Gas Mileage, Vancouver to Winnipeg

Gas mileage for the return trip.

Vancouver to Cache Creek, 327km

20.556 liters for 5.52 l/100k

$23.00 ($1.119/l) for $7.03/100k

Cache Creek to Revelstoke, 296km

20.755 liters for 7.01 l/100k

$23.02 ($1.109/l) for $7.77/100k

Revelstoke to Calgary, 428km

30.023 liters for 7.01 l/100k

$31.04 ($1.034/l) for $7.25/100k

Calgary to Brooks, 186km

15.002 liters for 8.06 l/100k

$15.53 ($1.035/l) for $8.34/100k

Brooks to Swift Current, 325km

23.170 liters for 7.13 l/100k

$25.00 ($1.079/l) for $7.69/100k

Swift Current to Regina, 251km

18.221 liters for 7.25 l/100k

$20.02 ($1.099/l) for $7.97/100k

Regina to Moosomin, 223km

18.204 liters for 8.16 l/100k

$20.01 ($1.099/l) for $8.97/100k

Moosomin to Winnipeg, 370km

22.458 liters for 6.07 l/100k

$23.00 ($1.024/l) for $6.21/100k

Overall, 2406km

168.389 liters for 7.00 l/100k

$180.62 ($1.073/l) for $7.50/100k

That's 33.6 miles per gallon. Again, best mileage in the mountains, go fig.

Classes sorted

I went in to the U today and managed to get all my classes sorted. I got permission to register in Classical Mythology, talked to one of the Geography profs about what all might be in the Atmospheric Science labs (pretty much just 'homework helper' time), and tried and failed to register for the History of Calculus course, as the waiting list for that one is larger than the entire class size. I'm not really too torn up about that.

I also took down a list of all the books I'll need so I can order at least some of them from Amazon. One of them I'll have to pick up in person, though, as Amazon is claiming that it takes them "1-3 months" to deliver it, at which point the class will be half over. There's another one that I couldn't find an exact match of on Amazon, but I'm going to double check at the university bookstore to see if it's just a different edition or something.

I'll happily be able to re-use 2 out of the 3 textbooks I got last year, which is a good thing considering how much they cost these days.

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!