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April 3, 2004 - 10:07 am 
I've been watching, I've been waiting in the shadows for my timeI've been searching, I've been living for tomorrows all my life I found a great new driving song by The Rasmus called "In The Shadows". It's beginning to look and feel like spring outside and I'm getting excited. I've got my wireless network card all good to go in my laptop and pretty soon I'll be bringing my lake chair to work, sitting outside under a big tree with my laptop and doing my days' work out under the sun. That will be the life. I've discovered another wonderful little quirky activity. It probably sounds almost cat-like but I tried it the other night and it was terriffic. Have you ever felt the top of the dryer as you're drying some clothes? It gets pretty warm, doesn't it? So what I did is went and got my pillow and blanket, and I hopped up on the driver, made myself a little bed and fell asleep. I sort of had my head (and therefore pillow) on the washer which was also running, and the combination of heat, vibrations, and soothing mechanical noises put me right to sleep. I could have probably slept there all night (or at least for the following 80 minutes) except Luke came home and felt the need to wake me up and poke fun at my new found sleeping place. It seems to amuse people all the things that I can sleep on or through. I've got one of those old-fashioned mechanical alarms with actual bells on top, and when it goes off a little hammer clangs the two bells repeatedly until the operator (sleeper) wakes up and turns them off. This little unit sits about two feet from my head, and is so loud that Luke can hear it up in his room four stories up. (I'm in the basement. Literally, our rooms are on opposite corners, both vertically and horizontally, of this house -- they couldn't be any farther apart.) This thing rings for hours before finally Luke comes down and wakes me up. I don't even hear it. Some days even it gives up and shuts off. (I think after two hours) Since Christmas when I got it, I've gone through 4 batteries in the thing. It's pretty funny. But even out at the lake, if you look at some of the pictures when Bo and Mike were there, they were trying to see how close they could take a picture of my face without waking me up.  I didn't wake up. April 4, 2004 - 2:04 pm  Could spring be on it's way? I found this little guy clinging to a blade of GREEN grass yesterday while I was curled up in BJ's doghouse barrel type thing. I took a whole bunch of pictures of BJ as well, and created a new section in the photo album devoted entirely to him! Take a look at it here if you're interested. I also FINALLY got the family pictures from Christmas up as well... Boy that was a long time coming, eh! And as for Kayla and Casey, it doesn't look like I'm going to be at Pine Lake for the May Long weekend... Bo and several other friends are planning on going to Sheerness (the warm lake) for the May Long Weekend. We've got a new idea to try with the Seadoo. Now I won't tell you what it is but I'll list the ingredients: Lake. Seadoo. GT Snow Racer. Rope. I think you can probably guess where that will be going and we might die. But it will still be fun and I've wanted to try it since winter! We'll see what happens I guess. April 6, 2004 - 12:10 am Tonight marks the eve of stage II in operation GUTLESS -- The name of my plan this year of losing my gut. Hahaha. So I put together a sweet little bike, and starting tomorrow morning I am going to ride it to and from work every day. There are so many advantages to this it's hard to find reasons "NOT" to do it. For starters, the exercise. This is the main reason, get the legs pumping again, heart racing and blood flowing. I always enjoyed riding a pedal bike, I used to ride it everywhere. I think I've figured it's about 9 kilometers to work which is really not that bad but it will have an effect I'm sure. Then there's all the fresh air to start my day, clear the brain and give me energy for the many hours I'll sit physically idle in my office before the ride home. I'll save lots of gas, and I recall that I always did a lot of good thinking while riding my bike. The only possible disadvantages that I can see are basically these: It will take longer to get to and from work, and I can't carry quite as much stuff. But really, carrying stuff is not much different than if I rode my motorcycle to work anyways, so that one really doesn't count. The only possible other disadvantage is that if I want to go somewhere after work, I've got to ride home and grab a vehicle first (if it's far away) but even there, so it adds half an hour to my travel time. Sitting in rushour will do the same thing and it will help me escape the rushour rush anyways. All in all, I win many ways. And once operation gutless is a success, it will be well worth whatever setbacks may result from it. I am very excited, and really instead of sitting up typing this I should be in bed getting some sleep but I've got to figure out my clothing situation for tomorrow before I get to