One year ago today, right about this time, I was enmeshed in a hurley burley of activity as a gently directed chaos swirled about me, and most of what I felt was relief that I hadn't screwed it all up. We were in the middle of our wedding, and the insight of hindsight brings an appreciation to me of what an excellent day it was. Our year since then has been busy enough to feel long, but mostly in an "I can't believe we did so many things" kind of way, which is definately a nice way to feel when looking back. We had a chance to do that last night with the folks, watching a slideshow of our past year's highlights and taking some time to appreciate how busy we've been. We rode into town last night with the folks on our way down from Edmonton, where we'd been hanging around with Joe and Erica.

At last summer has arrived, and I feel as if I'm wasting it. We're at home, inside, on a beautiful day, and both in front of our respective screens while it passes us by. We've been watching a lot of Dexter, which is a fine show, but I get pretty tired of TV after a couple of episodes. Somehow I don't seem to be spending as much time outside as I used to, and I can't even think of what I would do exactly, other than just leave. Things happen if you let them, but you certainly can't do that while on the couch. Maybe my malaise has been influenced by the soggy spring that has kept us away from Ultimate Frisbee more weeks than not so far. It's looking good for this Wednesday, but we're operating at a pretty serious deficit this season. Hopefully this latest turn in the weather will stick and we can get some real sun.

This weekend was Fathers Day, and Christina and Carmela spent quite a bit of time cooking up a tasty feast for us, served here at the condo on Sunday. We had marinated chicken (a la français), ginger chicken salad, goat cheese stuffed strawberries with pear salad, and a delicious raspberry cheesecake. In short, it was a very successful meal, and a great afternoon spent with the family.

Among other recent activities, photos of our St Lucia trip have found their way online, courtesy of Christina's flickr account.

St Lucia is really nice. We had opportunity to inspect the island up close last week along with Steve and Julene. We were gifted with the accomodation at Windjammer Landing by Christina's uncle Greg, which made for a pretty affordable vacation. Uncle Greg had visited with his family, and a month before we went Christina's parents also had a week there, which meant that by the time our crew showed up they were ready to treat us like family. Mr Mark, the hotel manager, came down to meet us as we checked in and immediately upgraded us to Villa 34. I don't know what we were going to be staying in originally, but our new "room" was in fact 3 floors, 2 kitchens, 3 bedrooms, 4 decks (one with cool-water plunge pool), a rooftop sundeck, and views from every window looking out onto the bay. We were blown away by how beautiful and spacious the rooms were -- we almost didn't want to go down to the beach! We took up Mr Mark on his offer of a complimentary catamaran sailing tour (valued at $100 each), where we got to see some of the touristy type stuff on the island (which didn't blow us away, but the sailing was fun). Eating on the resort wasn't super cheap, so we nipped into town and picked up a pile of fresh fruit, beer and liquor, as well as yogurt and granola for breakfasts. They didn't seem to have a problem with us bringing our own drinks down to their beach, so that probably saved us a pile of cash. We did try a few meals in Rodney Bay and Castries, but ended up feeling that the value at the hotel was pretty near equal that in town, minus the inconvenience of a cab ride. Generally, we had one day of "activity" such as visiting town (either Rodney Bay or Castries) followed by a day on the beach, and I feel that it was a good balance between relaxing and getting out. I'd rate St Lucia as being above Aruba, but below Boracay. Mostly due to the outrageously low prices of amazing food and beer in the Philippines, no fault to the St Lucians for that.

There's probably more to write on that subject, and I certainly need to get a few photos online, but back here in the real world I got slammed with work, so that's all the procrastinating I can afford for now.

Christina is developing a dangerous addiction to youtube. Specifically videos of babies and puppies, oh and flashmobs. Recently we spent a weekend at Mike's condo, and pretty much the whole time youtubing. As I type she has just finished about an hour or so straight. I spent that same hour playing my fancy new PS3. Where'd I get one of those? Well it was my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and it was probably the biggest gift haul of any birthday I've had. Christina is apparently shooting for "Wife of the Year" award, since the PS3 was her play for the event. Mike has been playing Modern Warfare 2 for the last while, so she picked that up for me as well, and I've been trying my hand. It's very tricky getting used to FPS play on a console. I've never really liked it, since the fine-grain resolution of control rendered by a keyboard/mouse setup has quite spoiled me. I'm averaging about four deaths per kill, which is super frustrating, but that's how it goes on a new platform I suppose. In other news, this Easter Monday I put "Mina" (Christina's former bike) up for sale on craigslist and had a call about it in less than an hour. I had posted an asking price of $1000, which I had figured was somewhat high, but established a position for negotiation. The buyer, which this first inquisition yielded, ended up offering $950, which I cheerfully accepted. I would have been happy with anything over half my original ask, so this felt like a mini-miracle, and meant that the new bike she had picked up had the same valuation as her original ride. Somehow that seems to me like good symmetry.

Well, usually I don't post more than once a month or so, but we've had a busy time of it, and I thought I ought to throw it down. The first weekend of March was spent in Victoria, where the whole family gathered for Lori Wiens' wedding. Christina and I went over a day early, which turned out to be an excellent plan. Upon arriving on Friday night we got the royal treatment from the folks at Beaconsfield Inn, to which I can afford the highest recommendation. They upgraded us to their outstanding penthouse suite, which comprises basically the entire top floor of the building, where we wound down after the flight, and sat in front of our fireplace reading before bed. In the morning they served up a spectacular home cooked breakfast comprised of fresh loaves of banana bread, fruit cups topped with sweetened cottage cheese, followed by a salmon variation on eggs benedict. We spent the day browsing around downtown and probably put over fifteen miles on our sneakers by the end of it. The rest of the gang came in by dinner time, and we had our first complete family dinner together since Christina and I were married. The rest of the weekend we spent visiting and checking out the rest of Victoria, and actually attending the wedding, which was a good time in itself. Christina and I covered a lot of ground though, and were pretty exhaused when we got home.

The next week seemed to cruise along pretty well. I'm not as pressured these days at the office, and Christina was busy but not overwhelmed. The weather gradually improved through the week, and by Friday we were ready to take the bikes out (again, our first ride of the year being to church a few weeks ago on a randomly warm sunday). Our route to work has us ride together down Tenth Street, and part ways at Memorial Drive, as I cross the Louise bridge into downtown, while she turns left and takes Memorial around downtown and eventually into Inglewood. The bridge does tend to congest somewhat, so it's not unusual for me to be held up while she continues at that point. On this morning, she was the only vehicle in the turning lane - also the reversal lane for rush hour bridge access, and waited in the intersection for an opportunity to turn. A car several spots ahead of me changed into the left lane aggressively, clearly impatient with the delay, and gunned it toward the bridge. The car slammed into the back of Christina's bike, and from my nearly front row seat I heard the *crunch* of impact, and saw her feet in the air above the cab of the car. In the bullet-time eternity of the next second and a half or so I had ample time to imagine every worst case scenario. It wasn't until I was dismounting beside her that I realized that not only was the driver of the offending car not getting out and apologizing, but was in fact peeling out and heading for the bridge! The trunk on the car popped preventing me from clearly reading the plate, but a cyclist was already yelling out numbers and letters which I furiously took down. I helped Christina to the sidewalk, cleared her bike and mine from the intersection, and joined her beside a woman who already had 9-1-1 on the line. She handed me the phone and I gave over all the particulars to a police officer to which the emergency line had connected. It was only moments before fire and medical staff were on the scene, and Christina was escorted into an ambulance for evaluation while I related the incident to the firemen. One of them was a part-time bike mechanic, and agreed with me that it was likely a write-off. The right-side fairings were torn up, the rear rim was badly bent and the rear fender was smashed. Christina however, when released, was uninjured - praise God - but shaken. Eventually the police wandered in, and I told them the whole tale. Again. They were impotently sympathetic about the accident and were mostly present so that we could finish the paperwork that they needed. We asked about if they might find the car, and were informed that the plates we had been given (as well as one called in by a driver good enough to persue the scab making a getaway) were not a match for the vehicle described, and that if there was any more information they would "be in touch". As frustrating as that part of the experience was, I'm feeling pretty blessed by how lightly we got off, since walking away from a car vs. motorcycle accident isn't real common. We both took the day off. It actually was a pretty nice day off, but for the reason. Beautiful weather, we got a bunch of domestic stuff done, and went to bed early. The next day Christina bought a new motorbike. Well not quite that fast, hehe. We went to breakfast with Mike and Camille, then browsed around first at GW Cycle, then down to Blackfoot Motorsports, but didn't really see anything worth having. Christina had been talking about getting a 'cruiser' style bike, before getting hit, but decided that she wanted one as an addition to a sportier ride, but not as her only bike. We went home to relax for a while, but had to take a look at kijiji and craigslist to see if there were any local folks looking to sell off a possible candidate. As it turned out, we saw a post that was less than an hour old by a girl looking to upgrade her black 2008 Ninja 250, so I replied to the post and no sooner had clicked Send than my phone was ringing. She was available that very evening, so after a quick hop up to the bank we dropped by her place to have a look. We ended up putting a deposit down, and picked it up Monday evening. So in four days Christina went from having a bike, to losing a bike, to having one again. That might be some kind of record...

Those who know me probably know that Josh Ritter is my number one guy, musically, and has been for a couple of years now. Just this very second I realized that he's probably on facebook, and became a "fan". How lame... Anyway, the point is that he's got a blog, which is fantastic, since he basically writes blog entries the same way he writes songs - That is to say clever, amusing, subtle, thoughtful... all the good ones. Check it out for some cool stuff. And if you haven't heard the music, a quick youtube search will make you a convert. Hopefully he makes it back to Calgary one of these days. It's definately a good show.

