless I die I will write more later. 9:10 pm - Well I didn't die, and as promised I have more to write about. I went over to my parents' house to grab the charging adapter for my Palm. (I don't know if you knew this or not but I got a new Palm Pilot, it was a warranty repair item because my old one would NOT synchronize using a cradle. I could sync no problem with the infrared port, and was able to backup all of my data off it, but no dice on the cradle. We tested it with my brother's Palm and it worked just fine so process of elimination determined that it was in fact a hardware problem with my old unit. Consequently, I sent it away for warranty repair and much like the camera thing, they send me a new one (Only this time it was of the same model.) I also got a new cradle with it but it did not come with a power adapter to charge the Palm. Anyways, back to the story, I went over to my parent's house where my old power adapter was but while I was greeted from behind the front door by a very ferrocious guard dog, he couldn't let me in and I had to return home without the adapter. Then it donned on me that they were all out at a play at the old school. Realizing they wouldn't be home for several hours I came back home and made my own power adapter off the 5v side of an old AT power supply I'm using to power the amp I've got my speakers hoooked up to. It works out well, because now I'll have a cradle for work and one for home too! Is that not a sweet deal? I charged it up and copied all my old files back onto it. Somehow though, I'm not sure if it was because of whatever happened to the old Palm or just what, but the 64mb memory card I had in my old Palm has become damaged and nothing can read it anymore. I can't even format it, whenever I put it in the unit just gives an error message about not being able to recognize the card. So that was a bit disappointing, I bought that memory card off of Steve, one of the guys I used to work with who didn't need it anymore. You know what's crazy? Speaking of memory cards I saw a 4 GIGABYTE CompactFlash card the other day!!! (That's the kind of cards both my cameras take and I've got an adapter for my laptop so I can plug them straight in and use them as portable hard drive.) Four gigs, while quite excessive, would be very handy. I don't know how fast they can transfer data but from a capacity standpoint that's large enough to replace a hard drive... You could install your entire operating system onto the flash card and then take your whole computer's files with you in your wallet even! I'm sure the 4gb card is expensive though; as near as I know the 1gb cards still sell around the $500 mark... But when you consider that they were over $2,000 when they first came out, they're now at 25% of their origional selling price. Give these flash cards a year or two and you'll see their prices drop dramatically too, maybe even to the point where they COULD replace hard drives. It makes sense, no moving parts, minimal power consumption, small, compact size, You could have a handheld computer with a 4 gig memory card and bring your entire music collection with you in your pocket, not to mention your daytimer, address book, to-do list, wireless browser, you name it! There is definately a future for these sort of things. Wow it must be getting late, I'm rambling now. Time to go to bed. Goodnight! I found out my cruiser weighs sixteen thousand kilograms! November 11, 2003 (11/11) - 12:58 am I suppose it would almost be inappropriate to wish someone a happy rememberance day, for certainly that which we remember is a tremendous sacrifice made by many brave, noble, and courageous young men and women who fought to the death so that you and I can enjoy what we know as the free world today. How can you greet someone? Most other days of rememberance are happy occasions, Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, Happy Easter, Happy New Years... I'm not sure what the appropriate greeting would be on Rememberance Day. As I was sitting in my room tonight, thinking about what I might write, a poem came to mind that while themed with war and very applicable to the day, carries a much more personal implication to me and no doubt the other members of my family. By Lord Tennyson Alfred Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade! "Charge for the guns!" he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew Someone had blunder'd: Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred. Flash'd all their sabres bare, Flash'd as they turn'd in air, Sabring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wonder'd: Plunged in the battery-smoke Right thro' the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reel'd from the sabre stroke Shatter'd and sunder'd. Then they rode back, but not Not the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell, They that had fought so well Came thro' the jaws of Death Back from the mouth of Hell, All that was left of them, Left of six