45. Take Sophie to a movie.

A few weeks ago (August 21st), we took Sophie to her first full-length movie. This wasn't just any theatre movie, either, this was an outdoor movie, watched under the stars in Connaught Park! It was a great community event, with free popcorn, and a movie screen about the size of our apartment. (And it didn't look that big...) They were showing "Up", which word on the street has pegged as one of Pixar's best in years (which is really saying something). I thought it was really good - maybe not as great as the buzz made it out to be, but solid. Sophie enjoyed the dogs and the bird and the house floating away. She didn't squirm too much, although her attention did wander a bit from time to time. Overall, she did great, and it was a pretty idyllic first movie experience - at least from the parents' point of view!

SHOWcase

Here's a fun little project - following strict rules, make a young adult novel cover. Here's what I ended up with:



Would I read this book? Probably not. Would I read it if the Spock look-alike had pointy ears? Probably. Who wouldn't want to hear about that time Spock won the big surfing competition on Risa?

Oh, and here are the rules I had to follow:

CREATE YOUR DEBUT YA COVER

1 – Go to “Fake Name Generator” or click http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

The name that appears is your author name.

2 – Go to “Random Word Generator” or click http://www.websitestyle.com/parser/randomword.shtml

The word listed under “Random Verb” is your title.

3 – Go to “FlickrCC” or click http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/index.php

Type your title into the search box. The first photo that contains a person is your cover.

4 – Use Photoshop, Picnik, or similar to put it all together. Be sure to crop and/or zoom in.

5 – Post it to your site along with this text.

15. Do the Grouse Grind.

I've only been up the Grouse Grind once before, and it was carrying a 25 lb. baby Sophie on my back for part of the way. (Holly carried her the rest of the way, I didn't just give up and leave her by the side of the trail - although I probably would have considered it, had I been up there without Holly...) Anyway, you'd think that my brain would have remembered the pain of it all the first time up, but nooooo... Apparently, the Grouse Grind is similar to childbirth insomuch as your brain immediately wipes all the horrible bits away into forgetful oblivion, and remembers only the good bits. Since I went up there this morning with nothing but excited thoughts of a rousing hike to start the day, I figured I ought to write down the bad bits before my brain edits them out and I decide to go again next week.

It started well, with the usual jockeying for position with the other hikers. Don't want to get stuck behind someone slow, right? Then the sweating began. The sweating, and the asthma. I was pouring water like an overflowing dam, and sucking air like an ancient vacuum cleaner. This went on for 15-20 minutes, and then I reached the 1/4 mark sign. This sign is like a mental kick in the groin. Such a lot of effort has been expended to reach this sign, and then it has the gall to tell you that not only are you only 1/4 of the way up Grouse Mountain, but that from now on, the trail will get dangerous and difficult! Good grief. This is where people were getting lightheaded and considering going back down. Nothing like other people's despair for making it more difficult to go on. Somehow, I sucked back a bit more air and continued on.

The wheezing and puffing continued up to the 1/2 way mark, where I had some water and a rest and let a few more grannies toddle past me. After that, I think I got a second wind, but my ankles started threatening to shatter. Whiny old ankles. They made funny noises up until the 3/4 mark, when it was time for a new affliction - just for a change, my heart felt like it would explode up until the top of the mountain, where it completely failed to do so, and I got that wonderfully triumphant feeling that overwrites all the preceding nonsense. Hooray, the top!



A quick change, a bit more water, and I was ready for the gondola trip back down. The trip down takes about 8 minutes. The trip up took 1 hour, 21 minutes, and 47 seconds. Whew!

P.S. This hike was also (officially) the last wearing of the notorious roller hockey coach shirt that Holly has been trying to get me to throw out for the last decade or so. I believe it's about 17 or 18 years old, and has served me well. But I suppose that when you try to pull a shirt off, and it instead just rips more holes in it, it's time to let it die. Goodbye, awesome shirt. It's been a blast.

11. Get a hat trick in a hockey game.

FINALLY. I've been trying for this one for ages, and I finally got it.

I play some casual pick-up hockey through my work, and we have ice slots twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I play once a week if I can. It's a great bunch of guys, the pace is just slightly faster than my skill level, and I really enjoy it.

Generally, I can get an assist or two per game, maybe a goal, but hat tricks are few and far between - I've had maybe three at most in my 1-2 years playing.

