Home, sw-... well, home at least

I'm home, safe and sound. I left Vancouver at 8:30 am local time on Saturday morning, and rolled in to Winnipeg around 2:00 am local time on Sunday night / Monday Morning, with a stop in Calgary in between.

As I expected, Father hadn't cleaned anything in the entire house while I was gone, so everything was completely filthy when I returned... well, filthier than normal at least. I'll perhaps never understand how someone can so completely and utterly fail at the most basic household tasks.

The drive itself went fine, though rather wet for the most part. Drove past some accidents, almost hit a deer, got slowed up by construction in a lot of places, etc etc. The usual drive.

I shall call him... Mini Me

So I went and did it. I can't live another year using my slow-ass G3, so I just ordered up a shiny new Mini (2GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB Ram) to take its place as well as a new trackball because apparently Macs these days don't come with ADB ports.

Interestingly, this is only the second computer I've ever bought myself new; the first being when I put together my Wintendo back in 2001. I've certainly owned quite a few computers over the years, but when they were bought new they were either family computers or a gift, and when I bought them they were generally used.

So, if all goes well my new baby should come sometime around the first week in September, with free shipping no less!

I should also note that this continues my uninterrupted streak of owning SMP machines going all the way back to my 9600/200mp.

I'm very thankful for my employee discount today.

Ain't no party like a Delgatty party

Did the whole party thing this afternoon with Heather and Adrian, Scott and Elinor, Janet and Jeff, Margret, Gail and the miscellaneous anklebiters and house cats.

Adrian was just coming off a bout of food poisoning, so he wasn't all there, but he did join the party after a bit and I was glad I got to meet him.

Janet, Jeff and Ben are doing well, though Janet is still bitter that she has the most education and makes the least amount of money (though I suppose technically Andrea has stolen that title from her).

Owen is growing by leaps and bounds, and seems to be getting the hang of the whole speaking thing.

All in all it was a fabulous party and a fabulous day.

Spreading the Disease

So this evening I had a little time to kill, so I decided to hop on my unicycle and practice the fine art of stopping and reversing (still don't quite have it down, but I'm getting there).

Part way through my riding a family rolled into the parking lot and was quite impressed at my riding abilities. I did a little bit of showing off for them (nothing too fancy, just riding around) and they were all suitably entertained.

The father in particular showed a great deal of interest, and after chatting for a little bit I managed to convince him to give it a spin. He quite nearly fell flat on his ass, of course, so it's a good thing he was hanging onto the railing.

It seemed to break the ice a bit with the neighbours, and before the night was out about half of them had given it a try, and much fun was had by all.

All in all, I'm really glad I decided to take up unicycling. Regular cycling is fun and certainly a lot more practical, but it's hard to argue with the way unicycling can bring people together.

Life, with a soundtrack

So today was my first day of iPodding it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the headphones don't really block out much sound, so I was still able to get some warning of the cars about to hit me so I could jump out of the way.

I also found that the headphones were not at all uncomfortable to wear, which is a welcome change from most headphones that seem hell-bent on mutilating my ears in every imaginable way. I also found the headphones quite useful for playing with my DS on the train, as the trains are anything but quiet.

I think this will be a good iPod for me. For general listening, I only really need one button: "play something". The shuffle admittedly has one or two other buttons, but I can forgive it.

The only downside is that it won't be very useful for listening to podcasts, and will be utterly useless for watching video podcasts. I suppose I'll just have to save up for a video iPod next year.

Randomly, it just occurred to me that I got all this nice software in my goodie bag, but my G3 is too old and slow to run any of it. Damnit!

Totally Non-Causal

So it must be RANDOM! And that would just about describe my day today.

It started off simply enough with my thanks-for-being-an-intern goodie bag from Apple arriving. Well, I shouldn't really say that; it started with Andy's intern goodie bag arriving, then an hour or two later mine arrived. Go figure.

My List'o'loot includes: an Apple pen, an Apple water bottle, an Apple note pad, an Apple t-shirt (size small, durr), a copy of Final Cut Studio 2 (all 9 DVDs worth), a copy of iWork (I damn well better get a copy), and last but not least...

A lovely silver iPod Shuffle (1GB)! Awesome!

A little later in the day the randomness continued with a surprise (to me, at least) conference with none other than Tim Bray, who came by to give a talk about how wonderful and marvelous Atom is. (more specifically, the Atom Publishing Protocol)

He gave a lovely talk, and I was able to ask him some very interesting questions. All in all he seemed like quite a nice person.

So all in all, it was a very random day indeed.

Cloudy Sunday

So this morning around 11 I decided to take a little walk down to the store.

My first stop was at Staples. I wanted to see if they might have a cheap trackball there I could use on my laptop. I do love my laptop's clitmouse, but it's not the best input device for long-term use.

As it turns out, they did indeed have a trackball. A single model of trackball. For $80. Not quite what I'm looking for.

It just so happens that across the highway from Staples is an Office Depot, so I decided I might as well pay them a visit too. They also had a single (different) model of trackball, also for $80.

There weren't any other electronics-type stores around, so I stopped of at Canadian Tire and picked up a box of toggle bolts to fix the stair railing here, then went on to Superstore to get some milk, juice, and a sandwich for lunch.

I won't bore you with the details of lunch, save to say that it was a perfectly edible corned beef sandwich.

Once that was over and done with, I made reasonably short work of installing the toggle bolt for the stair railing, then soon after got to work installing Gail's new light fixture and dimmer switch in the dining room. It all went pretty smoothly and I managed to not electrocute myself even once!

I stuck some pictures of the work in my vacation dump gallery (skip to the last page), though if you're reading this a few months from now they've probably been moved to somewhere more sorted.