bed so I will still be up for a bit. On another note, Bo and I have been talking about some other plans for this summer and hopefully even the May Long Weekend. It looks like I'll be going to Sheerness for the May Long, (sorry Pine Lakers) and we're planning on building a raft. It will probably be about the size of the grey floating dock at Pine Lake but we're going to put a diving board on it. Then at the warm lake we can sit out all day on this floating raft thing, take turns with the GT snow racer and the Seadoo and have an awesome, relaxing time. Oh it's going to be good. I am starting to get really excited. Sometimes the preparation is almost as much fun as the actual event. I think I've got a motor for our raft and Bo's going to get some barrels we can use, we just need to find some wood and other basic building supplies to construct it out of. I think we even have a trailer to get it out to the lake. If it works really well we might even sleep on it one night! That would be absolutely crazy! Bring a 12v battery and a bunch of deck lights, light up our little floating party-raft. We could maybe even do it like the barge at Pine Lake where they put a firepit on it and drifted around the lake with a roaring fire on deck. It's not like we'd have far to go to get water to put it out if anything got out of hand... All they did is put a cement slab under the firepit and that seemed to work just fine. Especially on the warm lake too, where the water is SOOOO nice and warm -- Oh man that would be awesome! Can't wait. April 6, 2004 - 8:39 am Day 1 - I made it to work. Wow I am out of shape! Well, round is a shape isn't it? Actually it only took me 22 minutes to get from my house to the office -- Even less time than my original predicted 30 minutes. It's a pretty good ride too, the up-hills and down-hills are probably pretty even so it won't be easy in the morning and deadly going home, I think it's pretty much the same both ways. It sure was chilly this morning though. I was out in shorts and a sweater but I think the temperature was only 2 degrees... Still, the sun was shining nice and bright, causing me to cast a long shadow. It was great to be back on a pedal bike. I do need to give it a good wash though, and since I practically soaked it in WD40 last night to help loosen some of the accumulated grime from the chain and sprockets, the whole thing (which is sitting beside me in my office here) reeks of WD40. Initial symptoms exhibited upon arrival include increased heart rate, faintness of legs, heavy respiration, and moderate sweat formation on exposed areas of skin. Sweating was likely curtailed by the cold temperature outside. I'm going to keep a record of sorts, I'm not sure how regularly, of such information throughout operation gutless. I think it will be fun to look back at the end of summer, see where I was and where I ended up. I should get some good gut-shots too, take some pictures before and after. Chances are though, I'll only post the 'before' pictures 'after' I've got some good results to put up. Otherwise, the 'before' pictures might just disappear completely and I cannot be responsible in that event. hehehehe Well, another big day is upon me and I should get to work. April 11, 2004 - 11:19 am Yesterday while Bo and I were rounding up supplies for our raft we had to take Madisson with us for a few hours. Bo and I took her to Revy while we picked up some planks and 2x4's and she just rode around on one of our shoulders or wandered around in the store. She loved the big automatic door and would run through it, turn around and run back through it again several times laughing and smiling the whole time. She was having a blast! I couldn't help but wonder throughout the day as I wandered around with this happy, funloving bundle of energy on my shoulders, wiping the occasional booger from her face, what if? What if things had happened differently? It's sad to see how Madisson is neglected by her mother who cares more about herself than her own daughter and really wasn't ready and isn't responsible enough to take care of her... But at least Madisson has the chance to live. April 11, 2004 - 12:14 am Today is National Directory Assistance Day!  What a day it was today! Bo and I built the first half of our raft, and it is turning out far better than either of us had ever expected! I couldn't help but think of my dear father as I made measurements, cut boards, drilled holes, and installed screws. While we are really not quite half done the main portion of our craft, it is already taking on wonderful form and it's rock solid... Bo and I set the barrels into place and sat it up on them, and both of us could wander about the frame, bouncing all our weight on every board without even causing so much as a budge... It is very sturdy. The finished project should turn out 8' wide by 16'3" long, and we hope to even have a roof build over at least half of it to provide not only shade while enjoying our labour, but also to provide a platform from which we can dive off! It will have to have a firepit on it as well, (Hey guys, remember