Today, the stars aligned - I had a good breakfast, we had three spares on the bench (not too many so you don't get any ice time, but not so few that you get exhausted), and a couple of the dark team's key defencemen weren't there. :)

I managed to get one on a breakaway deke (never happens for me), one on a cut across and shoot back, and one on a quick grab and stuff from behind the net. Generally, the only way I get goals is to make a big fuss (lots of head fakes and twitching around) like I'm going to do something awesome, then trip and fall over and watch it slide between the flustered and confused goalie's legs. But today's weren't so terrible, which I take it to mean that I've spent my hockey karma for the next year or so. Oh well, works for me.

12. Bike to work and back 40 work days in a row.

My original goal for this was 60 days, but Holly reminded me that this was not just the two months I had in my head - at 4 work days a week (at most), this would take roughly 15 weeks - more than three months! So I scaled it back to 40 days, and I just finished my run yesterday!

I'm mainly impressed with the fact that my bike held up for that many trips in a row. Usually, I would have had a couple flat tires and several tune-ups during that amount of (biking) time, but I think I made it through with maybe one tune-up. I attribute this mainly to our awesome local bike place, Dan's Bike Shop, as Dan does a great job keeping our bikes in tip-top shape - and what's more, he turned me on to these kevlar tires which I don't think have gone flat since I've bought them. Excellent tires. Even so, there were days when my bike was creaking like an old wooden galleon under full sail, and my chain was twitching around, trying to decide what gear it liked the most. But it made it all the way through - nice work, bike!

I bused to work on May 8th, 2009, and then biked (there and back) every day* that I worked after that until now: May 11th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 25th, 26th, 27th, 29th, June 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 15th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 22nd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 29th, July 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 21st, 22nd, and one bonus day, today, July 23rd. That makes 41, so I have a buffer day, just in case I counted wrong.

The * asterisk above indicates a justification slash cheat that I am allowing myself, based on full disclosure. On June 19th, we went to the Island for a train ride and a Father's Day picnic, so I had to leave my bike at work that Friday and bus to the ferry. That also meant that I couldn't bike to work on the Monday after the weekend. To make up for this, I (a) walked to work on the Monday, so as not to take transit, and (b) biked to work and back on my day off (Tuesday) to make up for the missed trips. I'm waving off the offside, and you can't argue with the ref.

40. Take Holly to Bard on the Beach.

Prithee, after roughly 14 years of living in Greater Vancouver, we finally got our act together (act III, if you must know), and went to see Bard on the Beach. For our first play, Holly and I chose a comedy - one of Shakespeare's earliest, The Comedy of Errors.



We were at the main stage, which had bleacher-style seating, and a big stage open in the back to views of the city and the mountains and the passing sailboats. (Beautiful.) Apparently, there were 520 seats, and I think they were all full, except for one beside me! Not only that, but they were full or spoken for 20 minutes before the show started - we were lucky to get two seats together. We were off to... I guess stage right, and we had a pretty good view of the stage and the steps and whatnot. They had a very clever center stage piece that acted as door, house front, abbey front, puppet stage, and more.

The play itself was so much funnier and more accessible than I imagined it might be! The way I understand things, Shakespeare himself was not above the crude, pander-to-the-masses jokes (the sort of Elizabethan equivalents of the football-in-the-groin gags), and the cast delivered them beautifully. The Comedy of Errors is all about cases of mistaken identity between two sets of identical twins. Lots of double takes, lots of "but I thought you said..." and lots of being arrested and punished for the other twin's transgressions. Mayhem ensued.

In conclusion, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and would easily recommend this to anyone. Holly and I both agreed that a comedy is the way to go - we have trouble seeing the point of going to see a tragedy. The Comedy of Errors was the perfect play with which to kicketh off our Bard experiences.

72. Go 100 days without a major computer malfunction.

This one is a bit arbitrary, so I should define what I meant by "major computer malfunction". I suppose I meant anything from "installed a bad service pack and internet stopped working" right through to "any part of it being on fire".

Apparently, I started counting on January 16, 2009, and forgot about it. Forgot about it so thoroughly, in fact, that it is now July 17, 2009 (182 days later), and I still haven't had any malfunctions to speak of. The internet has worked, the programs haven't crashed, we've had no viruses, there have been no instances of data loss (that we're aware of), things have been ... good.

Of course, I take all the credit for this, as I built this computer with my own two hands and my credit card, and installed all the software myself as well. As much as people have knocked Windows Vista, I've found it to be surprisingly stable, if a little goofy in places.

