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October 1, 2004 - 10:35 AM  Where does the time go? We're already in October!? That means my birthday is really close, how's that for a scarry thought. I received some sad news yesterday -- one of the guys who used to work here running the dryers passed away on Sunday. 
Bishamber Badhan, or Sam as we all knew him as, was 65 years old when
he passed away. Sam was a character, probably the hardest working person we had in the plant. He used to tell me
that when he lived in India, he once worked for eight days straight with no food and no sleep. All the years
he worked for Custom Linen, he ate once a day. Any more than that and he got sick. Sam just loved
to work. His whole family still lives in India and of the money he earned, he paid his bills and sent the rest of
his money home to his family. Even at 64 he was fiercely independant. I tried to help him move some heavy carts
in the plant one night (they weighed about 300 pounds each) and he called me an idiot. He was like that though,
and no one took offense. Good ol' Sam. He will be missed. When George and Barb went to visit him in the hospital,
even though he was dying his one request was that he could come back and run the dryers one last time. On another note, I'm going back to Grenada in November to help with the cleanup following the destruction Hurricane Ivan wreaked on the island. 90% of the buildings on the island were either heavily damaged or destroyed, and 60,000 people are without basic shelter. Blair and I signed ourselves up to go, so I am in the process now of getting my passport, getting all my shots updated, and raising the money needed for the trip. 
How can you tell that fall is here? Three distinct signs: First, there are many yellow leaves on the ground, second
there is frost on vehicular windshields, and third -- you can see your exhaust!
 Ignoring the cold weather for now and turning thoughts to a warmer time of year, yesterday Jason and I put a deposit down on our houseboat for next summer. This year we're getting a 22 man boat which has dual Seadoo docking bays and three queen sized rooms. It is a SWEET boat, so if you know of anyone who would like to come on a houseboat trip in July, let me know!  October 1, 2004 6:34 PM Friday night and I'm still at work. I'm trying to print but I'm out of wax. Our color laser here prints using wax. I wonder if a red candle will do the trick... Honey... I got a lot of money Could you be my nasty girl? And let me do that dirty dance with you? It's Friday and it's my day just to party all the way to Sunday, maybe till monday. It don't matter what day, every day's just a holiday... Crusin on the freeway, feeling kind of breezy. Get the top down and let my hair blown It don't matter where i'm going all I know is when I get there someone's gonna touch my body... Black girls, white girls, skinny girls, fat girls, tall girls, small girls, I'm calling all girls. Everyone report to the dance floor. It's your chance for a little romance or butt squeezing, it's the season just go "Auughuughuughhh!!!"  Party in my office! hahaha Have a good weekendOctober 2, 2004 - 7:28 AM Man my left eye hurts. Good thing I've got a spare... Jason and I went to BP's last night after working on his car and I've got to say it's great to have a friend like him. I am amused by so many aspects of my life right now. It's kind of funny how things work out sometimes. You've got to have good friends you can talk to and trust with even your most personal 'stuff.' Man, relationships are complicated things. I don't know if I learn more while I'm in one or while I'm longing for one. Of all the conversations I have with people, it seems that lately the vast majority of them has been focused around relationships. If two people are happy, who cares what anyone else thinks or says? Most relationships are not so much about the differences between people as they are about how willing each partner is to making the relationship work. Differences compliment. They add dynamics to a relationship. Bring different viewpoints, ways of thinking, ways of reasoning. They open up a person to new experiences and expand both people's views of the world and of each other. You learn from your differences. You learn to interact better and to relate to each other better through differences. You also learn to interact with other people because of your experience with each other. I'm going out to work on the van now. It needs a bit of stuff done before winter sets in and today is a perfect day to be doing it. I would love to write more later so if I have time tonight, I will do that. And HAPPY BIRTHDAY BO! Of course, he's in Lethbridge today or I'd be out celebrating with him... But I'll probably get to see him tomorrow when he gets back. Get out there and enjoy this weather!!! You know it's not going to last... October 3, 2004 - 12:48 PM REAR HEATER AT LAST!!! 