This weekend past was probably my favorite span of sixty hours or so in recent memory. Christina went out with "the girls" on friday, which allowed me time to finish off Borderlands, and take care of some other stuff of my own. We had a spectacular day on Saturday which we spent walking around the neighbourhood going for breakfast, running errands, snooping and exploring a few unfamiliar streets. I got the lock reinstalled into her motorcycle, and all the fairings buttons back up, then we lit out for a ride around town. It's nice to say that we rode in February; I believe that in the past twelve months I only missed riding in December and January. The first ride of the year always feels somehow like coming home. In the evening we ordered Swiss Chalet for dinner and watched a movie, then went to bed early. Sunday we rode again, just to church and back, before going to Mike's condo and watching the Canada vs. USA olympic gold medal game, which was exciting and satisfying. We watched the closing ceremonies at her folks' place, and then headed home for another early night. Pretty much a perfect weekend!

Things are cooking right along here. Christina and I have been terribly busy at work, but in the last couple of weeks it somehow still seemed like there has been time to hang out and relax. That's a welcome change.

Part of my down-time has been occupied with Borderlands, which is just the sort of game that makes me wish I still had people to play games with. Savage Memory, which harkens back to the townhouse I lived in with a few similarly inclined lads put a game like this right up at the top of the list we *would* have been playing through. Of course this memory does not recall to me the lack of both money and social opportunity that put me in such a position to start with, but the mind is funny that way. It makes me nostalgic, not in a way that makes me miss those days so much as in a way that makes me wish everyone around me wasn't growing up so fast. By which I mean “turning into OLD people”.

Christina took a few of her co-workers to the range last week and I tagged along to break in the Ruger, as well as the 30-06 Enfield that I still hadn't sighted in since it's purchase last year. Despite a few jams, and a clip-kiss, I very much enjoyed the new aquisition, and can't get enough of the fact that the cost of ammo for a liberal evening of shooting was less than $20. I didn't get an opportunity to really settle in with the Enfield, since the sighting bench was occupied, but I did blast off a couple of long rounds, which was fun. It's a bit pluckier than I expected, and quite loud, which is always nice :) Not sure when I'll get a chance to use it, but of course one must always be ready.

Well, holidays are definately over. Cheerful recap first, drab follow through second.

I won't say that going on vacation was quite the best part, but it certainly didn't hurt. Christina and I flew out on the 19th, and had an amazing week in Kelowna with the folks. We spent most mornings sitting around a leisurely breakfast until noon snacking and chatting with the folks, before going for a walk and setting up for lunch. It was super lazy days, which felt awesome. We picked out, and cut down, a nice Christmas tree, and got that decorated, and Dad had a new wood splitter on load from Rudy, so we cut up a bunch of the loose wood that lay about. Liz and Ashton came in a couple of days after Christina and I, and we went up for a great (but cold) day of skiing/boarding at Silver Star. Christmas Day came too soon, and we did the traditional gourmet pan sharing meal and gift exchanging, and then it was gone. We headed home the following day, and had another week of holidays in Calgary. Since moving to Calgary I haven't had a whole week off in town with no plans, and found it eminently agreeable. We watched a pile of movies, and wasted time as frivolously as possible. The only event of note was our celebration of New Years with Mike and Camille at a couple of house parties. In all, I would rate this as one of the best holidays I've had, and definately one of the best Christmases since living in Calgary.

Returning to work on the fourth was not as easy as it could have been. For some reason I didn't seem to sleep at all for the first few nights, so felt pretty loopy by mid-week. It's been a constant grind since then, and I've scarcely had time to catch my breath, which is not a particularly good start to the new year. I won't dwell on it, but a change would be nice.

On the up-side, arriving at home just after our return from holiday was my membership to the BTSA, catalyzing the transfer process of my first restricted firearm, a Ruger Mk II bull barrel target pistol. I just picked it up yesterday, and am very much looking forward to taking it for a ride. Pictures pending.

With Christmas approaching very swiftly now, Christina and I are getting ready for a trip to BC. It'll be the first time in a number of years that I will have had the chance to be “back home” for a whole week with no read adgenda. We'll be returning on the twenty sixth, and will then have another whole week at home in Calgary before work starts again - another unprecedented occurrence. All this down time looks very good to me right now, as we've both been terribly busy the past couple of months and will very much enjoy a break.

I picked up a computer for the folks to take out during our visit, and was surprised by how much computer you get for your dollar these days. It's nothing fancy, but at less than five hundred bucks you get easily twice the computer I've been tolerating for the last while. The new year will definately be seeing some improvements on the PC front.

Not much else going on, really. Just counting the days to vacation :)

Work remains busy, but it's a pace that I feel like I am riding competently, for now. I'm still working on some ASP.NET and SharePoint stuff, but am feeling a little better about it — not because I've “seen the light”, but because by virtue of experience I'm learning how to overcome some of the hacktastic issues native to the platform. Anyway, for now I'm on top of it. I've been spending a small portion of my down time on Torchlight, which fills a certain action-oriented-explorative-collective-type RPG niche, and it's been pretty solid so far. I'm sort of mentally preparing to rebuild my system, and would like to move to an Intel platform in the near future. I'm still on Ubuntu 8.04/Windows XP/OSx86 10.5.6 and all of those could stand an upgrade, so a new MB/CPU would be a fantastic excuse to start afresh. Probably not for another couple of months though. Christmas this year is shaping up pretty well, with both Christina and I taking the week-of to hang in BC with my folks (hers being in the Philippines for the season), then coming back to Calgary for another full week off. We are in negotiations to book a chalet or hotel or something near a ski hill, and might work that into the second week.

I may not have mentioned it at the time, but a couple of months ago I got Christina's old 2G iPhone and until this very weekend have been using OS version 1.1.3 and using her contacts and content. Finally surmounting my laziness, I took the time to rebuild it on 3.1.2, and start from scratch. It was quite a pain trying to jailbreak and unlock the phone using the available Windows tools, with nothing but horrible (and generally incorrect) tutorials and guides with a hodge-podge of requirements to balance. Giving up on that route and using PwnageTool from dev-team, which is available only for OSX, gave me the nearly-one-click implementation that I would expect from a process that has almost three years of maturity behind it. The new version is very nice and I'm grabbing all the classic software from Cydia to get me back in action. Next steps with this thing, should an abundance of free time suddenly, and unexpectedly, arise will be an attempt at my own development. I'd very much like to try building a small game, maybe like Bejeweled or something, just as a test.

My intention had been to write before now. I've had a month so busy that even thinking about it leaves me exhausted. I've put in about thirty hours in the last four days, which isn't bad, unless you consider that two of those days were the weekend. I've been working on some ASP.NET stuff, which I don't mind saying is horrible. If some, no doubt well intended, developers who were very familiar with windows forms, but not at all familiar with web development, or the internet, decided to develop a framework for web development then ASP.NET is approximately what they would have come up with. I have a laundry list of complaints, but chiefest among them are the postback model (an appalling hack that completely reinvents the wheel... badly) and the idea of a page "lifecycle" during which different "web controls" (another reinvented wheel) may or may not exist, and if they do exist, may not be familiar with their own properties. I have no doubt that there are some sort of redeeming qualities which will reveal themselves in time, but as things stand it is truly amazing to me that people who consider themselves web developers would intentionally choose as their platform this pile of tripe.
Ok, I'm pretty willing to admit that my distaste most likely stems from a lack of experience and familiarity. As I begin to get my head around the ASP model I can see some pretty nice tricks. Hopefully my next experience with it goes better than this last.

In other news... oh wait, I've been too busy working for other news. Almost. I took Christina to the Alberta Ballet presentation of Romeo & Juliet. My first time at the ballet, and it was... interesting... I'd put it above the orchestra, and somewhat below more narrative theater like a play. That said, I enjoyed it. Not much else going on, really.

Happy days. I have a couple of development-related gigs coming up, one doing SharePoint stuff, apparently developing Web Parts, which is sweet, and another doing something with RedDot/OpenText, which will be fun and challenging to learn about. Also, I have two new toys! Two years of asking for a new laptop from work, and yesterday my ship finally came in. It's a Latitude E6400, which represents a very significant upgrade over the D800 I've been packing since day one at Ideaca. Even more interesting than corporate assets, I received yesterday from Hong Kong, my aptly named PSX3/PSX2/PC Heavy Duty Wireless Joystick!

I've been looking for a wireless arcade stick for probably over a year now, off and on, and had seen a few options in the $250 range, but couldn't really stomach paying that much. I happened upon this particular stick, but was leery of the retailer, both because of its Chinese origin, and because of the shoddy website, which definately is not built with consumer confidence as a priority. Anyway, you only live once, so after some risk analysis, I sprung for it, and find myself pretty pleased with the result. It's a very nice unit, with good weight, and decent quality hardware. A quick install of the jscalibrator package, and it was ready to go! Unfortunately, setting up joystick controls in MAME and GSnes9x has been a little more challenging, as I haven't quite struck upon the magic combination of config file entries and command line parameters that will allow either to completely work - though both do mostly work, and the lacking functions have nothing to do with the device itself. In all, an excellent buy, for somewhat less than half of the other available options.