Anyway, I'm well aware that by writing this generally positive and satisfied post, my DVD drive will start projectile vomiting, our programs will all start eating each other, and pictures of monkeys doing crude things to each other will be emailed to everyone we know, as Vista goes down in flames... But that's a small price to pay to have another thing knocked off my list.

P.S. One grievance that I must air, one black mark against Vista (64-bit)... There are a largish number of games that just won't install or run on it! (e.g. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II.) I mean, this is Windows - the main reason for having Windows is to play all the popular games. Having them not work makes me think I'm right back on Linux...

94. Eat an entire pizza (medium or large) in one sitting.

What better pizza to pig out on than one made at home with help from Sophie?

I thought I'd let her help put a couple pieces of (veggie) pepperoni on there, so she'd feel like she was part of it, but turns out she's a fantastic pizza chef! She smushed the sauce around at the start, and then put on all the pepperoni, most of the green peppers and mushrooms, a few of the pineapple tidbits, and even some of the cheese - although she got so excited that we were almost done that she piled most of the cheese in one spot.

The pizzas were delicious, and I was able to eat an entire one by myself in one sitting. (It was officially a medium pizza, 12" across.) I did have to push myself on the last couple of pieces, which just goes to show that we all get older and our stomachs eventually get wise and stop taking so much flagrant abuse without objection.

With this pizza, I'm afraid that my days of rampant overeating are behind me. Well, at least they're becoming less pronounced than maybe they once were. It was a good ride while it lasted!

22. Drink nothing but water for an entire month.

I had no one particular reason for making this one of my 101 things, I just vaguely wondered if it would make me feel healthier, wondered if I could resist other drinks, and wondered if I'd be able to remember to stick to it.

I was helped along in my endeavour by Holly, who stuck to water for the month of June, right along side me, just for support and solidarity. Thanks, Hol! We managed to drink nothing but water, making exceptions for things like milk in cereal, and having a slice of lemon in our water jug.

It wasn't as hard for us as it might be for some people, as neither of us drink coffee in the mornings, and we don't drink alcohol - it was basically giving up milk, juice, and pop. This does have its moments of difficulty - no milk with cookies, no pop with pizza, no green tea with sushi, no (very thoughtfully given) cold chocolate milk on a hot day on the ferry... This has made me more aware of the times when a special drink is called for.



It didn't go perfectly, but as I am the sole referee for this list, I waved off a potential offside and allowed play to continue. I was getting Sophie a cup of watered-down apple juice, and I filled it a bit too full. Out of habit, I slurped a small amount out of the cup to make it less full and less likely to be spilled. I say it didn't count because it wasn't a full drink, it wasn't for me for the purpose of quenching my thirst, it was merely an alternative way of pouring some down the drain. I'm fine with the distinction, but Holly demanded that I document it if I were going to let it slip. Fine, done.

Today is July 1st, Canada Day, and we have big plans to say goodbye to our month of water with root beer, pink lemonade, and with any luck, milkshakes!

88. Ride in a June Critical Mass with Sophie and Holly.

June 26, 2009 (last Friday of the month, as per usual)

My goal was to ride in a June Critical Mass with Holly and Sophie. (June, because June is bike month, and the June CM is the biggest one of the year.) I exceeded my goal by a sister-in-law and a visiting Italian third cousin-in-law. Kristi and Nicola joined us for the ride, and it was great! There were tons of people (my estimate is in the low thousands, although Holly figures it was more like hundreds), the weather was good, and the motorists weren't overtly aggressive. (Except for Ice Cube guy, and he was swiftly corked.) Here's the scene, gathering for the ride at the art gallery downtown...



We were pretty impressed by the fact that, when we were heading north on the Burrard Bridge (we were near the front), we could look over and still see Granville Bridge being taken over by the tail end of the Mass, heading south. Here's a pic of the group coming down the Burrard Bridge, near the end, where it had thinned out signficantly.



We ducked out partway through the ride - it was getting late, and we had to get some food (Nicola's first sushi!) and get Sophie home to bed. It was a great event, and I feel truly fortunate that we have the ability and freedom to do something like that.