It's finally completed! After years of planning and procrastinating, I finally built and installed that rear heater in the van I've been talking about for years! And after taking it out for a test drive last night, it works awesome! The air coming up out of the register gets so hot you'd almost think it's going to burn your hand! I'd call the operation a complete success. Of course, I still need to install a switch on the fan and wire it in properly... But those are both minor tasks at this point. It's all hooked into the cooling system, no leaks at all and it's not even very loud! There's a BIG fan inside that machine drawing air through that heater core and for all that it's doing it's not loud at all. Now of course, the van seems to have picked this time to act up in another way. Ever since I replaced the thermostat in the van the 'new' one has been acting up. Every once in a while it seems to get stuck closed and the engine gets really hot. It hasn't yet blown the radiator cap and overflowed, but it definately runs a lot hotter than it used to with the old thermostat. One thing I did notice though, with both heaters going full blast at the same time, the engine runs cooler even WITH the thermostat closed! That means that between the two heaters there's enough heat being extracted from the coolant to keep the van from overheating. But ya, it's definately sweet. I am looking forward to some real cold mornings now to give this thing a good run for it's money! October 5, 2004 - 6:25 PM  Another day, another problem... We were having a meeting concerning the website (www.albertarooms.com) we recieved a letter from Moneris stating that due to inactivity in our account, they had terminated our merchant status as of September 27th. No notice, no warning, no phone call to ask what was going on, just a letter post-mortum stating that we had been terminated. What a joke. You'd think a company the size of Moneris would act a little more professional... My last correspondance with a representative from their company occured on May 27, 2004. Needless to say, the three of us were quite disgusted by this and immediately began searching for another credit card processing gateway provider. It just never seems to fail... 
 In other news, last night when I was waiting to get my passport pictures done I was browsing the merchandise in the store I was waiting in when much to my surprise and delight did I find an underwater camera kit for my little Canon digital camera! So of course, I just had to buy it... Now when we go diving we can take some underwater digital pictures. And the nice thing of course, with Digital you can see your images immediately and retake them if necessary! No doubt this will be a toy I'll get most use out of next summer... But still it has been on my wish list for some time. I'd only ever actually seen one on the internet, and I much prefer purchasing from an actual store anyways. It's quite a funky looking contraption, with buttons, levers and knobs that activate / adjust all of the camera's controls from outside the case, and it's waterproof up to 130 feet! That's deeper than I can dive, that's for sure! Bo and I are going to try to get one more snorkel in before it gets too cold and/or the lakes are all frozen but with my schedule for the next couple of weekends I don't know if that will really happen or not. This weekend of course is my birthday and Thanksgiving... Always a busy time of year. Next weekend I'm DJ'ing for my friend's wedding dance & reception, I believe the following weekend is the fall retreat at Grace, and then the one after that I'm getting baptized (on Haloween no less.) Then the first weekend in November, I leave for Grenada on the 6th with Blair and get back on the 14th, effectively ruling out those weekends too. It's a busy fall for me. October 6, 2004 - 12:42 PM  What Is It? The other day I took this picture, and it kind of freaked me out at first when I went to look at it on the camera. Doesn't it look like a broken LCD screen? Of course, I knew it wasn't but the more I stared at it the more it looked like the screen was cracked! Can you guess what it is? (And no, it's not a picture of a cracked screen... But nice try! )Counting the Days... Sort of Has anyone else noticed that the countdown thing is one day off? Today is the 6th of October, my birthday is on the 8th, but the countdowner says it's only one day away. I'm not sure why but one of these days I'm going to revamp that little script. I know (now) of a much better way to code it, so that you could even find out exactly how many days you've been alive, accounting for leap years and all that other fun stuff too. Theoretically I could even modify it so that you could (if you knew the time you were born) calculate the number of hours, minutes and even seconds you've been alive. Or you could count the number of minutes until a certain time / date. All kinds of fun stuff is possible with php's date() function and a little creativity. Old Habbits Die Hard... I was in Safeway this morning doing some grocery shopping. We've run out of pretty much everything here at work and with all the hours I spend at the office it's nice to have some food to eat without having to go out and pay restaurant prices for every meal... I've been getting better with the whole not looking up thing whenever I go into a store but as I was walking down the freezer isle I couldn't help myself. Whenever you change the lights in a freezer, you have to remove the plastic guard that serves two purposes: First, it protects the flourescent lamp against impact (and therefore, breakage) and second - it keeps the lamp warm. Flourescent (or any gas discharge) lamps do not do well in cold weather, and those coolers can get pretty chilly. So when the plastic guards are not reinstalled properly, the lamps tend to get really dim. So there I was, going down the row of coolers - re-installing all these plastic guards on the lamps. What a light geek. I know. 