hundred. When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wondered. Honor the charge they made, Honor the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred. You know, I went to Quizzno's the other night up in Coventry Hills (I think that's the name of the area) to buy a Mesquite Chicken sub. The restaurant was quite busy and as I stood in line my eye caught a black and white picture framed on the wall. At first I thought it was part of the decor, there were actually four pictures on the wall, all black and white, all framed and looking like very old photos. You know how sometimes restaurants will have "standardized" imagry that they display in their dining area -- these seemed to be the sort of pictures you might find in any Quizzno's. I wasn't prepared to pay them much attention but something caught my attention -- I realized that I knew the people in the picture. I looked at one of the other pictures and realized I knew the people in THAT picture as well. Why am I recognizing people from very old black and white pictures on the wall of a popular fast food restaurant? Part of the answer lies in the gold chain I wear around my neck, given to me by the lady in one of the pictures. The other part of the answer lies in the poem displayed above, which was one of the favorite poems of the man in that same picture. Volley'd and Thunder'd I can still hear his voice uttering those words, reciting that line with quiet amusement. I felt proud to see that picture there. The couple looked so happy. The man held in his hands a black book I presumed to be a Bible. (Of course, in a black and white picture - what other color would it be? ) I stood there at the back of the line, amidst the bussle of a busy place with people
rushing around, people waiting to be served and ever more to do than seemed would get done. Yet between me and that picture, there was no noise, no action, no
commotion. I stood as though in a museum, where the only sound I heard was whatever sound I made. I smiled as I saw their faces, the mischevious grin on his, the
joyous smile on hers. But then I saw the small plaque attached to the picture frame, and read the letters inscribed upon it. It had their names, but beside his
were the letters "- 2002"I will not forget that night, how could anyone who was there? The night we watched a miracle take place in our midst. The night we felt the presence of the angels who lead him by the hands into the presence of our Lord. The numbers "- 2002" meant a great loss for us, and certainly we felt much sorrow. But if you move but one of the letters over to where it best describes our grandpa now, it should read "2002 -", and never shall another number be written beside it again. What a hope we have in Jesus! Volley'd and Thunder'd Noble six hundred November 16, 2003 - 2:04 pm Wow, I went nearly two weeks without updating the main page! That has to be a new record. Well yesterday I finally pulled the battery out of the Seadoo, gave it a final fogging before the winter and made sure there was no water in the engine.  The other day I fixed my Numark CD player, the one that hasn't really worked properly since I bought it in grade 11. That's the problem with buying store demo models, you never know how much they've been used or abused in the store. But no matter, it's running better now than it's ever run in it's lifetime! Right now I've found a great new song that I'm trying to see if it will go into Project X, which is nearing completion I might add... (After over three years in the making) Crazy! It is so far my best dance mix CD though, and I can't wait until it's done! Well, more on that later. As my list of things to fix slowly decreases, I am finding more and more items to add to it. It never seems to end. Now it seems like the power connector on my laptop has cracked a solder joint... I don't know how much fun that's going to be to get into but we'll see. The headphone connector is starting to fall apart again too. Remember I fixed it that one night at Pine Lake after drinking a whole whack of tea with that French Vanilla stuff in it? Good times! So it might be time to take this thing apart anyways and do some maintenance on it. Oh, I got a letter from that church in Wetaskiwin the other day... That was pretty cool. At first when I saw Wetaskiwin on the envelope I thought it was from the Lethbridge's but couldn't figure out why they would have sent me a letter since Karen had already signed the guestbook... Then I remembered filling out the guest card and the rest fell into place. I love small churches like that, where they actually take time to write letters to every guest that shows up in a pue. I think that's awesome. Anyhow, gotta run! November 17, 2003 - 10:55 pm One of my cousins sent me this story, which unfortunately I read at work. It took me a few minutes to regain my composure, so if you are somewhere that you wouldn't want to be seen with tears in your eyes, read no further until you can.