14. Swim in Kits pool.

It's somewhat embarrassing, having lived in Kitsilano for six years, and having never gone for a swim in Kits pool. At 137 meters (almost three times the length of an Olypmic pool), it is Canada's longest pool. Add to this the fact that it's Vancouver's only salt water pool, and is situated outdoors right by the ocean and Kits Beach, and this makes for a pretty amazing swimming experience.

Of course, we wouldn't know much about the actual swimming side of things, since we spent all our time shivering in knee-deep water while Sophie went down the little yellow slide over and over again. We had to keep pulling her out when she fell face down in the water, and to keep her from drinking the water. Silly girl.

But still, it was good times. We plan to go again soon.

16. Walk to work at Radical.

As part of a justification for shuffling around my biking to work days, I walked to work on Monday, June 22nd. It took about an hour and 20 minutes.

3. Ride the Dayliner on Vancouver Island.

I lived on the Island for something like 19 years, and I'd only ever taken the Dayliner once, when I was too young to remember. So when we were over on the Island for the annual Father's Day picnic, we seized the opportunity, and took the train from Duncan up to Parksville.

Mom was kind enough to drive the car up, so we could have some time in Parksville (rather than coming home again on the train three hours after we arrived). This meant that Dad and Holly and Sophie and I could take the two hour train ride north. Here's one of Mom's shots of the Duncan train station - in my opinion, the nicest station by far, at least of the ones we saw.



Here are some pics of us on the train. Sophie spent a lot of the time standing on the seat, looking out the window, and at the other passengers. We had a bit of a chat with the conductor, and learned that we were only going around 40 mph (about 65 kph) at our top speed, although the train was rated for 120 mph (about 195 kph). The way we wobbled going around corners, though (especially in the bathroom!), I'm glad we weren't going any faster.





We enjoyed seeing things from a different point of view than the usual highway drive. The scenery varied from dense forest (with branches brushing the train as we went by), to wide open farmland, to a few overpasses and tunnels, to some beautiful rivers. We went right by WildPlay Element Parks (formerly the Bungy Zone), although we didn't see anyone jumping at that moment. We were right near the back of the train, so here's a shot out the back window to finish this post.

18. Climb a tree.

About a month ago, Holly and Kristi and Sophie and I went on a bike ride along the beach, right to the end of the line at Spanish Banks. There's a good little climbing tree there, with easy-to-grab, strong branches that let you climb right up into it - at least to a point. Seems like I've gained a bit of weight since the last time I really climbed a tree, so I didn't try to go as high as I would have liked to, say, 20 years ago. Regardless, it felt great to be in a tree again.

We didn't have our camera with us, but this might be the tree I climbed. I got the image off of Google maps, and it seems to be pointed in the right direction and everything.

Movie review: Knowing

Boooooooooo! BOOOOOOOOOO!

I saw the previews and got all excited. Neat ideas: prophecies, codes, disasters - they could really do some great stuff with this, I thought. Or, alternatively, they could write a terrible story, cast Nicolas Cage as an MIT professor, and turn the whole thing into a ridiculous religious story. Ugh.

It's not often that I walk out of a movie feeling personally intellectually insulted, but I sure did tonight. Boo. [Spoiler alert!] Here's an example of one subplot, paraphrased. Nicolas Cage: "I'm an atheist because I'm bitter about my wife's death. But now there's this piece of paper telling the future, so I'm rethinking all that. And hey, turns out aliens did it, so now I believe in God again! Phew, feels better not being an atheist anymore." WHAT?!? The rest of the plot didn't fare much better.

Slightly redeeming feature: the effects were cool. But I think I heard somewhere that you might just need more than effects, say, an actual STORY to make a good movie. Crazy notion, but maybe one movie companies should be investigating a little more.

All in all, I want my money back. Booooooooooo.

96. Buy a new tshirt on the Internet.

After much looking around, and much snickering at the sophisticated / juvenile humour on the interwebs, I settled on this shirt from Diesel Sweeties.



The first day I wore it to work, I completely derailed a meeting by just standing there. One of my co-workers was cracking up. Worth the price of admission, right there.

25 and 26. Leave Sophie with Star & Russ / Jan & Ken and have a weekend getaway with Holly.

Okay, so I feel slightly guilty about knocking both of these off at once, with only a single weekend away, but I have satisfied the letter of the law here. We left Sophie with Star and Russ and had a weekend getaway. We left Sophie with Jan and Ken and had a weekend getaway. So what if it's the same weekend?

For more information, click here.