October 11, 2004 - 10:08 AM Happy Birthday Kristin! And a belated happy birthday to me too. Actually this has been a weekend of
birthdays, Bo's on the 2nd, Julie's on the 6th (not quite the weekend, I know)
then mine on the 8th, Rachel's on the 9th, Kristin's today... Kind of makes you
wonder why so many were around this 7 day span... As far as birthday
activity goes, it wasn't the most exciting birthday I ever had, Jason and I
just went to Red Deer and played pool at Lorne's pool hall with Carmen and
Megan. Paul from the houseboat trip two summers ago and his girlfriend also
showed up for a bit but they left fairly early in the night to come back to
Calgary. I walked over to the Peavy Mart and left a note for one of the
employees there -- when in Red Deer... As far as birthday presents go, so far I have had a wonderful birthday - I was given the gift of warmth and safety (a heated vest for spring & fall riding and a new pair of gloves - mine wouldn't do much should their protective qualities be required...) but the best present that I've recieved this weekend could not be wrapped up with paper or given in a card. And to me, it's far better than anything that could be. You know how sometimes there's a whole bunch of little things that each individually do not ammount to much, but when you read them together as a whole -- they tell a much more interesting story? Well this has been the story of my life for the past couple of weeks. A collection of little things which now I cannot stop thinking about. You might even say I'm floating.
So now I am heading off to my Uncle Jim's house to have the big family Thanksgiving "thing" with the rest of my extended family. And so far today I haven't pee'd yet either so I will stop writing right now and tend to some more pressing matters! Have a a wonderful Thanksgiving!October 12, 2004 - 11:21 PM ... All of a sudden you came into my life and I will never be the same ...  It always happens when you least expect it. Whenever you look for it, it cannot be found, but it seems that as soon as you give up the search, it finds you. This Thanksgiving has offered me more to be thankful for than I would have ever thought possible even a week ago. I can honestly say I have never felt so much excitement about the sheer potential that has come out of a new friendship that has been developing over the past couple of weeks. I am trying not to psyche myself out but I couldn't help but feel giddy after my lunch date this afternoon. Today was definately not the nicest day to have one's first motorcycle experience, yet despite the cold I don't know which of us enjoyed the ride more. I don't want to go into too much detail just yet... There will be plenty of time to elaborate later. I've been trying to post some new pictures but for some reason Photoshop has been acting up on my computer lately and it's practically inoperable... It might just as well be time to begin work on the completely re-designed photo album that doesn't need Photoshop to resize anything. It seems a lot of other things are starting anew, perhaps it's time to start this web site over again as well. With all my preparations to go to Grenada in a few weeks and everything else that's happening before then, I honestly don't think I will have time to do much and I appologize for that. Goodness knows there's a lot to write about. Thanksgiving celebrations, Kristin's birthday party, Jason wearing a bracelet that says "Carmen"... I've even got some awesome fall pictures if only I could add them... << sigh >>
October 15, 2004 - 8:15 AM What a week this has been! I woke up this morning and could hardly believe all that's been happening, it is all just too wonderful! Rachel and I went for lunch on Tuesday, then on Wednesday night after practice we went for a 3 hour walk, beginning at 11:30 (pm). Thursday we went for lunch again and another walk, though this time in the rain, and last night I stopped in at her work and spent her last working hour sitting on the floor with her and trying to tune a cheap guitar that's for sale in the store, much to the agony of her musical ears... Tonight we're seeing each other again, and
somehow we've got to plan a Meet the Parents for both of us in the
next week or so. I've never met anyone who clicked as well as we do. I've
been waiting for this for a long time. Tomorrow is Rob's wedding! I haven't even really began to pick songs... I guess I should get on that, eh? October 19, 2004 - 11:28 PM Cube has found his Sphere What a week. Has it only been a week? Rachel and I went on our first date last Tuesday. I know why it feels like such a long time ago -- because it was still nice enough to ride!!! I took her to the new Moxies for lunch on my bike that day. And now it feels like winter has all but set in. Crazy. We've actually seen each other almost every day this week so far, including a 3 and a half hour lunch this afternoon... We ran some errands together, stopped by the
University to pick up some reading material for her and drop some books off for her friend and then we went and had lunch at Madisson's Cafe. Afterwards we
stopped by one of the stores she works at to pick up a book she had on order and I had the privilige of embarassing her horribly in front of her peers while
we were there... She was trying to find this guy by the name of John who works there so she could introduce me to him but she didn't know where he was.
