I haven't updated this thing in months, or uploaded any new pictures either, I should probably get around to doing that sometime soon.
Christmas is just around the corner, so I will have a bit of free time (yeah, right) to get some stuff done on the website.
I have to go to a funeral later today, not something anybody likes to do.
The funeral is for my great-uncle, Charles I. Smith, known to me, most of my family, and any of my friends that have met him simply as "Uncle Charlie"
He died wednesday due to complications during surgery, he had fallen earlier in the week and fractured his hip.
He was someone who really knew how to have fun, he was a fantastic jazz musician, he loved the ladies and a good strong drink. The thing I remember most about him is his laugh, he put everything he had into it.
I now regret not making more time to visit, I had not gone to see him in a couple of years, even though he lived close by, I always seemed to have something more important to do. I guess it is easy to take family for granted. I wish I had taken the time to get to know him better, he would have had some great stories and experiences to share.
His obituary from the Halifax Chronicle Herald
Charles I. Smith Rest In Peace
I went Snowboarding yesterday for the fist time in 3 years. I bought a new board bindings and boots at the after christmas sales, and I was kind of excited to get out on a board again. The conditions were horrible, but it was still pretty fun to get out and make some turns.
This next part is a few thoughts I had while snowboarding. (a bit of a rant)
-Charging full price for lift tickets when you have less than half the trails open and conditions are terrible is lame, yeah I payed it, but won't be going again till there is way more snow and all the trails are open.
-When you are in the lift line, or on the chair, there is no need to pull out you cell phone/I-pod and make a show.
-If you are going to talk smack on the lift, and yell at people about how much they suck, you better have the skills to back it up.
Well, another year has come and gone. I celebrated New Years Eve with my friend Lindsey, she wanted to build a snowboard jump in her back yard. I was skeptical at first, since it is a fairly small back yard, and very flat, but hey, there was booze involved, and the promise of some tasty snacks afterward so I was game. It turns out that I had a fantastic time, the mini snowboard jump we built was fun as hell. I even have pictures to prove it...
So, I took the plunge yesterday, and bought a digital camera.
a Nikon D70 Digital SLR, so be on the lookout for a lot more pictures from me.
I have been seriously thinking about buying a digital camera. I have been shooting with a fully manual SLR for about 12 years, so going to a dinky little point and shoot digicam would drive me completly nuts. This is what I am thinking about buying...
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Canon/canon_eos300d.asp
The price seems to be a consistent $1300 canadian for the kit, which includes body and a decent zoom lens.
Hard to decide if I want to shell out all that cash for a camera though.
I picked up my new car this morning, a brand new 2004 Toyota Matrix. I am really excited about having a new car, I was getting sick of paying to fix a car that was almost 10 years old, and would barely keep up with traffic going up hills. The old Geo Metro was a great car, but it was definitely time for a new one.
Someone posted a link to this on a BB that I frequent, it's good, but it had a bunch of annoying popups, so I made a copy and got rid of the nastyness.
http://www.bikeeast.com/wmd.htm
I also just bought the cd "Rock Against Bush" last night, haven't listened to the whole thing, but it has some quality tunes.
Well, The odometer on my car rolled over to 200000 KM this morning on the way to work. I think that is pretty good for a Geo Metro with a 3cyl. 1L engine. I have been looking at buying an new or new to me car for a couple of months, but have been holding off. I had told myself not long after buying my current car that I would keep it until it got to 200000. I have no excuses now, it is time for a new car.
I stopped at Crappy Tire aka Canadian Tire today on my way home from work. I had decided I was going to buy a cheap cordless screwdriver because I need to remove all the hard drives from about 40 old computers next week, and I don't plan on doing all of that with a regular old screwdriver. I notice in the glass security case, that there is 4 racks of the same model of cordless screwdriver, with 3 different prices. I ask a salesperson what the difference is and I get this respone:
price 1: $19.99 - Regular price
price 2: $15.99 - Instore special
Price 3: $9.99 - Flyer special that ended on March 12th
and he says, This is your lucky day, someone forgot to remove the expired price tag, so we have to sell it to you for that price, Ill take it to the cashier and explain the situation.
So I walk up to the cashier, and she starts ringing in the sale, and then she calls a manager to ask them a question. She hads me a receipt, and the screwdriver and says "Have a nice day" I have not yet given the cashier any money. I say "I'm confused, what just happened here?"
The response is, if there needs to be a price correction done on any item, the buyer gets $10.00 off of the lowest price. So I walked out with a free screwdriver and a big smile on my face.
Someone just pointed me to this site.
http://www.bensaunders.com/
His aim is to ski solo and unsupported from Russia to Canada via the North Pole.
This 1,240 mile journey has never been completed alone and without re-supply...
This is some incredible mental toughness to commit to this journey.
Well I just had to make a post today since it is leap day, you have to tale advantage of things that only happen every 4 years.
I found this fun little surfing game the other day, fun way to kill some time. It can be a little tricky, but by the looks of some of the high scores, there are people out there that are really good at it. A nice change to play something where you aren't shooting everything in sight.
http://www.hyro.com/games/pages/game_11/game_11.html
I was just looking for a picture on my hard drive and came across this, I have had this for years and haven't looked at it for a while, always good to poke fun at microsoft. see the pic here.
Just received an e-mail from my friends in England, They sent me a link to their fabulous site with photos and descriptions of their world travels.
http://www.bennbeck.gotdns.com/show_place.asp?placeID=6
and I thought I was spending lots of time working on my site, obviously I was wrong. Tons of great pics.
This is a whole new thing for me, I will have to see how things work. Movable Type was a bit of a task to set up, and I don't think everything is working quite right yet, but it has been a learning experience.