[UPDATE] Well after six hours on the bus, I think I've had enough of that for a while. It was absolutely packed and four buses left Kelowna for the safety of Vancouver. I did sit down next to a pleasant elderly lady who helped pass the time a little. By the time we had wandered into the netherlands of Langley on the way home, even she was bitching about why we had to stop in the sticks. Nothing like going through the burbs during rush hour.
I hopped on the train and went downtown to catch a bus. After waiting on Granville for an enternity, predictibly, three buses showed up in tandem. I was amused when I got home; I had dug my work pass out of my bag as my bus pass should have been in there. Turns out the bus pass was in my jacket and I had flashed my business card to the driver who accepted it without question as proof of payment. Good to be home... [UPDATE]
DAMN, DAMN, DAMN! Mom and Dad just dropped me off at the bus station. As soon as I got in, I realized that I was looking at the wrong schedule! The bus leaves Vancouver at 10 but it's 11:15 in Kelowna. So it's 9:30 and my bus doesn't leave until 11:15. One very strange man has already come over and tried to start a conversion with me which was strongly rebuffed. "Yes, it is snowing and it might continue to do so. It's December in Canada, look for the pattern..."
Even if I had listened to her and gone into to check the schedule, there wasn't enough time to return home as we would have just had to leave as soon as we got back so I resigned myself to soaking up the Kelowna bus station scence, such as it is.
I gave thought to taking a cab to McDonalds but settled for the greasy spoon next to the restaurant. *Mental Note* McDonalds would have been a better choice, which is saying something if you think about that for a minute. The food was gross but what was worse was that when my breakfast was ready, it was placed on the dirtiest surface I have ever seen. That's Ma's Grill, 2374 Leckie Rd, in Kelowna!
The only redeaming quality about this dive is that they have a smoking room! Wow, smoking indoors after a bad meal. What a novelty.
Well, the battery is running low, so time to go. Just got our first boarding call! Woohoo, maybe I'll get out of here early.
Having a good time in Hooterville this weekend. Been doing a lot of running around and eating, so who can complain? Dad and I went into Future Shop and it was a breeze. We got everything that we needed and the crowds were minimal. I was expecting shopping hell but it was surprisingly light in there. I wish that one at Robson and Granville was that easy to shop in.
Buddy the cat is the friendliest cat I've ever seen. He's just happy to have everyone around as there's never any shortage of people to give him attention.
Between Mom and Shirley, I think I've had a turkey bun in my hand just about continuously.
Well, I finally dragged my ass outta bed and got on a bus to Kelowna. I'm just east of Meritt on the slowest bus I've ever been on. We're on a hill and I really think it's just going to grind to a halt.
I've also concluded that a bus is not big enough to really allow you to work comfortably.
We went straight to Shirley and Robin's from the station and had a really nice meal. I had forgotten about dinner and had eaten a huge sub while I was in Merrit so I didn't eat too much but tried a little bit of everything. Sleep will come easy tonight.
I hope everyone is having a good Christmas. Yeah, that's right, Christmas. Not festive season, or holiday season. Christmas.
Many thanks to Neal and Ardie for hosting Christmas dinner last night. It was great to see everyone and Max enjoyed his first Christmas party at six weeks old. As usual I took a bunch of pictures and they'll be posted at some point, blah, blah, blah...
Today was one of the laziest in recent memory and I needed it. I've been pretty exhausted lately but I'm looking forward to getting rested up. I opened my gifts and made some calls and then went back to bed for a while. The afternoon was wasted playing GTA, how festive!
Not many days left in the year and I'm not sure how much more I'll be posting but it really doesn't matter. I'm sure most people have better things to do at this time of year. Of course I figure people have better things to do the rest of the year but people still visit.
Very best of the season to you, wherever you are.
Got an email from Stace and she has added some pictures from dinner on Thursday. Good to hear that her Lasik surgery went well. I hope that she and Sean make it up here more often in the future.
Worked on Saturday, which is becoming par for the course only this time almost everyone was in. Luckily I arrived just as they were ordering lunch. Nothing worse than getting there just after the food has been ordered. Probably a good thing that we did work as we discovered an ugly bug with the new build that had developers being called all over the place. Software development is fun...
Today was all about me! Laundry and cleaning... damn I know how to pamper myself. I headed to Shnewt's this afternoon where we played some foos and then settled in the watch The Two Towers. It was the extended version which meant it was four hours long, but it's a great movie. Paul 'borrowed' the projector from work again so we got to enjoy it with a screen about 6' by 4'. Very nice. Now we can see Return of the King.
Lastly, I want to thank all three of my readers for making this site the 4,479,589th most popular site on the internet. You know who you are...
I just got back from Andrea's 'din & drinks' thing and it was good fun. It's amazing how many people you can fit in a tiny room if you really, really want to. Shnewt and I were a little apprehensive as we had no idea what to expect but it was a good crowd of folks.
Stace and her husband Sean had made the trip up from Seattle and they were great people. Just the type that would fit right in at a party. Chatted with Yvonne; another X-Stocker, for most of the evening and got caught up with her and some news of other X-Stockers as well.
The food was excellent and there was lots of jugs to keep everyone festive. Andrea didn't eat anything and was pissed within the first ten minutes. Good times...
I have many pictures but have come to realize that taking the pictures is the easy part. Posting them is another matter. There are some good ones, so they'll be up soon.
We had the mighty Infowave Christmas party this evening and it was alright. Sushi seemed an odd choice but the food was excellent. Most people showed up but Biff didn't. Calvin declared him disgruntled this morning and we did our best to shame him all day to no avail.