Not that it's immediately obvious from this website itself, but I'm pretty interested in “design” as a practice or craft. I don't spend a lot of time on it, but I do spend a lot of time reading about it, or seeking out and evaluating it. I subscribe to a number of blogs about things that I'm not really that interested in, mostly because they often offer up designs of products that are new and interesting ways of designing around comfortable ideas. Ideas like fireplace, or coffee maker get reinterpreted fairly frequently, and there are a lot of cool ideas out there about how these things can be different from ways they have been in the past. This ususally just applies to form rather than function, but somehow I still find it interesting. Further to this, and somewhat more on topic (if I could be understood to actually have a topic for this ramble), I was reading an article at A List Apart called Visual Decision Making, which is a very nice read if you're interested in exactly how and why shiney/pretty things engage ones interest so actively. I find an often enjoyable exercise to be locating a blog or gallery and quickly scroll through, just allowing myself to give a mental thumbs up or thumbs down, purely at the “viscreal” level described in the article, with the only behaviour to click next. Usually that's a good way to get sidetracked though, and I end up unintentionally engaging a research-type behaviour when something specific catches my eye. Generally this will involve fantasical digital paintings, or floorplans and architecture, or motorcycles. If that means something, I'm not sure quite what it is...

Well, Christina and I have been steadily nesting away here, and gradually the condo is taking shape more as a "home" than as a place where I sleep and keep my stuff. This past weekend we made a run to Ikea and got a nice Expedit storage unit for the kitchen nook, as well as a media storage shelf from the same line. Everything is still getting put into it's respective receptical, and the place is still a bit of a mess, but once completed, this task will go a long way towards having a home for each item. Work is alright, with my current contract winding down, and some exciting conversation happening around the possible implementation of either Drupal or Plone in lieu of SharePoint, which is certainly an exciting change of attitude. I've been wanting to get back to actual development for a while, since that, ostensibly, is my role, so hope that my next deployment will be a little more hands on.

I haven't really had any free time of my own in the past few weeks, so haven't gotten to do any theming or firmware hacking or anything on that little handheld I picked up, though I've stolen a few moments to try out it's emulation capabilities, with overall pleasing results. Nor have I been able to play video games very much. I'm hoping that this will change pretty soon.

Last thing. 1001 rules for my uborn son has some good advice. Not sure all of it is advice I'd give, but many are clever, some were said by people I've actually heard of, and there are definately a few nuggets. Like “Find yourself a good hideout.”, “Smile at pretty girls.”, and “Get to know your sisters boyfriend. I'll rely on your opinion.”

It's raining. It's been raining for days. I don't particularly mind, especially since we've had a pretty sweet run of smoking hot weather in the last month, and a break is welcome. Also, poor weather is a good excuse for staying indoors, watching movies, and relaxing.

I've always loved conspiracy theories, and occasionally abandon myself to readings about UFOs and abductions and such. This week, prompted by Mike, I've been reading a lot about Tesla, who had a remarkable life, whether or not you can believe everything written in his supposed "Lost Journals". Some pretty entertaining reading, for sure. The other diversion I've indulged is Fallout 3, which now runs tolerably on my slightly upgraded computer. I haven't really put serious time into it yet, but am very much enjoying the RPG/FPS gameplay. For me, System Shock 2 was sort of the introduction of this genre blend, and I feel echos of the same implementation style, especially in some of the darker sequences.

My newest aquisition is a Dingoo A320 (aka. "Pocket Retro Game Emulator", from ThinkGeek), which has arrived in Calgary just today, and I should be taking posession of in the next day or so. It's a charming little device with all sorts of emulation built in, and a wonderful community of firmware developers and linux folks who are hard at work expanding the capabilities of the system. I look forward to picking it up and trying my hand at a theme or a port of something.

To resume my previous post, we spent part of the next afternoon at the Escabillas' residence doing some gift opening, and visiting with her family, then left for our Honeymoon.

This is probably a good time to link to some photos which are now available on Christina's flickr account:
• Our Wedding photo set
• Ceremony video, c/o David Ong
• Honeymoon photo set

My intention was to keep the destination a secret for as long as possible, and I was mostly successful, but by the end of the wedding reception I had let it slip to quite a few people. Christina never did catch wind of it though, so it was not until she noticed the arrival text on the baggage claim ticket, that she found out that we were headed to Aruba. We were on our way already at that point, which was good enough for me. The travel was long, but we both managed to nap some, and we didn't have too bad a time of it. I had us set up to stay at Bucuti Beach Resort, in the Tara Beach Suite wing, which i had found using tripadvisor, and selected due to it's winning the "Best for Romance" category in the 2009 Travellers Choice destination short-list that they do. When we showed up to check in we were served chilled champagne, which I thoguht was "kind of nice", but which made a real impression on Christina, and was the one detail that she kept coming back to when talking about the resort. The door behind the lobby opened into a large gardened courtyard, around which a path leads on the right side, with the standard suite wing standing on the left side. We followed the path to the Tara wing and were shown our suite. It was a beatiful room on the second of four floors, which initially I didn't like, but later noticed that the view from the third floor suites would be obscured by the tops of palm trees, so our second floor room, with an unobsctructed beach view, was actually quite nice. We took a little time to get settled in, then went exploring. A full play-by-play might get a little wordy, so I'll just give the highlights. Our first evening we did the "Romantic Dinner" at the restaurant, which included a fantastic four course meal set privately for us in a beachfront shelter. The second night we took a sunset sail, which was less private (about half a dozen couples were with us), but was a lot of fun, and again, very beautiful. The boat we were on had a well equipped open bar, of which I took full advantage, and served some snacks, which we amused ourselves with by throwing them to be caught by the birds following along with us. The highlight of the sail was probably when the captain, who was fishing, accidentally caught a pelican, who mistook the bait for a fish. The pelican is ok, after being de-hooked, and maybe a little wiser. After the sail we had another very nice seafood feed at a restaurant on the pier where we had docked. Before heading straight back to the hotel we checked out the market area that was nearby, where there was shopping, eating, and a jazz club. Despite a few returns to this area we never did go to the jazz club when they had live music, which I think both of us would have liked to do, but we did a lot of other stuff, so that's ok. Our hotel happened to be half way between this area, called "High Rise", and "Downtown", which is the other shopping and restaurant district. It was very convenient to be able to choose between these, since both offered a different variety of options and activities. We did a lot of "shopping" but not a lot of "buying" which suited me just fine. Christina got one bathing suit and one dress, as well as a bunch of tourist nicknacks. We spent quite a bit of time relaxing on the beach at Bucuti, and trying out as many restaurants as we could. Other than being more expensive than our South East Asia destinations, Aruba was absolutely perfect. Everyone speaks english, and is super friendly, everything is clean, and for someone who just wants a relaxing trip it is a made-to-order destination. The only way I would have improved the trip would be to have stayed longer.

And now we're back to real life. Christina and I took a trip to Ikea to get a big wardrobe system for all of her clothes and stuff, which will have to fit in to the condo eventually, as well as to get a new bed and dresser. We've spent the last few days getting all that stuff put together, and look forward to having a clean home again once it's finished. I've said before that I would like for us to live in the condo for at least one year, and I'm curious to see, now that we've begun, if we get used to the small space, or if it will be something that we struggle through. At work I'm getting ready for our final go-live date, which will be the first of August. Being so close to completed is actually a little bit relaxing, since it's almost too close to show-time to be making changes. Hopefully that lasts.

This could be a long one...
We've been pretty busy here, with final preparations for the wedding, actual execution of the wedding itself, then our immediate departure on our honeymoon. I'll give each piece a brief treatment, but will probably have more details in a future post, since I'm bound to miss some things.

I wouldn't say that there was a high degree of stress involved in getting all the final pieces ready for the wedding, but apparently there was enough stress for an unfortunate physical manifestation, in the form of a cold sort, to appear on my lip. I believe that I could have resolved it by "show time" if only I had been on the ball enough to take immediate action. As it was, I let it slide for too long, and was blemished for the wedding. Not a huge deal, but the whole process would have been easier without that on my mind. My mom came out a week early, and it was great to get to visit with her, as well as to have her on hand for help with any number of small things that needed doing. Pretty much everybody else came out on Friday, with a couple showing up on Saturday, which is when we had our rehearsal. Joe and I did a quick run to get the flowers from the florist over to the baker, and ran around trying to find me some sort of lip-blemish-concealing-cover-up stuff, which we did not find. The rehearsal went quite well, with excellent turnout of all relevent parties (minus one bridesmaid), and a delicious BBQ catered by my folks. Once we had rehearsed and ate, the boys and I, along with my Dad headed to the tux shop and picked up our fancy duds. Christina and I joined her family for dim-sum in the evening to visit with some of the out-of-towners that had come in for the event, then called it an early night.