I began to call out his name, at which she was mortified that we were making noise above a whisper in this otherwise silent retail establishment but for
all her embarassment she couldn't stop laughing either, and eventually John came out and we were able to meet. It was fun. There are few people in this world
I really get along with but Rachel is definately one of them. We just have a good time no matter where we are or what we're doing. And although it's
only been one week, I'm even more excited now about the potential this relationship has to become something wonderful.So those of you familiar with me know that I love to assign nicknames. Well what would you know it, so does Rachel! For some time before we'd actually started dating, to all her friends I was simply known as M.G., or Motorcycle Guy. This afternoon as we were sitting in the parking lot at my work she let me read one of her poems, something that precious few people ever have the privilege of doing, and afterwards I found my (first) nickname for her: Sphere. Surprisingly enough, she had actually given herself that reference in her poem, but considering my association with the six-sided square it seemed to have a double meaning. I can't wait till tomorrow. This Sunday is Meet the Parents for both of us. I'm not worried about my folks at all, I've told them about Rachel and they already love her. I think my mom was more excited than I was the night I started talking about this new interest in my life... Apparantly her dad is the one we have to work on. (Why does that seem familiar? hmm) but her mom is on our side and apparantly her grandma is coming to meet me on Sunday too. It will be interesting. This weekend was Rob's wedding, and I guess you could say his "Hitching went off without a hitch" huh huh. But speaking of the John Joke, at the reception where I was DJ'ing the dance I ran into Mr. Hoff, my old junior high English teacher. You know all those five minute mysteries I ask people, the ones where I say a phrase like, "If he had been smoking he would still be alive" and you have to ask yes or no questions to find out what the story behind that is? All of those came from him. He gave me an award for the John Jokes back in grade 7 because they "did not offend, demean or belittle anyone" and yet brought so much joy to so many people. We had a brief but warming conversation that night and he gave me his email address so we could stay in touch. I would have to say that he is probably the single most influentual teacher I had throughout school. To this day it annoys me when people spell a lot as one word, and I have so many memories of his antics and stories that made learning language arts more bearable than it would have otherwise been. While he always maintained a stern attitude in class, out of class I considered him a friend and was overjoyed at meeting up with him again after all these years. There is a lot to catch up on and hopefully he has some more 5 minute mysteries I can tell at the lake. hehehehe He wrote back to me today and sited a
few memories of his own from that time that even I had forgotten. Those memories have sparked other memories and a whole wave of stories has been coming
back to me since. It's incredible how much you forget in your lifetime!October 25, 2004 - 12:27 PM  Retreat at Camp Harmattan This weekend I went on the fall retreat with Grace to a new campground for the church but an old campground for me. The place is called Camp Harmattan, and it's about 25 kilometers west of Olds. I haven't actually been there since grade 10 but I used to go there every year with Marshall. Oddly enough, if you've heard any of my stories about how everything in my life is linked together, this campground is the place where everything that's happened since then in my life can be traced back to, one way or another. 