QA cleaned up on the door prizes (if you don't include Randy) and I took home what I think is a box of truffles. Just what I need to stem my ever expanding waistline... Chris got the weekend in Sun Peaks so I guess he is the winner overall.
Tomorrow is Andrea's 'din & drinks' thing, so that should be fun as well. Too bad Carmen declined as it would have been nice to have hooked up with her before Christmas. Maybe in the new year...
What a dismal weekend... Grey, cold, wind and rain. Oh yeah, it's December in Vancouver. What am I thinking?
I put in a half day at work yesterday and it was productive. Shnewt and Pei-Yin were in as well, so that meant I had to wear my pants this time. I left and came home to finish my xmas cards and look into Moveable Type.
Karan's incessant complaining about my lack of an XML feed finally pushed me over the edge. How anyone is able to configure this is beyond me. It's not rocket science, but the documentation is seriously lacking when it comes to the installation and configuration.
I do take some pride in that I was able to get it going myself but it never should have been this complex. I mean I'm no computer genius but I have a half-ass idea of what's going on and it took me the entire weekend to get it up and running.
The 'bright' readers will notice that I'm not running it now. I have a page set up so I can play and get used to the new system before I publish it. I can see why it's so popular and it should just be a matter of tweaking the style sheets to something pleasing.
Speaking of pleasing, Andrea is sick, so she came up with a very nice new layout. Check it out...
Damn work has been busy, hence the lack of updates. I'm going in today to try and get caught up a little and maybe have next week be a little more managable.
Our Christmas party has been rescheduled several times now to the point that I don't know if I'll even bother with it. Quite frankly, I'm more excited about Andrea's party than the Infowave party. Sushi at Christmas? Uh, ok...
I stopped in at ResponseTek this week just to Hi to everyone. They've added a few people to the staff which is very needed. Good to see everyone again though I didn't get to talk to Kevin and Riz as much as I wanted to as they had a meeting. I'm thinking I'd like to stop in next week and teach them a thing or two about how foos is played. Yeah, right...
Well, I guess I should get in to the office. What a lovely way to spend a Saturday.
Had a great time at Karan and Claire's place on Sunday night. Mmmm, Iranian food... Claire is obviously a quick study. It also seemed that everyone brought a dessert which meant there were eleven people, half-corked and high on sugar by the time the XBox was pulled out.
It was also my first chance to take my new camerea somewhere and fire off some pictures. I have a few cool ones that'll be posted eventually. I have to get used to the fact I can take as many pictures as I want as I'm not really used that. Also, maybe learning how to compose a shot would be a good idea as some of them were kinda odd. That doesn't include the picture Paul took. He feels compelled to take a picture of his crotch everytime he gets ahold of my camera. Nothing to see there...
Our gracious hosts were kind enough to send us home with a Christmas goodie bag, consisting of a CD of Christmas music and a bag of cookies. The CD is great but so far I haven't been able to dig into the cookies. Gotta wait for my blood sugar level to drop a little.
While this isn't the work related news that I'd been hinting about earlier, it's huge and more important for us. Looks like I'll have a job for a while yet.
I'm happy to say that I have finally moved to the digital era for my camera. I've been sitting on the money since April and yet never got around to buying one. Mostly due to the fact that I was a bit put off by the size of the camera that I had decided to buy. Yesterday I finally went out and bought a Canon SD100.
It's a really sweet camera and about the size of my phone. More or less a point and shoot, good for vacations and parties. That would fit the bill for me as I'm not shutterbug. I just want to take the picture and see if it turned out without waiting to get the film developed.
There are quite a few features on it actually, so I'm spending some more time reading the manual than I normally would. It only came with a 16MB SD card so I'll need to get a bigger one but at least I can put the old card in my MP3 player and get a few more songs on it.
I'm heading over to Karan and Claire's for dinner tonight, so I guess I'll get my first chance to put it good use. Maybe I'll add some pics to the Gallery.
[UPDATE] So the big news is that I got one of those cool, Mike Tyson, facial tattoos! I look even cooler now and I'm totally excited by it! I know you're going to love it Mom!
Uh yeah, anyway. The real news is that I sold my car today. Got a decent price and I'm happy to be rid of it as I didn't use it much anymore. A little part of me misses it because I had it for more than ten years and it's quite the little rocket but it was time to get rid of it.
What was surprising was the interest in it by people looking for a CRX. I put the ad up on Sunday and had the first call within hours. By Tuesday several people had looked at it and I had two fair offers but so far, no cash. Last night some idiot calls me, totally low balls me and says he'll buy it without looking at it. I tell him I have two offers for more and he comes way up on his price. Like I would clammer for his money... "Oooh, look at me, I'm a player with some cash. You'll be so impressed with me." Ok dude, whatever. I wouldn't have sold it to him unless everything else fell apart. Something tells me he would have been trouble. Then there was the guy who wanted me to meet him in the underground at Metrotown. "Ok, man, I'll call ya!" I never did call him back either.
In any event, they have the car and I have the cash in the bank. I had to drive it way the hell out to PoCo but it's done now. Both guys who made offers were young and the exact type I expected to sell it to. I have little doubt that it will end up in an ICBC salvage yard in no time.
I guess the first thing I'll do with the money, is to replace the bus pass that I seem to have lost. Dammit that pisses me off. [UPDATE]
Busy week! Wow, I've really been kept hoping. I have some interesting news but as per Andrea, I won't talk about so as not to jinx it. If all goes well I'll update later tonight or tomorrow.
Big news coming out of work these days as well. Naturally I can't talk about that either but it is pretty exciting for us. 'Delightful' even.
Now that I have you baited, I'll leave you to hit F5 for the rest of the day...
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |||
)
)