4. Take a weekend trip to Seattle.

Recently, we received a tag-team gift of a weekend away, courtesy of all of Sophie's grandparents. (And Aunt Kristi helped out with babysitting, too.) For our weekend away, we chose to check out Seattle, because we live so close, and had never explored it before. So we donned our most touristy outfits and took a four hour bus ride to downtown Seattle on the Friday evening before the Memorial Day long weekend.

FRIDAY:
We got in around 10pm, checked into our hotel (close enough to the Space Needle that, if the Needle fell over, and, um, were twice as high, it would hit us), and wandered through the Seattle night, taking random pictures and getting carded by the bouncer at a bar and grill. (We were denied entry - Holly forgot her ID, and apparently, looks 18.)



SATURDAY:
O touristiest of days, it started innocently enough with Belgium waffles at the hotel. I could have sworn they were supposed to be Belgian waffles, but maybe they didn't want to get sued by Belgium. We left the hotel at 9am and went up the Space Needle. We were both pretty impressed by its presence - more than just a tall tower, it has style. In a nutshell, it looks neato. From there, we wandered into downtown, stopping to look at a glassblowing studio, a few clothes stores, Bill Gates' footprints in a sidewalk (I have slightly bigger feet, go me!), and some fancy everything store called Anthropologie that Holly really wanted to see. After all this, we hit the Pike Place Market, taking in such features as the original Starbucks store (would have been more impressive if we drank coffee, even though we did partake), pigs everwhere (the market's mascot), loads of fresh flowers and produce, hot dogs on the lawn overlooking the harbour, a giant gummi bear made of smaller gummi bears, and finally, the fishmongers who throw fish around like frisbees. Hooray!





After Pike Place Market, we went for a tour of the main branch of the library, a most amazing building with a fantastic kids' section and an interior viewpoint of all 8+ floors that we both found more dizzying than the Space Needle. From there, we wandered through the old section of town, found a neat old bookstore, and collapsed on the stoop of a fancy Italian restaurant. Disgusted with our appearance, but sympathetic for our obvious tiredness, they put us at a table in the back. After getting some food into our systems, we decided to kick the already-seized day while it was down, and attend a Mariners-Giants game at Safeco Field. It was very exciting, we saw Ken Griffey Jr. get a hit, and we saw the Mariners get the only run - until the end of the 3rd inning, at least, when I felt way too woozy and ill to stay, so we left. We had some confusion at the gate, and managed to get slightly ripped off by a scalper - fun! After walking and busing back to the hotel, we watched the rest of the game on TV, and saw the Giants have a blockbuster 8th inning to win the game 5-1.



SUNDAY:
We didn't have time for the same amount of touristy nonsense on Sunday, so we had to settle for: a walk around the Queen Anne Hill area, a visit to the Experience Music Project (where we got to operate actual Muppets!) and the Science Fiction Museum (both located in the weirdest building I've ever seen, designed by Frank Gehry), a ferris wheel ride, and a folk festival. After all this, it was a short four hour bus ride back home to see our little girl again!



All in all, a very tourism-packed weekend, and lots of fun. Thanks again, Sophie-grandparents! We'll have to do this again sometime!

7. Take Sophie to see the woolly mammoth in Victoria

Ah, the Woolly Mammoth. This is one of those early childhood memories I have that is completely detached from any useful context. I had no idea where I was (the Royal British Columbia Museum), what city I was in (Victoria), why I was there (my parents, and maybe grandparents, took me there), or what exactly was going on (I'm still not sure of this) - all I remember is being face to face with a giant. Or to be more precise, a mammoth. The idea that there could be such a big creature made quite an impression on me. I remember being a little bit scared of it at first, but it quickly became my favourite part of the museum - and remains so to this day.

This is why it was such a treat to take my daughter to the museum and introduce her to the mammoth. She seemed to have a somewhat similar reaction to the one I remember. She was hesitant at first, and quietly said to me, "It's biiig." She didn't want to get too close, but was pretty captivated by it. She was pretty good about posing for pictures, as long as she could check on it every once in a while. I think she came to the conclusion that it was sleeping, although I tried telling her that it was stuffed.



And yes, it did seem a lot smaller to me as an adult than it did as a kid, but I really enjoyed seeing it loom hugely once more, through Sophie's eyes.

P.S. A very big (mammoth, even) thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for taking us all to the museum! A good time was had by all.