It all starts with my very first girlfriend, Sarah Burrows. I met her at Camp Chamisall the summer between grades 8 and 9,
but that relationship ended after only two months. Still, since she went to Marshall's church, she was also at Family Camp
that year at Camp Harmattan, so our paths crossed a number of times at the camp. She had some friends with her at the camp
who would follow her around and hang out with her, so naturally they were also hanging out with us. After that weekend of
camp, the following Sunday I went to Rockyview Alliance to talk to another friend from the camp, Shaun Otis, to see if I
could borrow his LA Style CD. (Good times!) Two of those girls who had been hanging around Sarah at Family Camp, Alicia
Arenburg and Emily Boser spotted me at the church while I was looking for Shaun and asked me if I was going to come to
DVBS the following week. I was 15 at the time but that was still young enough to get into DVBS and since I had nothing else
to do I said I would come. Well what would you know it, I met a girl by the name of Jackie Valdmar at DVBS that week and
we hit it off quite well initially. We went for bike rides after DVBS and ended up going through McDonalds drive thru on
them for a 'date'. After the week of DVBS however, we didn't see each other very much and so the talking also ceased quite
quickly. Well, a year passes, and one evening Marshall and I decided to go to Village Square Leisure Center to pick up
chicks. I recall we had been sitting in the hot tub for a while and decided to go to the blue slide. As we were walking
under the orange slides, we both spotted three bikini-clad hotties approaching and just as Marshall was about to give me a
nudge as if to say, "Look!" I was already approaching one of them and exclaiming, "Jackie?" and she replied, "John!!" and
then proceeded to bowl me over with a giant hug. Marshall was beside himself and said, "You know them?" so I explained how
it was I knew Jackie and we were introduced to her two friends. After that night, Jackie and I got back together, and
Marshall and one of Jackie's friends, Kaylee Sorensen, got together. Well true to our form, Jackie and I broke up about
another week later, but Marshall and Kaylee continued dating for about two months. (Marshall, feel free to correct me on
that one if I'm wrong) After Kaylee and Marshall broke up, her and I became friends and we used to talk to each other all
the time. One night, Jason and I were going to Deerfoot Mall to play pool and whoever we had made plans to meet up with
had cancelled. He asked me if I knew of anyone else who might want to come hang out because we didn't want to just go
home, so I thought I'd give Kaylee a call. She came to play pool with us and although her and Jason hit it off really well
that night, she had a boyfriend at that time, Ryan. It was some time before her and Ryan broke up but once they did, her
and Jason started dating and it was not long after that Jason and I were hired on at the company her dad worked for,
Sylvania Lighting Services. It was there that after working with Pat Duplessis for quite some time, he convinced me to buy
a Seadoo so I went out and bought my first real toy, which then required that I find somewhere to camp and use it.
Pine Lake was my natural choice, and after going around all the campgrounds I talked with Jayne Oullette who made me feel
very much at home at Sandy Cove from our first conversation, and they had the best tenting price as well so my summer was
set. I began to camp at Sandy Cove with my Seadoo, where I met many people - not the least of whom were Shauntelle and her
family, Kristin and her family, Carmen (who is now dating my roommate Jason), and countless others who have made an impact
in my life over the years I camped at Sandy Cove. Kristin's family adopted me into their family, and now I have a wonderful
job working with her mom, Barb. So much of what I have come to know and accept in my life right now all goes back to Family
Camp at Camp Harmattan, and really to Emily Boser. Once Emily came to Heritage, I used to talk to her once in a while and
through that friendship I met another person who has remained a large part of my life and become very dear to me, Rebecca
Millward. So you can imagine all that I had to ponder this weekend as I relived a memory that spawned so many other
memories exploring my past through the retracing of my steps at this camp. This weekend was also the Meet the Parents for me, as I had been invited over to Rachel's place for lunch yesterday to meet her parents and to be interrogated by her dad. It's not easy to read her dad though, he kept asking me very blunt and very direct questions, much to the horror and embarassment of Rachel but nothing he asked made me feel uncomfortable and I simply answered everything he fired at me with the truth. It can't have gone *that* badly because he gave her the go-ahead to persue a relationship with me, and to be honest I actually enjoyed the whole experience.  