Now on the morning of the wedding the girls got up early, were shuttled from home to hair to venue, getting all put together for pictures. In contrast, I slept until 10AM, then played video games in my underwear until my parents showed up with the makings for some lunch. My groomsmen showed up and we hung out for a while; Joe and Chris playing chess, and Steve and I watching a movie. When our moment of action rolled around we headed down to Hotel Arts, where I checked in and got my room key, then we drove down to The Ranche. Vitalia took some photos of us, then some of us together with the bridesmaids, and we hung around waiting for guests to show up. For me it was mostly an impatient time. I was just eager to get on with it. The weather was getting progressively more ominous, with clouds appearing to roll in from every side. We were visited, shortly before we were scheduled to begin, by the event coordinator, who said that they had received word of a storm heading our way, and that if we were going to do this then we'd better do it now. Music to my ears, but once everyone was all lined up and ready to go we ended up starting on time anyway, so nothing gained, really. Ken said a prayer with me and the boys, and then led us out onto the stage area. To me it felt like we were standing there quite a while, but this gave me a chance to look around the crowd, and to take in the scene. It was probably nicer than I had imagined it, with white chairs and the flower petal aisle marking a pleasant contrast against the grass. Presently the music changed, and the girls began to appear around the corner, as the proceeded from the front of the house. Nicolas, our ring bearer, was no trouble at all. Abby, as our flower girl, looked like she came close to making a break for it about half way down the aisle, but only paused instead, and then successfully completed her walk. I could hear all the ladies "cooing" about how cute she was, which is pretty much the objective anyway, hehe. The music changed again, the crowd rose, and Pablo rounded the corner with Christina on his arm. She looked amazing, of course, as I knew that she would. After all the tall tales about a purple or leopard print or polka dotted dress, it was instead a brilliantly white number that was perfectly suited to her. The rest of the ceremony went by pretty fast. The pacing was good, except for a couple of parts where Ken strategically paused during the "patience" theme of his message, while thunder rolled gently above us. Everything about the ceremony flowed so well that it was a bit of a blur, and suddenly I was kissing the bride, and we were heading down the aisle. I had completely forgotten about the bubble-blower things we had gotten, so was surprised when halfway down the aisle we were suddenly mobbed by bubbles. Details get a little fuzzy after that, but people were congratulating me and I was handing out hugs and handshakes like they were on sale. Right around that time we felt the first few raindrops, so quickly hussled some family members together for a couple of photos. We only got two or three shots before it really started to come down and we abandoned the garden to take photos inside. Christina and I had a pretty easy time of it. Vitalia had us sit on a bench in the middle of one of the smaller rooms while Carmella, Jayce, and Alma herded people all around us and went through the shot list making sure that we got all the right photos. Easy peasy. Once the official shot list had been covered we headed upstairs for some quiet time, and photos of just the two of us. It was a nice break, and probably got us some pretty good pictures. It was nearing time for dinner, so we headed down and got ready to be announced. Apparently there was a deer spotted on the lawn, and the girls went into a tizzy about it. Once we got called in and dinner started things went pretty smoothly. Brian and Jeni Lyn did a great job on M.C. duty, the food was fantastic, and the slideshow was very well received. After dinner we did the Father/Daughter dance, Mother/Son dance, and Christina and I did our first dance. We danced to At Last by Etta James, sung by Jacelyn, who sang amazingly. Some people commented after that they didn't even know it was being sung live until they noticed the mic in her hand. After these preliminaries we did the bouquet toss/garter toss/cake cutting stuff, then everyone hit the dance floor. We only put a few songs down before it was already time for Christina and I to take our leave. The limo was there to pick us up at 11:30, but it was probably more like midnight before we managed to disengage from the party, after saying all of our goodbye's and thankyou's. It was an amazing wedding, and the degree to which all the details worked out, and worked together, still surprises me. Word the next day was that a lot of people, including both of our immediate families, stayed and partied late enough to get kicked out, and that the DJ jokingly inquired if our crowd could attend his next wedding. We had opened up the bar just before leaving, and ended up coming in under budget by twenty four dollars. Unreal.

Wow, this did get long. I'll finish later...

I've had a couple of false starts on my recent entry attempts. My time in the valley was productive, but inconvenient. Wedding plans have been all over the map, but seem to have normalized as of last night. Christina will be off on a PM course this weekend, which should leave me with some very much needed free time. Unfortunately I tried playing Fallout 3 last week, which looks to be excellent, but burned out my pansy-assed video card, and I'm waiting on the new one to arrive, therefore will not be spending the weekend in front of the computer. I also got my bike back from GW Cycle, freshly shod with a new rear tire, and also picked up a sweet new helmet, bought for significantly less than retail. I haven't ridden much with an open face helmet, and am really enjoying "top-down" feeling compared to my usual full face unit.

If I'm feeling completely run down it might be because I've been on the hop for a while here. Christina and her girls were out to Vegas last weekend, and had a rip-snortin' time of it, by what I've heard. Meanwhile I hung out at home and played video games and watched movies and generally enjoyed the poor weather. Prior to that, Steve and I took a shotgun run out to Medicine Hat to pick up his replacement for Suzy. He got a smoking hot 1973 Triumph Tiger 750 TR7V, which will be a slight displacement upgrade and a massive coolness upgrade. Pictures are "forthcoming". My own bike found a flat tire, which I've got a replacement for at the shop, and will hopefully have changed out this weekend. Amidst other flotsam of the daily grind, life sails on...

Oh, also, Bike Exif is the flavor of the week, and (the generic) you should probably check it out.

Well we had a fantastic weekend here in Calgary. Christina and I did some cake tasting at Buttercream Bake Shoppe, which was delicious, albeit an ultra-sweet breakfast... We also checked out the Lilac Festival, which was really nice. It was very hot and sunny, so was a perfect environment for the feeling of summer madness. We also spent a pile of time in the park reading and snoozing and drinking iced tea. I'd say we're doing pretty well so far.

On a more geeky note, I found the savegame files for Far Cry 2 I thought that I had lost in a recent format, and have resumed play on that front. It's still fantastically fun, and I'm glad I didn't have to start all over again. Christina was out at one of her numerous wedding-related parties and I had a few hours to game away. I tried out Mount & Blade, but found that it wasn't nearly as good as it could have been. The premise was severely spoilt for me by horrendously slow progress, and a frustrating combat interface.

While waiting for a data load to complete I thought I'd jot down a few notes. I'm completely exhausted. From a number of things, including soul-crushing work, physical damage, and too many activities to properly enjoy.

The work I'll not discuss here. But it's probably the most significant contributer. As regards my physical state, somehow I rolled a +3 Neck Sprain getting out of bed last Wednesday, and only now am finally getting over it. This means that I haven't slept or felt well in over a week and am quite tired of it. Christina and I have had a very busy time, despite trying to cut back on activities, and the extra day added to our last weekend was not enough to compensate. For myself, I feel like I haven't had real time on my own in months, and that is definately not helping either.

About a minute left on my load, so I'll briefly mention The Vintagent, which I've been reading recently, and with great pleasure. Today I was reading VMCC DEVON RUN, which makes me want to move to Britain. Or a Canadian equivalent, like Victoria, or Charlottetown.

Things have been busy. Quite unpleasantly, and sufficiently so that Christina and I have decided that we're not "doing anything" with other folks for at least a week or so. It seems like there have been reasons to be out and about every day for the last few weeks, and we're both exhausted.

If I've been so busy then I must have lots of interesting things to talk about... Lets see if I can remember a few.

In an unlikely and uncharacteristic bout of mechanical competency I replaced the brake pads on the TBird this weekend. An hour or less job which took me over three... but I got it. On the maintenance note, we took Christina's Ninja in for a tune up, and despite a hickup (they put the rear tire on backwards), it seems to have passed muster.

My Ubuntu 7.04 got an update to 8.04, in order to take advantage of XMBC's precompiled packages. I took Windows 7 for a ride as well, but after issues with my NVidia drivers and an old Sound Blaster card, both of which were supposed to work, according to the HCL, I reverted to XP again. Lastly, my plagued OSX86 10.5.5 install got replaced with iPC's 10.5.6, and appears to work wonderfully, once the seatbelt fix is applied. For the first time in a long time I have all 3 OS flavors all playing together nicely!

We've had both our first and second weeks of Ultimate Frisbee, which were both great, though we lost one game that we shouldn't have. We'll play tomorrow, likely in the rain, which I don't especially mind. It feels really great to be out running around again.

Other stuff happened... If I remember more later I'll write it down. My data load is under way. I'm outta here.

As previously posted, I've been seeking a solution for managing my digital media. While reading some reviews for a variety of the usual suspects I came across a mention of XMBC. I installed it using the repository set available for Ubuntu, and it worked like a charm. There are only a handful of themes available for it, but those are almost all polished to a very excellent degree of shine, and I have to say that the overall package has left me extremely impressed! My favorite skin so far is MediaStream, which looks like the picture below, and which offers an interface that I haven't gotten tired of looking at and using for the last couple of days.

Facilities for using both an existing file structure, or for managing your files using a Library are available, and despite my inherent distaste for iTunes-style library management, the polish and features of the XBMC Library system have wooed me. Integration with IMDb.com and other online content providers for locally available media (adding shiney bits like DVD covers, plot & synopsis, cast, and fanart) and then delivering it all in a slick, tightly packaged interface, is enough to sell me on it. Except that it's not for sale! It's free!

Enough ranting. It's what I was looking for, and if you manage digital media and like nice interfaces it's probably what you're looking for. So much more so than anything else I've seen (including commercial offerings) that it blows my mind.

Christina and I had our pre-marital counselling this weekend at Brentview. The good news is that the wedding is still on. The bad news is that marriage sounds like a lot of work! Jokes aside, it was time well spent, and will hopefully pay dividends down the road...

To balance out the domesticness I picked up a new HDD, and plan on getting a new CPU and video card quite soon (as soon as I get the a new mail key for my box...). My future computing plans include finally setting up some NAS, and getting a proper media software solution set up. I've been following Boxee, but it may still be a little new. Last time I installed it there were chenanigans involved due to 64-bit incompatibilities.

I'll admit that I've always considered myself to be at least a bit of a "geek", but when reading the 10 Annoying Habits of a Geeky Spouse I found that my own impression of my behavior does not seem to fit the profile. No, I don't "pun", or swear in Klingon. I did attend a party when the newest Star Trek series premiered, but mostly because I lived at the "venue" and also owned the TV we watched it on. I don't own geeky t-shirts or toys (excluding gadgetry), and since I download my TV shows, in order to watch at leisure, I'm perpetually at least a season behind Big Media. I guess there are some weekends that get occupied with computer related projects, but I think the bottom line is that I'm more of a thinker than a do-er, so I'd rather play video games than execute on the numerous plans or ideas that I have floating around. Somehow the bits of geek cred I do have seem to have been missed in their list. I've spent hours painting 40k models and own a couple CCG decks; sometimes I wish I still had people to actually play games with. I've been to PAX, run a triple-booted computer, and prefer to run from the command-line when possible. I guess that doesn't qualify me anymore, but I never did attach much value to the label anyway, which I suppose is another point against me.