that barge at Pine Lake a few years ago that had the fire pit on it? I was sitting up at Ed's trailer one night when we noticed a fire on one of the docks! I went out to investigate and found that it was not one of the Sandy Cove docks, but rather a barge much the same size as this raft we're building, which had docked at our docks while several passengers came ashore to buy things from the store. It had a few chairs around a big fire pit in the middle, and they just went trolling up and down the lake. It was awesome!) But anyways, tomorrow I've got two Easter dinners to go to, one at my aunt's place with the family and the other at Bo's house with his family. I just checked the forecast tomorrow, and with a high of 22 you'd better believe I'm going to be taking my bike... Today was gorgeous too, a perfect day to be working outside. We videotaped our progress throughout the building process and took a few pictures too so once we're done we'll have a bit of a presentation from the whole adventure. Man it's going to be awesome. We went in after we'd cleaned up and talked to Sean and Lynne and they're almost more excited about it than we are! Sean wants to bring his keyboard out and have a jam on the raft! hahaha That would be awesome. I can't wait. I think there are some 5 weekends left before the May Long so we've still got a bit of time to get everything together. The biggest concern at this point is getting it out to the lake, but Sean had a good suggestion tonight that we might go with. Man it is going to be awesome! I'm not sure if I'll bring it out to Pine Lake but we'll see. I suppose anything is possible. We sure got a lot of looks from passers-by today too. This one girl stopped and asked us if we were hammered. Not hammered, just having a good time. But wow it's almost 1:00 already and I desperately need to go have a shower. Happy Easter everyone! April 17, 2004 - 6:31 pm  Three dreaded words: Hard Drive Crash! The other night I was sleeping in my cupboard as I frequeltly do, when I was awakened (and anyone who knows me knows how soundly I sleep!) to the sound of a hard drive smashing it's heads against each side of it's stoppers, causing an awful racket. From where I lay sleeping, I was unable to tell which drive had been affected since there are multiple computers, and most with multiple hard drives. As it was 4 or 5 in the morning, I went back to sleep to deal with the problem in the morning. When I turned on the monitors, it was very easy to identify which computer had been affected... Stealth, my main file server and basically the Linux computer I use most often (or at least access directly most often) was locked up. Now at first I wasn't worried. That computer has two hard drives in it, an 80 gig drive which was only a few years old which has all my music, old pictures, programs, backup files, and whatnot -- and a 13.7 gig hard drive I bought way back when I was still working at the digital print shop. I assumed that it was the 13.7 gig drive since it was 5 or 6 years old and really wasn't worried about it. That computer still ran Red Hat 8.0, which is so old now they aren't even supporting it anymore and I'd wanted to upgrade it for some time, but just never had an opportunity. I was actually kind of glad, I figured I'd replace the 13 gig drive with a new one, give Fedora Core 2 a try on it, bring it up to speed. Well, after some quick troubleshooting on that computer my heart sank when I realized that the 13 gig drive was working perfectly fine -- it was the 80 gig drive that was clanging and clashing! And while 90 percent of the files on it I have stored somewhere else (backups, etc.) there was still a good 10 gigs or so that existed in no other location but on that drive! Old pictures, all my original dance mix CD files, a whole bunch of old personal stuff from high school and even junior high... A lot of files I'd much rather have than be without, if nothing else but for sentimental reasons. I already lost all my old QBasic programs when the CD they were stored on got scratched horribly... The only thing I can read on that particular CD is the directory listing, none of the actual files can be opened. So that was pretty sad, some of that stuff was kind of fun to have... But back to the hard drive... I checked it's warranty status and it is still under warranty so that's a good thing... And even though the disk surface developed some bad sectors somehow, linux's fsck program was able to clone the bad blocks and as I type this, I am copying ALL my files off the hard drive! It looks like everything is still intact, but I am of course going to back everything up before I send the drive away for replacement since they will return to me a blank hard drive. What a hassle though! So for now the music sections are offline because the music is not accessible at the moment. In other news, after consulting with Ed concerning the raft, he has come up with a very interesting idea on how we can securely attach each 8' x 8' section together to make the whole raft one piece in the water. Bo's gone to Lethbridge to see if he can get some cheap (or free) wood sealer from some connections his mom has there... Pretty soon we're going to start work on the roof, once we've got the deck sealed and all the plywood on. I'd like to make the deck out of two by fours but the expense that adds to the project almost makes it completely prohibitive. If anyone has some 8' two by fours' they'd like to get rid of...  It ought to