Cube and Sphere It's official: We are together, a couple, dating, courting, having a formal relationship, boyfriend & girlfriend -- however you want to define it, that is what we are. And I am very happy. Rachel is a wonderful person who has helped me grow even in the short time I've known her. She has challenged me to persue good things in my life and to be a better person. I honestly never thought I'd actually be looking FORWARD to going to hear the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra! Go figure! hehehe And if my weekend weren't already good enough, there is still another story to tell: For many years, Raychel and I had been very good friends. Her mom is Jason's mom's sister, and although she lives in Nanaimo, BC we were very close. However, about a year ago we had a big fight when her and her boyfriend at the time Mike came to stay with us. I don't even remember what the fight was about but it was messy and we both said some very hurtful things to each other. From that time on we hadn't spoken a word to each other. Even when she came to visit this summer we hardly said a thing to each other even though we were both sitting around the same fire. Last Sunday I got up to go to church and was much surprised to find HER mom standing in OUR kitchen holding George (our cat who was actually born of Raychel's cat a very long time ago.) Sandy had come to stay with us for a week, but no mention had been made of anyone else in her family coming to visit. Imagine then, my surprise when on thursday night I got home from work around 1:30 AM and went into the basement only to find Raychel and Luke sitting there talking. Yet for some reason this time, I went and sat with them and started talking to them both, and even to my own surprise Raychel was talking with me too. This went on for some time until Luke went to bed. I could very well have left for bed at the same time but I realized how much I had missed talking with her so I went and sat on the couch and we ended up talking until some unearthly hour. We appologized for whatever we had said that had caused us to fight and ignore each other all this time and promised never to 
let it happen again. We updated each other on all that's been going on in our directly-inversely related lives and found that
our old rule still held true. Whenever I had a good day, she had a bad day and vice versa. It was SO good to finally resolve
that friendship because truth be known, I really value Raychel's insight and appreciate it when she kicks me in the pants,
no matter how much it hurts at the time - I know it's what I need and she loves being the one to do it. All in all, this has been an incredible weekend for me. God has been working wonders around me and affirming me so that I know I am exactly where He wants me to be right now, and bringing people into my life, some new friends, some old ones, who have increased my joy and helped me through much doubt and confusion about many things. I leave for Grenada in less than two weeks (!!!) and my excitement for that is building, even though every report I've heard on the condition of that island gets exponentially worse. This will be unlike any mission trip I have ever been on before. Even seasoned disaster relief workers who have seen devastation from storms like this before are having a hard time coming to grips with the extent of the damage in Grenada. If you would like to pray for me as I prepare for this trip and especially while I am down there, I would be eternally grateful to you for that. And of course, if you would like to help me financially, any support in that area would be equally appreciated. Know too that any amount you give is tax deductible. I must have all my funds in by November 4th (I believe, I will have to check that!) I can get you a form to fill out if you would like to support me in this way. Anyhow, there's a brief overview of my life over the past week or so. It has been very exciting.
October 29, 2004 - 8:24 PM On September 24, 2004 my dad was featured in the Volume 2, Number 3 edition of On Campus newsletter at the University of Calgary. Here is the article:  I'm so proud of my dad! One thing I will always remember was that whenever I used to walk around SAIT with him
when he still worked there, no matter what building we were in, what department or floor, people everywhere were
greeting him warmly: "Hi Derrick! How are you? Is this one of your boys?" and what have you. It made me feel very
proud that my father was both well known and well thought of by so many of his colleagues there, and I have no doubt
it will be the same at the University. If you ever read this Dad, I love you. On another note, I have been given a new project to tackle at work and this one has me very intrigued. The concept is really quite simple. I work at a commercial laundry facility which processes many thousands of pounds of laundry every day. The first step the soiled linen goes through as it enters the plant is sorting. All the incomming linen is sorted by type before going to the wash floor. What I have been comissioned to design, build, and implement is a system to count each piece as it is being sorted into the bins before washing. The concept itself is fairly simple. I have sketched out a basic design for a 'hoop' that will be mounted above each bin, through which the sorters will toss each piece of linen with a sensor mounted below to notice when each piece passes through. These sensors on each chute will notify a computer that will be monitoring them, a light will flash and an LCD counter mounted near the chute will add +1 to it's total count for that bin. The long and the short of it is that the computer will then be able to say with a reasonable degree of accuracy exactly how many units came in from a particular customer on any given day, at what time they were sorted, and a variety of other statistical-type fields will be recorded in a database. It's almost like one of those carnival-style electronic basketball games - I'm trying to think of where I've seen them... Chuck-E-Cheese's? Maybe. You get a certain amount of time to throw as many baskets through the hoop as you can and if you get enough points you get prize tickets. I'm pretty sure that's how it works. So this will be very similar, except without the prizes, of course. October 28, 2004 - 9:47 AM Life is 20% what happens to you and 80% what you do about it. So now what do I do? BACK to Journal Index | |