The coolest thing I've seen in a while is 100 Amazing Flickr Collections for Architecture Buffs, which could potentially occupy a huge portion of my free minutes of surfing time.

The second coolest is the Periodic Table of Typefaces.

"Dear Diary..." Not much to report, since my last entry... Christina and I have been cranking away on the wedding plans, and are pretty near to wrapping up the "Blueprint" phase and moving on to "Implementation"...

In other news, I've had the opportunity, while Christina is otherwise distracted by pictures of flowers, table settings, and hair styles, to play a significant portion of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. Happily, I can report that it is hugely faithful to the tabletop game, insofar as a real-time execution of the turn-based style could be. I had no quarrel with the base building that went on in the first Dawn of War, despite it's foreign nature, but this exclusively squad based vision rings far truer to the "real" game.

On a far more "mature" front, Christina and I got ourselves signed up for some life insurance. A move that has my inner child writhing and cringing, but will probably be a wise... investment <sigh>... in the long haul...

Nearly a month after my prior entry, and I'm back on the bench once again. My most recent engagement was a quick run at some custom MOSS search stuff, and I have to say that it was more fun than I expected. SharePoint has a very well deservedly poor reputation among web developers. At least those I've worked with. Folks online who have drank the Kool-Aid seem to understand, and be able to work within, the numerous limitations, constraints, and frustrations that seem to plague the framework. This leads me to believe that it's a state of mind, more than technical ability that lets these select few enjoy the experience. By way of example, the Form Web Part used to filter the Data View Web Part will not allow itself to be externally populated using standard connections. That means that either you don't get to use a form (as if there's some alternative... o_0) or you must (as I did) quietly escort SharePoint into the alley and bash it over the head with inline javascript. For all of the amazing configurability and functionality, it's quite baffling to run into fundamentally simple things that SharePoint cannot do.

On Friday I got a call from Shaw, and had a nice long chat with the operator, who gave me some free cable TV. I haven't had TV in my place since the last time their free offer (which nicely degraded into a limimted-run heavily discounted service) expired. I watch quite a bit of TV, but have become quite used to downloading shows instead of waiting for them to come on, putting up with commercials, and changing channels. At this point NOT watching my downloaded programs feels so primitive that I don't think the cable will get much exercise.

I'm back on the bench after another brief stint at WestJet. Christina had a pretty hard run of things this past week, as her audio project at istock went live, which was a pretty intense activity for her so soon after vacation. It's done now, and seems to have gone quite well, despite a couple of 14-hour days. Now that I'm back on the bench I needed something to distract me from finishing my audio player project, and Litestep has nicely filled that gap. I've got it running in Vista, which is not advised, as it is supposed to be compatible with XP/2000 only, but aside from a few hiccups it seems to run ok. I'm running the sandwich theme, which looks and runs quite awesomely. Anyone still using Windows who wants to make it look "cool" should definately take this stuff for a ride.

I'm back online after a temporary, and unintentional, period of disconnectivity. Losing my Visa in Jakarta (see previous entry) resulted in a number of suspensions of service, including the inconveniently timed autorenewal of this domain, as well as a very rude phone call from Rogers which makes me want to take my business elsewhere. Anyway, my week of reintegration with Calgary time since the trip has reduced my ambition to absolute zero. So I spent some time on the bench playing with QT, and Aardwolf. I'm back on the job though, fixing up some stuff from my previous deployment, which shouldn't take more than a week. Going to work, and actually doing work has brought me out of my slump by providing the needed focus on non-work interests. By the time this week is out I'll be ready to get slacking again. Also on the slacking front, I've been continuing to play a lot of Far Cry 2, which still hasn't gotten old, and which I'm enjoying even more as the game progresses. Anyone out there with an interest in games who hasn't played it is doing themselves a serious disservice.

We have returned. I don't want to write a huge telling of everything, but do want to explain some of what happened. Replying to an email from Sarah caused me to sketch out a quick picture, to which I will add flesh below:

Highlights:
• Missed connection to Manila through Hong Kong results in free hotel stay, instead of camping out in the Manila airport (as previously planned).
• $1 beers, +30 degree weather, local karaoke "entertainment" in Manila.
• Propeller plane to Boracay, where we stayed at Nigi Nigi, which was even awesomer than advertized/expected.
• Smoking a hooka on the beach under the stars listening to a guy play guitar, and eating the best thin crust pizza ever.
• Massage on rooftop terrace overlooking the beach with billowing white curtains and soft music. 1 hour = <$10...
• Bribing our way into Indonesia (one-way flights seem to make customs/immigration people a little nervous).
• Lost my Visa... :(
• Crappy first night in Bali at a rundown shanty of a hotel, after which we found the super sweet Kuta Puri Bungalows, near Kuta Beach.
• Surfing in Bali is fun. I only lost my passport once! Awesome!
• Visiting the Australian Embassy. Then a photo place. Twice. The embassy again. Post office, back to the embassy, and it's done! All we had to do was courier an estimated number of dollars along with my remaining ID to an ambiguous address, wait an undetermined length of time, and hope that they send me back a new passport before our flight home.
• Elephant safari.
• Moved to Melasti Beach Resort, near Legian Beach, for a change of scenary while we waited.
• Kecak dance (watching, not dancing :).
• Numerous dinners on (or near) the beach, including some fantastic seafood, mind-blowing pasta, and the best tomato soup on earth.
• Got a "temporary passport", after many emails and phone calls to the Canadian Embassy in Jakarta.
• Mad dash through Denpasar airport, followed by drama with customs and immigration, but they got us on the plane in the end.
• No go for China flight without Visa, so we're stuck in Hong Kong. Checked into Shamrock.
• Seafood dinner on the harbor for Christina's birthday, watching the Laser Light Show.
• I got sick. Probably bird flu or something. I'm still getting over it.
• Turns out Hong Kong has a pretty kickass transit system. We had a lot of fun taking the bus, train, Sky Tram and Ngong Ping Cable Car. We also saw a giant buddha statue, had dim sum at the Jumbo floating restaurant, and did a pile of shopping.
• More drama with customs/immigration, this time in Vancouver. The line we were put in had a "drug smuggler" (just a kid with a dime-bag), students without visas, a guy with a suitcase full of cash, and US. "welcome home" indeed... we had to RUN to catch our Calary connection after waiting 2 hours to be "processed"...

And yet after all of that, we're safe! Praise God!
I'd do it all again, heheh.

Christina uploaded a few photos to her flickr, but hopefully we'll put more up somewhere soon.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Christina and I are driving with the folks out to Abbotsford, then on in the morning to the airport, where we hope, despite many airline difficulties throughout the continent, to depart to the Philippines. We'll try to upload a few photos during the trip, but may have to wait until we return before the stories are fully told. Until then, there are a few new ones from our holiday celebrations up at my flickr.

This has been a pretty crazy month. Most people find that Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year, but trying to fit in Christmas with both Christina's family and my own, planning our big trip to Asia, and getting some wedding details taken care of before we leave, it has felt truly very busy. On the plus side, I've had a sweet time at work "on the bench", with time for working on a couple of projects and catching up on so much previously ignored internet. Among my distractions I count my Media Player which is so close to completion that I am very nearly in danger of actually finishing something, playing with some dotnetnuke, and this website (which is still not very much closer to being finished).

As we approach our departure date I'm starting to get pretty excited to be leaving. Christina is beside herself and will likely be so wound up by the time we fly out that she'll pass out straight through to Manila. Last night we celebrated Christmas with her family, and had a great day cooking up a roast beef feast for Christmas dinner, and opening some presents with them. This coming week we play the same game again in Kelowna with my family. It's amazing to think how blessed we are.

The only other thing going on is that I'm playing through Far Cry 2, which I'm enjoying a good deal more than I had expected, and can highly recommend, even playing as I am -- with graphics tuned way down, and for only thin slivers of time at a stretch. The campaign game is fantastic. I always enjoy the open-ended play style of a "mercenary" campaign, and I love the responsive and diverse AI that still catches me off guard with a couple tricks now and then.

Just a quick on before the day is done. I've been playing with some EFL and Edje programming, and am working on a simple media player type application. No idea if it'll finish, but perhaps it'll motivate me sufficiently to put an actual page under the Sandbox portion of this site. Also, I was looking at the news section of the previously linked Quel Solaar, and found that "the team" (a guy named Eskil) had released a trailer for the forthcoming game Love, which looks interesting. Watching it gave me a vibe somewhat between Myst and Magic Carpet, which both rank quite highly on my list. I'm not holding my breath for this one though, since it's a one man show putting it together, and it might be a while before anything playable comes out. Anyway, it's good to hear of progress, and the trailer is definately worth the 00:02:48.

Nearly a month since posting, and not for lack of things to say...
I've been to, and returned from, MS PDC 2008 in Los Angeles. It was a very busy time, and I didn't get to see nearly as much of the city as I had hoped to. In fact when we went to the Hollywood strip on arrival day I hadn't even brought my camera, assuming that we would be doing a little more sightseeing, but ended up missing the only shot we were to get at it. Anyway, the second non-conference outing was to Universal Studios, which Microsoft had rented out for the evening of our second day there. It was done up in full halloween regalia, and was a lot of fun, but mostly because the lines were short and everything was free. I can't believe people actually pay for an ultimately worse experience there. If I don't go back I won't be a bit sorry. The last full day we were all suffering from some information overload, and most of the sessions were sounding like rehashes of the same material, so we took off early and headed down to Santa Monica for the afternoon and evening. We ended up catching a bus down there, since there doesn't appear to be a way to take the subway from downtown, and it was about an hour long ride which offered a good chance to see a large portion of the city. I'm pretty glad we took the bus, since cabbing everywhere can make for a pretty canned experience. We had a look at the pier in Santa Monica, and walked the length of the mostly deserted beach (and into the Venice Beach strip) until after dark. Along the way I saw my second awesome vintage BMW motorcycle, which further inspires me to pick up something similar. Every time I see one of those it blows my mind. We then took a quick cab ride back to the 3rd Steet Promenade, which is much like what Calgary's Stephen Avenue is supposed to be, where we had a nice dinner, compements of the company, and took our $50 cab ride back to the hotel. I'd like to see more of LA, especially the beach part of it. There is a more relaxed attitude there that I don't feel I really got to see.