be ready for a test launch on the May Long Weekend! Boy I'm getting excited. Anyhow, Stealth has just finished burning a CD of some files I needed to grab off it
to help clear space so I should continue on my backup and get out of here. Have a good weekend everyone!Aptil 27, 2004 - 12:56 am What a beautiful day this has been! 25 degrees celcius and what did I do all day? I slept on the couch! Hahaha When I came home from work I was just so tired that I thought I'd go lie down for a bit upstairs in the living room. This was about 7:00- ish. At 12:30 am I was awakened by Jason and Luke who were coming in from a fire and trying extremely hard not to laugh loudly, but the more they tried the more they failed. Apparantly the position I was lying in on the couch was found by them to be amusing... I don't know. Watch ED TV sometime to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Anyway, they thought it was funny but I had a good rest. I'm still tired and as such, am going straight to bed once I finish writing this. (Luckily they could not find my camera!) I do remember at least one dream I was having while lying there though... I dreampt I was at work (big surprise) but for some reason my mom worked there. She was getting [irritated] with me for some reason because I didn't know how to work the machines. Well here if she doesn't get Cindy to teach me how to use the machines! (Like, not the wash tunnels but all the folders / ironers, etc.) So Cindy kept trying to teach me how to use all these machines but nothing worked... It kept turning into one of those dreams where nothing was going right, like the ones where you keep running but you can't get away. Make some sense out of that one, eh? This weekened Bo and I are going to go up to Mount Romulus. Why not Mount Klingon? Well, it's too far away for one thing... I'm actually not sure why it's called Mt. Romulus but I don't think it had anything to do with Star Trek... If that name does sound familiar though, I have a good many stories from previous camping trips to that same spot many years ago... It is there that I had a syst blow up near my tailbone causing so much pain that I wandered around that whole weekend on Tylenol and couldn't even sit in the van all the way back to Calgary... It was also there that Peter tossed a Roman candle into the fire pit before asking me to extinguish the fire... While I was putting it out I suddenly found myself under fire unexpectantly with no shortage of laughter to accompany my plight... I was not impressed but I could see the humour... Yes there were many fond memories on that camping trip... Peter and Tanya and the leaky air matress... * HISSSSS * Hahaha. Good times. Anyhow, I'm actually starting to wake up now and that's not a good thing. I should try to fall back asleep ASAP here or I'll be up all night! Goodnight everyone. April 28, 2004 - 12:30 AM  First it's beautiful, then it snows. Is this not the recurring pattern of things in this city? Although I had to admit that even with the cold snowy rain we had this evening, I could see a lot of green sprouting up everywhere — Green grass, buds on trees, shrubs and bushes... No doubt about it, spring is coming. Yet ironically as I walked outside to my van tonight, the cold weather reminded me not of winter, but rather of Pine Lake. Several nights up there were not a whole lot unlike the night I experienced today. Yet despite the bitter cold in the damp air, there was a warmth in the memory, a glow of rememberance that could be felt underneath the chill of the night: A mug of Tea with French Vanilla, close friends and shared warmth under blankets, a stupid yet funny movie (Kung Pow? Or was it Airplane? does it matter?) The comfort of familiarity and security nestled snug inside a warm trailer despite the turmoil, dreary rain and cold winds raging outside. That is what I felt tonight. You know, it's amazing how much you can forget over time until something brings back a memory - A smell, a sight, a place, a word, a picture... I've heard quite a few people offer grattitude to me for posting pictures and stories on this 
web site because it helps them remember and share those memories with others. Interestingly enough I've actually spent a
good amount of time in the past week going through the site myself and reliving many memories through it. Some memories are
in plain view, some are buried just a little bit deeper but there is a lot of my life recorded here. I want to thank you,
the visitor, for coming here and allowing me to share a part of my world with you. Life is something that I believe
should be shared. Thank you for allowing me to share mine with you. BACK to Journal Index |