November 20, 2003 - 12:15 am  I got my camera back! Brand new LCD and all, total price including all parts and labour: $79.95. Can you believe that!?!? I couldnt'! But I have a receipt to prove it, and a camera with a new screen to boot! I guess "seeing really is believing!" huh huh. It's nice to be able to see the pictures I'm taking again. Some other interesting pictures to share with you tonight, first of all the actual picture I took of George with the S400:  Next is an interesting little image, here's what a laptop screen looks like when you break it:   Kind of wierd, I come across two broken LCD screens in the same month? Pretty strange... Do you want to know how much the owner of this laptop was quoted (by HP) to have the LCD display panel replaced? (I hope you're sitting down...) TWENTY-ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS!!! ($2,100) And it's no wonder the thing broke either, when you push on the back of the screen (the top of the case when it's closed and sitting on a counter) it doesn't take much pressure at all to affect the display. There is a thin layer of plastic between the outside of the computer and the fragile glass panel. Compare that to my trusty IBM Thinkpad 600E, which after testing for myself you pretty much CANNOT affect the screen from the back of the panel. I think there must be a steel plate or something protecting it, a GOOD IDEA considering how easy it would be to break otherwise... Then again, that's HP for you... "Plastic Junk" as my dad would say... I mean, the laptop itself is pretty decent internally, it's pretty loaded to be honest. But when you consider the construction of it's case, unless it's sitting stationary at a desk or plugged permanently into a docking station, it's not designed to travel. On another note, I can't help but notice my stomach is becoming more and more agitated. I fear I might actually be getting sick! This has not happened to me in years, but here I am sitting, fighting an increasing urge to expunge the contents of my digestive system. I'm hoping it's just some gas from the Vanilla Pepsi I've been drinking tonight but I've had gas before and this feels nothing the same. Good thing I can work from home, tomorrow might be a good day to stay home if this continues! Not good! I really don't want to be sick, especially with this all-nighter coming up this weekend! There's no WAY I'm going to miss that... Anyhow, I'm going to go to bed and hopefully sleep it off. Have a good day everyone! November 25, 2003 - 8:12 pm When I got home this evening I had a package from Telus, a fairly large envelope with something heavier than just paper inside. On the front it bore a greeting wishing me a happy anniversary. I wasn't really sure what anniversary they were referring to but of course I was eager to open it. Here it turns out that I've been a Clearnet/Telus customer for 5 years! How's that for crazy!? I remember when I first "bought" my very first cell phone, "Paid" for it with debit, and probably still have the receipt that says I "paid" over $160 for it, but in reality that cell did not cost me a cent. It was discovered after the transaction had taken place that the clerk at the store had printed up a receipt but not processed the debit card, so no money was actually withdrawn from my account. OOPS! So here I am, 5 years later opening a present from Telus on the 5 year anniversary of customer-ship. Want to know what it is? A hands-free headset thingie (and a calendar). I'm not sure if it's the same as that good one I used to have a long time ago that got broken one night I was trying to ride my bike with it on or if it's like the one I bought to replace it that never was nearly as good... I guess I'll just have to try it and find out, but really I have another one that the company I work for now gave to me that's a lot better than any of them were so I don't even need it, but it was a nice gesture... Speaking of work, my job is causing me to expand my knowledge of PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and even Linux a lot lately and I'm lovin' it. Just today I added two more package manuals to my collection of offline documentation, the manual for JavaScript 1.5 and JPGraph, a PHP package for creating graphs and charts from php. It's exciting (but very geeky) stuff. In the works right now are several php-based programs, one of which I plan on using to track all of the plant's utility and perrishable consumption as well as measure it's productivity in several categories and then generate reports and graphs to present the information. It's a little over half finished right now, I'm already using it for the tracking side of things but getting useful reports out of the system is still in it's infant stages. It already does generate graphs though, which is really cool. My brain hurts though. I was having so much fun at it last night I stayed there till 9:00, a full 12 hour day and today even I was at work till 7:30. Our Christmas party promises to be quite a blast too -- we're staying overnight at a hotel / lodge in Canmore. As near as I know, everything but drinks are paid for, so if one does not consume any fermented drink, the weekend is completely free. Just another of many perks with this new job! Yesterday I set up my Christmas Tree in my office and I've started bringing in pictures for my walls. It's slowly but surely becoming "MY" office. (And already I've had a number of personal computers dropped off for me to fix.) I swear some day I will just *FORGET* how to fix computers. My life would be a lot simpler... But I'm not complaining. I love my job and I love
what I do, and now I get paid to do something I really enjoy. You can't get a better job than that!
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