As I entered in my last post, it was supposed to be my last week on that job. I got back from LA and had a week's extension to try and get some vendor related issues worked out, but ended up staying for two full weeks waiting for them to put some eyes on the problem. Finally, on the friday of the last week they finally took 15 minutes and fixed the issues with their database and we could confirm that my code was working. I'm glad it got to end on a somewhat high note, and am relieved to have been able to successfully test my end of the project. Now I'm at Ideaca waiting for my next job, but with any luck I'll be waiting until the new year, which should give me lots of time to attend to my numerous other neglected projects.

Well I'm down to my last week here, and despite a couple of API challenges and vendor stonewalling, I may actually finish on time. As with all projects it would be nice to have another week or so clean things up a bit more, but my time is better spent on having the business test the current code and make sure that it's functioning as well for them as it has been for me. It's been very frustrating this past week to see my near-perfect solution give way to the inconsistencies of a poor, poor API, but what're you gonna do...

In other news, Aviary has come out of it's shell, so to speak, with the beta version going public. I've been keeping a loose eye on it since I first heard of the project a while ago. It's an interesting push in the cloud computing direction for media creation and manipulation. It's basically a bunch of in-the-browser tools for image editing, with plans for many more as part of the suite. The cloud computing idea was recently described to me as a resurrection, or extension, of the late 1980's which had "experts" predicting a takeover of the client-server model, and all of us using thin clients by now. That didn't exactly pan out, though it was popular for a while. Anyway, I did notice some performance issues last night in my trial run of creating an image, but that could be a problem on my end too, and I wouldn't claim that a single session was anything like conclusive.

In yet other news, A Librophiliacs Love Letter is amazing. I quite regularly visit architecture and design blogs, and every time I see a library in someone's home it makes me jealous.

So I've had a bit of idle time here in the last few days as I wait for some vendor feedback, and in the course of frittering away those minutes have made a couple of submissions to iStock's Screen Yrself contest, which is fun, but ultimatly too constraining for me due to the three color restriction. I'm not talented enough to reduce image complexity to that level and keep it looking good. The only consolation I have is that most of the other entrants either have the same trouble, or keep wanting to throw text in their designs, which I would file under "appalling". In addition to the previously mentioned fffound (I like it so much I'll link it twice :) I've been hanging around Strange Maps, which is exactly what it sounds like. Since I love maps - and especially old or otherwise unusual ones - it's a pretty cool way to blow off steam.

In other news, Christina and I have booked our stay at Turtle Inn, Boracay and I've got to say that, despite trying to stay low key about the trip, I'm starting to get pretty excited! We went in for our shots a couple of days ago, and even just talking to the nurse there about the diseases and stuff we might catch kind of got me pumped to get going.

Also, after much searching and seeking, I finally broke down and got a 1/2" allen key to change the oil on my bike, instead of the 13mm key I believed was the proper size. Except it was too large. So I took the bike in to the shop, had the size checked for sure, and it turns out that all this time I've needed the oh-so-common 12mm, NOT the 13mm I had been looking for. ‹sigh›... So that's done. Now my next major task is getting a wedding website put together so that Christina and I can start getting some content ready.

I've been heads down at WestJet these days, working on converting a portion of an ETL app from stored procedures to using Web Services. It has been very busy, but a lot of fun too, and I've learned a lot about C#. In the scant downtime available I've "discovered" fffound, which is promising to be an excellent source of daily inspiration and distraction. Just what I need :)

The folks visited this past weekend, and it was great to see them again, though it hasn't been especially long since our last visit. With all of Dad's side now living in Calgary "dinner at Len's" became something like a mini family reunion. Christina and I got to show them "the venue", and get them generally up to speed on the wedding planning progress. Christina has been working away at it with a not-unexpected gusto, which means that we're fully on schedule. I haven't been a particularly engaged participant, but have no doubt that as we come around to the back nine of the timeline, and things move from a strategic to a tactical focus, I'll have more to do. For now I'm happy to let her play.

No progress on either getting my motorcycle back in active action or getting this website finished up. But I've got plans to do both "real soon now"™

As the day winds down I reflect on my time at this contract, and decide that I'm happy to be out of it. Great company with fantastic people, but this portion of the project feels like a made-to-fail exercise, and I'm happy to roll off at this point. It's been a very interesting, and personally stretching, experience, but I'm ready to get back into proper development. With any luck I'll get some time between engagements to finally do some EFL development. Or finish this website. Or build a wedding website... Yikes.

We're back. I never did get to change that oil, but it turns out that it was not oil that caused me trouble. I'll tell it backwards, cuz I'm tricky like that.

I pulled into the stall at my building and sighed in relief as I killed the engine. Seeing the construction at the very last intersection before turning in to my lot had made my heart skip a beat. Very much like the beat it had skipped just a couple of blocks prior, when I'd had to run a red light, which itself had turned on me as I screamed toward the fading yellow as fast as first gear could push. Not all reds were run though, as the second light into town was where I found that I was no longer able to disengage the engine. Not able to shift into neutral, and with the clutch not quite holding the engine back, I rode both clutch and brake in a careful, creeping balance as I waited for the light to change. On the approach to this light I could sense that the end was near. An inevitability betrayed by the lack of tension in the clutch lever, which I had so feared to feel, and an unmistakable stickiness while shifting. Pulling away from the first light in Calgary, which we had caught just changing green, and I hadn't had to stop complete for, I started to breath, as safe arrival became, again, a hope. Pulling away from the scene I had a sinking feeling that I wouldn't make it back after all. Each of the few shifts required to get through the bottleneck made my hairs raise and breath a little shallower, as the sponginess of the clutch, and stickiness of the gears could only mean that I was very near to finding out first hand what a leaking hydraulic clutch yields. The firefighters on scene were blocking off one of the lanes of traffic, and the resultant merge was the cause of the delay. Passing Calaway Park, and only another twenty minutes from home, traffic suddenly slowed. We were on the doorstep of Calgary, and I finally began to relax.

Anyway, the rest of the ride was fantastic. We had beautiful weather on the last day, as well as from Vancouver to Kelowna on Friday, and got frozen and soaked on Wednesday and Thurday. Nice variety :). It was really great to visit the folks, and I'm happy to call the whole trip a success. I'll maybe post later when there are some pictures online and I feel like saying more.

This is a particularly short week. Today is Tuesday, but really Friday, since it's the last working day before Christina and I, along with a small group, say good-bye to dry, dirty Calgary, and head west. We're going to see Jack Johnson in Vancouver, which would be cool enough on its own, but Christina an dI are going to try and ride out to the event, which is cooler yet! The weather looks a little uncooperative, so we might end up just driving, but I would be quite dissapointed if we didn't get the chance to ride, as this will be Christina's longest ride so far, and the first multi-day trip we'll have taken together on the bikes.

Preparing for the trip has been a little frustrating for me, as I had planned to do oil changes on both of our bikes, and had a couple of annoying roadblocks to such a simple job. My motorcycle maintenance has been done chiefly with Steve in his garage, which has historically meant that I just show up and use his tools and stuff. Doing a job like this on my own was a little more than my tiny toolkit could handle, and I had to do a bunch of running around to get the right bits together. Additionally, I seem to have lost my 8mm allen key, which is apparently not a very common article, as none of the places I've been to have carried them (except in kits with a great number of unneccessary sizes). Anyway, I finally got hers done yesterday, and will do mine tonight, by hook or by crook.

After a whirlwind weekend I'm (sort of) back. Since last post I've flown to Toronto and back, picked up a car from the airport last night on arrival, and driven down here to Sparwood for the last kick at UAT, following which I'll be driving back up to Calgary for a long overdue night in my own bed. Christina and I dropped the good news on her family just before flying out with them for the (unrelated) wedding in Toronto, and called my folks from the airport. I'm not in a hurry to send out mass emails or anything, as I'd rather tell people in person, but look for a facebook status update soon, hehe.

After much deliberation, consideration, contemplation, reflection and projection I began to think. Thoughts led me to plans, and plans led me to actions, which have ended in a proposal. A proposal made last night, which she has accepted!

Christina and I are, finally, suddenly, engaged to be married!

I'm not even absolutely sure now how I came across it at first, anymore. It must have been a blog or something. Anyway, I recently found the website of Eskil Steenberg, who is, by himself, making a game called Love. It looks like one of the most interesting ideas in game design I've seen in a long time. A REALLY long time. I very highly recommend checking it out, as well as his blog, which has some truly well written and thoroughly considered material regarding media, games, development, and technology.

Now I don't remember which I saw first, if it was the previously mentioned Love, or the Verse platform on which the game is being built, but his resource on the topic is what got me really interested, especially after seeing the in-game screenshots, which are stunning. Being so impressed, I checked out Verse and saw that it has a number of open source, freely downloadable tools. The platform itself is designed around multiple developers and development tools (mostly oriented around the 3D space of modelling and audio) connecting through a server for collaboration. On the same file. At the same time. Possibly using different tools!? Outrageous! I haven't had a chance to fully explore the toolkit yet, and probably won't do more than make a 3D smiley face, but the modelling tool is crazy enough to pick up on its own merit. The screenshots blew my mind, and though it's not the most intuitive interface, it is certainly the most experimental and interesting, which to me is worth much, much more. I look forward to a little time to explore it more thoroughly.

