Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Get Human!

Sorry...this is for folks who have to deal with US companies only, but I think it's a killer resource

How to speak to a human via phone support

Monday, July 17, 2006

Windows Give No Tongue...

If it's printed in the paper, it must be true....

Caution mildly disturbing...

Too much time....

I'll let the link talk for itself...

Space Invaders!

Worth a look see...

Sunday, July 16, 2006

So I went out for a ride...

So I went out for a ride on Saturday morning to do some training as I can't let Army Boy even think about kicking my butt on Sea 2 Summit. My favorite "how fit am I" training evaluation is to bike to Henry Coe, go for a run, and bike back (Click here for GoogleEarth Tracks). I've measured myself on this particular course a couple of times, so it's a great way of evaluating my overall fitness. As I was heading up towards Coe I passed a man who had stopped to adjust some stuff on his bike. I nodded at him to make sure he was alright and continued on my way. As I was on my mountain bike and he was on his road bike, I tried to see how long I could stay ahead of him. After about 6 hard miles he caught up to me, and the chat went something like this (edited as to not bore the reader to tears):


    Him: Nice pace. I didn't think you could hold me off for that long.

    Dave: Well it only cost me a couple of coughed up body parts that I left along the way.

    Him: How do you like your bike?

    I was riding my 2002 Specialized Stumpjumper FSRxc

    Dave: Love this bike...I've put some serious miles on it, and it's never let me down.

    Him: You changed the rear shock. Why?

    Dave: My Fox Shock wore out...

    Him: They wouldn't rebuild it for you?

    Dave: Nope...they wanted to sell me a new one, and I got the Cane Creek for way less

    Him: Hmmm...

    Dave: You know your bikes. Do you work for Specialized?

    Him: Yep

    Dave: What do you do for them?

    Him: I'm the president

    Dave: uhhhh....I'm Dave...

    Mike: Nice to meet you...I'm Mike.

We chatted for a few more minutes, and then he dropped me. Now for those of you who don't know, Mike Sinyard is a mountain bike god. He designed the first StumpJumper back in 1981, and has been working with them ever since. I'm very sad because I hadn't had a chance to clean or oil my poor 'jumper (which I usually do regularly), and it was creaking so badly as I was peddling up the hill, that I had cranked my iPod to drown out the noise...what did Mike think? Sigh... :)

Sea 2 Summit 2006

It's now official. Bren and I are going to do Sea 2 Summit Whistler the Sept 9/10th weekend. We'll be racing as Team Cardiac Arrest.

If anybody wants to come up to Whistler to cheer us on, we'd love to see you.

Friday, July 14, 2006

How geeks waste time...

Go to:


http://n.nfshost.com

You are allowed to look at the source, and you are allowed to change the URL. Can you make it to the finish?

This little puzzle probably cost Google a couple of million in "wasted" time alone :)

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Sacre Bleu! Tabernacle! Ou est le sirop?

Thieves Steal $1 000 000 syrup

How on earth do you fence 270 000 kg of syrup?

Also, according to this very official looking paper the density of maple syrup is about 1.25 g/ml. At 270 000 kg, that gives you 270 000 000 g of syrup, so you get 216 000 000 ml of syrup, or 216 000 litres of syrup. According to this price sheet, that's closer to $3 615 300 000 (yes that is 3.6 BILLION) dollars of syrup. Now we know that the province of Ontario enjoys fleecing the tourists, but even still...

BTW for our American audience, I realize this is all in Canadian dollars and all those colours (yes coloUrs) can be awfully confusing at times...but even still, that's 3.2 BILLION US.

Edit - who knows what I did on my math. As my Dad has kindly pointed out in the comments it's only (ONLY) $2 892 240...I somehow added a small factor of 10^3 in there. Oops.

Sunday, July 9, 2006

Hummingbirds

We have been enjoying watching the development of two hummingbird chicks in a nest near Gran's deck. Although they are still in the nest we think they are almost ready to fly and will likely leave soon.







Monday, July 3, 2006

Summer at Shuswap Lake

We celebrated Robert French's birthday today. Included in the celebration were our very good friend's from Burbank--Jim and Ann Atkinson. Of course Joan and Dutchie were there. The kids are Holly and Piper French as well as their cousins Hanna and Elias.


Saturday, July 1, 2006

The Big Surprise

So for two weeks now Rodric has been telling me about this "Big Surprise" that he has planned for us after I finished teaching. He wouldn't tell me what it was, but kept giving me hints like "we need to take a ferry", "You need your tent", "It is really fancy and expensive", etc. etc. He said that we wouldn't be able to leave on this trip until Sunday or Monday, but that we could go for as long or as short a trip as I'd like and to celebrate my last night of school he would borrow his buddy's boat so that we could cruise around in English Bay for a couple of hours on Friday night. He even suggested that I invite friends along on this evening journey, so I asked Tom and Cecile if they'd like to cruise around and share some wine with us as well.
Meanwhile, in preparation for "The Big Surprise", Rodric has been running around like a madman, not sleeping, giggling at all hours of the night, and telling me repeatedly that I am "going to flip". I started truly believing that he really is nuts, because all the while he was also suggesting things like, "I think I'll go get us a little place up in North Van on the water..." "Don't you think we need a new vehicle?" "I think I'll put an offer in on a charter yacht..." "Maybe we should get some crab traps."
Now, after all of this, in my logical mind, I'm thinking that he has a serious spending issue and can't tell dreams from reality. I'm envisaging a) a new vehicle b) a very expensive open-ended journey c) a new water-front apartment in North Van d) a huge mortgage on some cruiser in the Caribbean... and all of this while we're planning to leave the country in 2 months for an unknown length of time. I'll admit that I had a breakdown on Thursday while he was in the middle of telling me about all of his dreams... he promised that it would all make sense soon.
OK. So the point of this story.
I finished work yesterday. Rodric told me to go to the Granville Island Ferry dock, so I did... with a bottle of wine and some cheese and crackers, all ready for an evening of floating in English Bay on his buddy's boat.
Sure enough, he showed up, in this:


And I hopped on board and said that his buddy is Mr. Fancypants. Rodric said, "Do you like it?" Of course I did, and was immediately wandering down into the cabin and opening doors, etc...
He then said, "Good. Because it's ours."
We also own the boathouse that it's parked in, under the Second Narrows Bridge in North Van. This is the new apartment and the holiday (he's taking me cruising through the Gulf Islands this week) and the reason for all of the odd giggles and unexplained stress. It's been his life-long dream to own a boat on which he can travel, so now we have her... all 30 feet of her, with new teak throughout and a brand-new engine that hasn't even been broken in for 6 hours yet.
I'm still trying to absorb it. In the meantime, we're off to spend the night at a local island. (The hints about the ferry ride, tent, etc. were all just to throw me off... as if I'd guess it or something!)