34. Beat a computer/video game made before 1990

For this 101 Things task, I chose one of my all-time favourite games, King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human. This was released in 1986, during the golden age of Sierra adventure games - all the great series, King's Quest, Space Quest, Hero's Quest... Ah, what a time to be young and geeky, and to own an Apple IIe/IIc...

I own the King's Quest series on CD, but it seems that 64-bit Windows Vista refuses to install and run the games. Boo, Windows. To get around this, I used AppleWin, an Apple IIe emulator for Windows. (Not only did I download King's Quest III, but I also found Adventureland, a purely text-based computer game - one of the very first I ever played! This'll probably be the subject of another post one day...)

Anyway, King's Quest III was a game I played back in the days before the Internet, when if you got stuck, you were stuck - unless you sent away for the hint book, which I may have had to resort to, I can't quite remember. But if I did succumb to the lure of the hint book, it wasn't until many months (years?) had passed with me trying to figure this game out. As such, many of the tricks and secrets to the game are burned indelibly into my brain. This made it a trip down memory lane, and a distinct pleasure, to play again.

I won't go through the whole plot of the story here, but it's your basic escape from slavery, defeat the dragon, rescue the princess type of deal. Here's me beating the dragon near the end of the game...



And here's the shot of the end of the game, with the adventurer's hat being passed on to one of the children...



You'll notice I only got 205 out of 210 points. I thought I did everything, so I had to go online and find which points I missed. Turns out I missed 5 points for "As a fly, enter hole in the tree." Darn. Now that I think about it, I vaguely remember doing that as a kid. Anyway, as it wasn't strictly necessary to beat the game, I'm okay with letting those 5 points slide.

This brought back so many fun memories that I think I'm going to look into playing a bunch of the other Sierra classics, through emulators if I must. They're just too fun to pass up!

23. Bike to SFU and back.

With Holly and Sophie on the Island visiting grandparents, and work not overly crunchy, I found myself with my usual Tuesday off with nothing to do. "Why not go on a 46 km bike trip up to SFU and back?" I thought to myself. (The answer: sore legs, but I didn't think of that until I got back, luckily.)

I made a Google map of my trip. Let's see if this works. Click here for the map, and check out all the wonderful points of interest along the way.



For some reason, I decided to do this on a day where I had already played hockey in the morning. I figured hockey would be a good warm-up, and didn't think of the whole "expending all my energy" thing. Anyway, it worked out okay. And hey! It's one more thing off my list...

Pie is good

79. Make a pie for someone else.
The "someone else" turned out to be Janet, who conveniently had a birthday at the same time as I was wanting to eat pie. Of course, "wanting to eat pie" is a kind of default state for me, but regardless, I decided to make her a pie rather than go buy one at Aphrodite's Pie Shop. (Holy cow, good pies there...) I hadn't made a pie for quite a while, and I don't bake too often, but it seemed to turn out pretty well.



Janet didn't gag on it in front of my face, anyway. Kristi did mention that she was "interested" in trying my pie, and someone made a joke about accidentally dropping it on the people waiting for the bus outside, but I'm assuming they're all full of beans, and my pie was delectable. Sophie tried to claim it for herself (by poking it), and even went so far as to try to deflect suspicion, and accused Janet of "poking my pie".



78. Make a pie for myself.
I figured that the mess of making two pies wouldn't be appreciably bigger than the mess of making one pie, so I bought twice the ingredients and made one for myself too. Hooray for pie!



Bonus update:
34. Beat a computer/video game made before 1990.
I haven't done this yet, but have decided that the game I'm going to try to play and beat will be King's Quest III: To Heir is Human. I loved this game as a kid, and it remains one of my all-time favourites. Haven't played it in a while, though - looking forward to it!

35. Beat a computer/video game made after 2005.

I just beat King's Bounty: The Legend, copyright date: 2008.



I would have bet good money that, having bought this game and Fallout 3 at the same time, I'd play Fallout 3 exclusively until I finished it, but King's Bounty was simply an excellent game - simple and intuitive controls and battle system, a beautifully rendered world, a length of gameplay that was just right, a sweet quest system... It hit all the high points, and didn't fail anywhere*.

Not sure how it'll be for replayability, but hopefully by choosing another class of character and a different difficulty level, it'll be fresh and new again.

* Actually, that's not 100% true. I did find one annoying bug in the game, where you can get off your ship onto land in such a way that your ship is too far away to get back aboard. This isn't a problem if you disembark somewhere on the mainland, where you can go buy another boat, but if it's on some tiny island somewhere, you're hosed, and you'd just better hope you've saved recently. (Which I hadn't, a number of times.)