Well it seems like things are moving and shaking all around the Enlightenment world. In addition to the previously mentioned Planet E there has recently been unveiled Exchange.e.org, which is to be the successor to Get-E, and will provide, in addition to themes, third party applications and modules. At a glance it seems to be a very nice improvement, but also it provides a nice API which allows application integration with the provided online content. Sweet! Also new is the Adventures in Edje blog, written by Toma, which has a great start to some theme-specific tutorials, tips and tricks.

After another stint in Sparwood, this time for running UAT sessions with the user groups, I'm back in town. The trip was brief, only the first couple of days of the week, but somehow it wore me right out. That, and one other happening of significance have kept me very busy in the past couple of weeks, but details will have to wait. All I'll say for now, is "Strange things are afoot" and leave it at that.

Last night after getting home I was catching up on the E17 developer mailing list and found a reference to Planet E, a blog aggregator which takes feeds from the developer team and shows them all in one place. Among numerous posts about food, a few about E17, and a nest of miscellany, there was one post from Benr titled Christianity, which I was surprised and delighted to find associated with a project in my immediate interest. It was a very well written entry that does a great job encapsulating many of my own theological positions, and my own observations about how faith and life mesh with internet culture:
The Bible outlines how God has interacted with man in different ways over time and why they didn't work... "Just give me a sign and I'll believe!", and He did that and it didn't make a difference, "Just give me some easy rules to follow and I'll believe!", and He did that and it didn't make a difference. It all leads up to Jesus and grace.
When Open Source came along it jived for me because it parallels Christianity. Community and working together and evangelizing... these are integral Christian concepts that I immediately got.
Doubt isn't a sin... explore faith and test it.
What?? Who is this guy? If my thoughts were this organized I'd claim that he had stolen them! I especially love the Penny-Arcade reference, since Jesus is one of my favorite characters that they do. It's such a perfectly agnostic representation of Jesus The Son Of God as a normal dude [1, 2, 3, 4]. Anyway, that was super cool to stumble across.

Well my fears about riding through The Pass this past weekend were unfounded. We had absolutely spectacular weather all weekend, and had a fantastic time "camping". I quote because it was a pretty yuppy affair. We had snacks Sunday night, a late breakfast was picked up at a farmers market Saturday morning, lunch was snacks at the beach, and for dinner we hit the dairy bar just up the street for a hamburger. It's funny how much of the effort involved with camping dissapears when food is not an issue. All that's left is to set up the tent, make a fire, and chill out. Good times. We did have to make an early return, as Christina had to work on Monday, but that was fine for me, as I spent the day doing some housekeeping, and finally finishing an entire game of SoaSE. I've been looking around for something new to play and am pretty dissapointed in the selection. I'm on a bit of an RTS kick now, but might have to take the blinders off if nothing good can be found. If I had a comments bit on this site I'd put it out there as a question, but this feature is mid-way down a long list which hasn't been looked at in months.

After last weekend's Kaninaskis camping trip Christina and I made a run to MEC and upgraded/aqcuired some legacy and missing items from our camping equipment inventory. That means we're all set for this weekend's camping trip, which will take us south, between Fernie and Cranbrook. We'll be riding through Crowsnest Pass, which consistently provides "stimulating" weather patterns, so that should be fun.

For the past couple of weeks I've had a Wii and an Xbox 360 at home, which has been quite entertaining. I had kept telling myself that I'd take the next-gen plunge myself, but instead have these guys on loan for a few months. I have been keeping an eye on the game inventory for the new generation of systems, and haven't really found anything very compelling, so it's been good to try them both out first hand. I have to say that the 360 is somewhat dissapointing. It hasn't been on more than a couple of times, and the only game so far tried (Gears of War) left me with an eyebrow raised and my patience expired. The Wii however, is a little more compelling. I'm not such a huge fan of the Wii Sports, but can highly recommend Ghost Squad as an absolutely fantastic interpretation of the classic arcade "on rails" shooter. I won't rave too long about it, but if you have a Wii you probably owe it to yourself to drop the $30 and pick this title up.

Well we're back from Edmonton, and have one more wedding scratched off the list. This is a tremendous relief, since this was the event for which Christina and myself were filling an MC role. It went quite a bit better than I had expected, and was quite a smooth operation, if I do say so myself. We drove back right after the wedding, making it a very late night, so yesterday was completely written off as a relaxation day. Christina and I lay in Riley Park for about 3 hours, watching cricket, reading, and listening to music on her iPhone. Exactly what the doctor ordered.

Work is frantic, and even now I am deferring some work on the pending UAT kickoff which happens this week. By the time I get home there is no time or ambition for personal projects, so the mental list I keep for myself continues to grow. Finishing this site is near the top, but doesn't look to be happening soon.

I've been busy.
Really busy. Every now and then I'll think of something that has just happened and want to write about it, but don't feel like I have the time. So I'm taking some now. Actually, what prompts me is the fact that I just wrote a long-ish email to Erica about what's been up lately, so I think I'll just paste most of that here, hehe:

Summer really started rather early around here for me, since I got my first sunburn sometime in mid-April, which was nice. Christina and I had ridden the bikes into Inglewood to a little breakfast cafe and ate on the patio. If you guys *do* come in for a couple days we'll definately be hitting that spot, it's one of my new favorites!
Summer has not, otherwise, been very impressive, with only two other good weekends since that first one. We have been taking every opportunity to take the bikes out, and just a couple weeks ago did a nice ride to Banff for the night. It was Christina's first time on the highway, which was a really good experience for her, and was my first time in many months to go dancing at a club, which was equally educational.
Of our six total weddings for this summer we've gone through two, and the next one up has us booked as MC's for the event. Scary.
Last year was pretty busy with sports during the summer, so I'm scaling back to just Ultimate Frisbee, and ended up becoming team captain for my team this year. I'm really more of a figurehead though. I do the "three cheers for the other guys" bit after games, and Christina does pretty much everything else. It's a pretty sweet team, with people from "church", "people we used to work with", and "friends & family" spheres all coming together. Somehow they've all cohesed to make a really fun group.
In addition to all the weddings we've got slated we must find time for a couple of camping trips, progressively longer bike trips (culminating in our trip out to Vancouver to see Jack Johnson in late-ish August), and at least a few weekends to relax and snooze in the park, so it's going to be a pretty busy season...

That paints the highlights with a pretty broad brush. There's been a lot more going on with work and such, but I'll write that up later. Maybe even later today... We'll see.

In something of an anti-climax I find myself back in Calgary after only a brief stint out west. Utterly unsurprising delays in getting a development environment set up, and some unexpected changes in scope mean that I have still some details which need clarification before development in earnest can begin, and the absence of my technical resource means that any preliminary development could as easily be done from home. So here I am. On the upside, Victoria is an absolutely beautiful and charming city. I did take a few pictures, but they're pretty low quality. I will try to upload them anyway when I get a chance, and may supplement them with better shots on a subsequent visit, which now is looking like March 10th at the earliest.

Christina and I joined Steve and Julene last Tuesday to see Josh Ritter here in concert. If you haven't heard his music I'd recommend checking him out. Very few artists that I can name fail to dissapoint me, and he's on the happy side of that list.

Recently I've been hearing about Armageddon Empires, so downloaded the demo to take it for a ride. In it I've found something which has been missing for a very long time. The game plays like an old-school tabletop game, combined with the chancy strategy of a collectible card game. I've played both genres to some degree, but the limiting factor has always been rounding up enough enthusiastic opponents, which is nicely circumvented by the available AI players. While not quite the same style of game, it fills a gap for me which has been missing since my last wargaming enterprise, Warhammer 40K, was reluctantly retired. I've actually installed Warhammer's Dawn of War RTS at home, and have enjoyed getting back into this, more accessible form of the universe, but AE is providing a truly traditional play style that is engaging as well.

Well wouldn't you know it... Just as I began to settle in and enjoy my time on the bench I get slated for redeployment. I'm actually kind of excited about the opportunity, which will be an integration project between SharePoint and CRM, which are both somewhat new to me. I love to learn new technologies, so this will be a very interesting project, and the more I read about the two products and integration strategies the more interested I get. We'll see if that interest survives the rigors of "real world" experience.

In other news, I've been playing around a little bit with EWL development, and made a tiny project to get my feet wet. I've got a plan to build a ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file editor, which is simple enough for me to start with, but complex enough to explore the API and remember how to use C. One thing I love about Enlightenment is the community support. Playing around with the code and getting advice from people in #e on the FreeNode IRC server actually makes me feel like part of the open source community, even though I'm not exactly breaking new ground or anything. It's just fun to play, especially when some other kids are playing too, hehe.

I'm at the office. The office, of my actual employer. For the first time in over two years I'm not on contract, and now am trying to fit back into the groove of things here. This is the first of three events of note; possibly the most important, certainly the least interesting. I'm "on the bench" here and waiting my next adventure.

The second of these three happenings is the big family gathering at Big White. Despite a rocky start — thanks to WestJet, who loaded, then unloaded Christina's main bag from the plane, forcing us to wait an hour in the airport for it to arrive on the next flight — we arrived not terribly behind schedule, and enjoyed an evening of visiting and relaxation with the fam. In the morning we hit the slopes, and had a fantastic day skiing and boarding together. It's interesting to contrast the ease with which we all were able to keep together against the difficulty with the same task on the trip to Fernie earlier this year. It's great to be able to enjoy the whole mountain as a group, and not have to feel like one member is holding the group back.

Our third event was yet another ski trip, back to Fernie this time. A revisit of a trip last year, to the same lodge we had used, but with a largely changed group. Fernie was absolutely drowning in snow, and the hill conditions were perfect. Unfortunately, between the last paragraph and this one, I had come down with "something", most of which had passed, leaving a condition which carefully walked the line between sounding serious and actual misery, so I didn't hit the hill very hard. Christina had brought her sisters showboard up, and I took the opportunity to try and teach her on an actual hill. She ended up doing really well, and was clearing runs on both edge's by the days end. It was a great trip, and quite relaxing, but I think that both of us are ready for a weekend that looks more like camping out on my couch in front of the TV for eight hours at a stretch. Handy that I've stumbled on one of my favorite folk heros featuring in a show that looks like a perfect fit for the occasion.

The group from The Hub had their annual Winter Retreat event at Camp Caroline this past weekend, and I was there for (I believe) the sixth time. It was a lot of fun, but our room, supposedly set aside for the non-snoring contingent, was not nearly as silent as hoped for. I would estimate that I snuck in two hours or less of sleep all weekend, so the whole affair passed in a bit of a haze. I do remember a few points though. Attendance was higher than I've seen before, which was nice, but meant that there were not many opportunities to just be alone, which I always enjoy at retreat-type events. Christina brought a snowboard, borrowed from Carmella, and tried a few runs on the tubing hill with quite good success. We also spent time in the pool and hot tub, sat around the fire, played games, ate continuously, and spent quality time in fellowship and worship with the group. It was a fun time, but not entirely restful, so when we got back Sunday afternoon I passed out for a couple of hours. In the evening Christina's parents took us for her birthday to Silver Dragon, which is a chinese restaurant downtown. We had a good meal there and visited with them for a couple of hours before heading back to my place to wind down.

Yesterday was Christina's birthday, so last Friday I had ordered some flowers for Monday delivery to her office, which was a little trickier than it should have been since her office isn't technically on the map. Even Google Maps can't find it, and so there was some question as to whether or not the delivery would be succesful or not... Anyway, they did arrive on time and intact, so that's good. I had struggled a bit with finding a good idea for something to do for her birthday, and eventually decided against trying to plan a big party, which for me is always a lot of work and generally not very successful. With being so busy recently I thought it would be nice to scale things back a little so planned a quiet outting to Prince's Island Park with a thermos of hot cholocate made "from scratch" with real chocolate and milk and vanilla, where we could sit with a blanket on a bench and drink and talk and look at the city, then over to River Cafe for a nice dinner. This was nearly successful, but since River Cafe was closed we instead visited the downtown side of the park, in Eau Clair and went for dinner to Oceana. It turned out to be a very nice little evening, and she seemed happy with it, which is really all I'm after.

The remainder of the week sees me spending a fair bit of time alone, which will be a nice change from our recent hectic schedule, as Christina will be off on her own affairs or having fun with Jacelyn. I've got a little house cleaning, video gaming, and edje/ewl/efl/e17 experimenting on the menu. Generally just retracting into my shell and being a hermit. Gathering strength before the family trip to Big White, which should be a great time. I'll probably give a full report once I'm back.

Happy New Year to everybody...

If there was some sort of smiley-face icon for feeling like an old man with aches from your toes to your neck I'd be using it right here. I'm back from Fernie, which despite, or possibly thanks to my prior admitted rough shape, was a really fun time. Christina and I drove out with Brian and Erin, and put in a full day at the hill on Friday after meeting up with the rest of the crew. Once again I'm reminded that I don't like doing things with a large group, as we spent a good deal of time over the course of the trip waiting and organizing. Good times though, which I'll summarize as piles and piles of great snow, killer accomodations - including sweet hot-tub action, games and drinking and fun with friends, a New Years celebration with champagne and fireworks and a smooch(!), and nominal safety for everyone at the end of it all.

And now it's back to "real life". Which doesn't actually disappoint me terribly much. I'm ready to wind my time down on this contract and see what the future will hold. I'm ready for a period of rest to recover from the holidays. I'm ready to start a new year, and find what it holds. I'm not really ready to get back to work though, which is why I'm still writing... :P

I resolve to finish this site. This year. Or maybe next year...

Merry Christmas to everybody!

As the final work day begins winding down before the holidays I can feel the stress leaking from my body, running down the leg of my chair and collecting in a pool below, and somewhat in front of, my desk. It will simmer there and await my return. But until then I fly; out of the building and through downtown, with maybe a quick stop or two for any last minute items, then on to my apartment and couch and computer, where DPI problems evade resolution (pardon the pun). This year I'm staying in Calgary for Christmas. The first time not being "home" with the family, and it definately feels odd. There are a few elements of our traditional family Christmas that I will miss, like the postcard-perfect hominess of the living room with a fireplace going and comfortable couches and Mom and Liz whipping up something tasty in the kitchen; or the absolute quiet of the farm and how the spirit of that place is so restful and peaceful; or Christmas Eve when we have a fondue or group-cooking meal and open gifts. I know a lot of people get stressed out over the holidays but for me it has always been a time when I've felt the most blessed. Christmas with Christina's family will be a lot of fun, and I'm sure we'll make many memories, but I'll still miss home :)

Ahh good, it's December again. That wonderful time of year when the only daylight I see is that small bit peaking through the window, over the top of the cubicle wall of my neighbour across the hall which lies just outside my door. When the radiant heating in my apartment can almost keep up with the chill fighting its way in through the weak points in my insulative defenses. When walking to work means deciding between frost bitten ears and sweaty toque hair. The most wonderful time of the year...

I finally got a chance this weekend to spend a little time with the new computer I've assembled, and I must say that it's blazing fast. I've got Windows dual-booted this time, because the attrocious state of linux gaming really kills the mood when all I want to do is shoot some bad guys. On the other side I've switched to Ubuntu, not because of any serious problems with core Debian, but mostly because I'm curious to try out a distribution with such robust user support. So far I'm pretty happy with it, mostly because of the one button nVidia driver installation, neccessarily contrasted against the Debian ordeal. Last night I got e17 put together and running and I'm building directly out of CVS this time instead of fooling around with packages. I spotted this icon set today and think that it might make a snazzy replacement for the stock icons, which might be the extent of my customization for a while (aside from switching to Detour, which is awesome). I'm tempted to simply revel in a "working" environment for a bit before sticking my fingers in it again. Oh, and no progress on the site :P

"... jumping the gap between zero and one...". That's brilliant. Come back Ze, I miss you. It really feels these days like I'm not jumping that gap very successfully, but an absolute deluge of work might be helping to keep me down. Insert sad face here. Still no progress on the site, hehe.

I seem to have survived Brazil, which is nice. Though I was unable to get a supply of Cachaça, the uniquely Brazillian liquor used to create the magnificant Caipirinha, under the influence of which I was sedated for large portions of the journey. I'm going to see if I can convince Mauricio to bring me back some, or to find a local supplier. You could get a 750ml bottle at the grocer for (as low as) R$5, which is right around $2.50 CAD. Not what I'm used to paying for liquor. Nice crisp beer was valued at around R$0.50 per can, and decent wine could be had for R$15.00 ‹sigh›... Anyway enough about the booze. The trip itself was a great time, and though the group did, at times, feel the strain of such close quarters, I believe we're all closer for it. Especially after shared suffering in the form of mechanical failure, trepidatious weather, and soul crushing airport delays. Full details are in my personal journal, which likely won't be published here, but may surface in bits and bobs from time to time. Christina, and to a lesser extent, myself, have posted some pictures on our respective flickr sites.

Upon arrival I was greeted with the awkwardness of having been tentatively disengaged from my current deployment at work, which means that the client is scrambling to get a replacement, and I'm left to sort out a documentation and knowledge transfer nightmare. I knew it was coming, but the timing could have been more tactful or convenient. Anyway, this means that there will be no spare time at all for cleaning up or implementing functionality on this site. Stay tuned.

Hopes of getting this site functionally implemented in full PHP today were dashed by a flurry of activity late yesterday, which has spilled over into my nice, clean, blank schedule which today's calendar had proudly displayed. I'm now scrambling to get my comments in on a code review for another app. News that my order is not (and will not be) ready means that I am frantically searching for a gift to contribute for the my part of "Secret Santa". Proofing a draft has occupied my morning, depsite my expectations that it would be wrapped yesterday. Finally, notes from my bike trip are still waiting for archival in my Moleskine, which must be done before I leave in order for the Brazil trip to be "on the record". To those various ends I will toss off this quick post, and get on it. Pics when I get back.

Alive, but limping. Still getting a few wrinkles in templates and graphics worked out before "turning on" the navigation and links. Hopefully will be fully functional by the end of the week. If not it'll have to wait until November as I'll be beaching it up in Brazil until then. In the meantime check out the links in the sidebar for some sites worth your time.

It's alive!

Welcome to the current iteration of my humble home on the web. My track record is pretty bad when it comes to maintaining a personal website, but I'm here to give it another shot. As this is the first entry to my blog I will give credit to a few of the resources I used when making this site. All fonts and brushes are used without permission, requested or recieved, from the author. Hope that's not a problem.

Attribution - noun : The act of attributing, especially the act of establishing a particular person as the creator of a work of art:

• prAna.com made me want to try a "distressed" or "painted" style site.
• Textures from RHBrushStrokes2 brush set.
• Minor detailing with Swirly Ornaments brush set.
• Frakt font provided letter shapes for dk emblem.
• Windsong font used for script menu text.
• Flickr Badge code, with modifications, for sidebar photos.

There is still a lot of work to do here, and I anticipate progress will be glacial. Hopefully once things are in place I will be able to keep up to date with current events in my life, things that are interesting to me or that I am working on, and the places on the internet I consider best worth returning to.

Thanks for visiting!