Hanging Pidgin

For anyone out there using Pidgin as a chat client, if you recently upgraded and now find that it won't shut down cleanly, I found the answer to my problems here, about halfway down the page, talking about libpurple. So there you go.

Okay, you got me, this is mainly so I can fix this problem again when I forget what the solution was. Now the debate can rage on about the value of blogs as personal brain dumps, and whether that flies in the face of their intended use, blah blah blah.

(Note of correction: The libpurple thing apparently doesn't work if you don't have the same version of Gtk+ installed as the guy who compiled this dll. Or something. Blah blah blah. But the latest version of Pidgin (2.5.4) seems to fix the problem too.)

Fallout 3

I recently got a new computer, or rather, I recently got a big pile of computer parts, which I have assembled into a working computer. (Hooray!) It's quite fast, especially compared to our last computer, which was around four years old.

One of the perks of getting this new computer was finally being able to play some up-to-date games. With this in mind, I purchased two new games: King's Bounty (an updated version of the original classic which I adored) and Fallout 3. I love the new King's Bounty - it's simple, colourful, fun, and highly addictive. I've already overdosed on it.

As for Fallout 3, I ran into trouble right off the bat. I installed it and patched it successfully, but as soon as I tried to select "New Game", it crashed, and Vista said it had no idea what was going on. I tried reinstalling, I tried running it with less graphics/sound, I tried a bunch of stuff. Then I thought to check to see if anyone else had this problem - and boy, had they! Lots and lots of people have been having this problem, and it looked like none of the reported fixes worked for everyone. There were hints on installing new codecs, tweaking video drivers, running in windowed mode, running without sound, renaming dll files... all sorts of nonsense, none of which worked for me.

Finally, I stumbled upon this post, which accurately described my problem and the solution to fix it. The problem was specific to my ASUS graphics card, and the software that came with it - for whatever reason, if you were running the software that monitors your graphics card, everything blows up. You just uninstall the monitoring software, reinstall the drivers, and everything is shiny!

And now that it's shiny, let me say how fun Fallout 3 is! Yay, I'm so glad I kept trying and didn't just return it to the store in a grumpy huff! I can see I'm going to enjoy hours of entertainment, beating up giant cockroaches with a baseball bat. And maybe there'll even be more...

Another 101 thing done

33. Watch all four Indiana Jones movies in one weekend.

Completed: Jan. 9-11, 2009

This turned out to be harder than expected, due mainly to Sophie staying up late and then projectile vomiting all over everything, causing movie watching to (predictably) grind to a halt.

Janet was with us for the original three movies, and then Holly and I watched Crystal Skull late Sunday, just squeaking in under the wire with about half an hour to spare.

Oh, and here's the poster advertising the event, although the times aren't accurate - there was much last-minute juggling of showtimes. (The poster wasn't widely distributed because we can only fit four or five people maximum in our place watching TV at any one time.)

Found the book!

38. Find and buy a copy of Peggy Parish's "Key to the Treasure" in a used bookstore.

Dec. 27, 2008 - After checking 10+ used book stores in Vancouver, I finally stumbled upon this book in the used bookstore in Ganges, on Salt Spring Island! Ganges is da bomb, and the used bookstore is even better.

Slight progress on 101 list

I'm now up to 5 things done, with a few more on the go. Check out the list, the link's on the left.

Updated 101 things list

I crossed one more item off my 101 things list, and made progress on a number of others. I also added a direct link to my list off to the left, so you can jump straight there. I'll try to post little posts like this when I update the main list, so the hordes of my fans with RSS feeds (1? maybe 2?) can keep up.

#*@%ing keyboard

Recently, our keyboard had a stroke, as Holly put it. All of a sudden, typing became impossible. Your words would be highlighted, deleted, rearranged, programs would start up and shut down, all while you were trying to type your name.

After some careful experimentation, it appeared that some of the keys had fused with other keys. For example, pressing "a" or "home" meant that both "a" and "home" seemed to be pressed - i.e. the cursor would go to the start of the line, and an "a" would appear there. So "a" and "home" were fused, "d" and "print screen" were fused, and "f" and "caps lock" were fused. I think there were a few more, but I forget what they were.

So as long as we weren't typing anything with "a", "d", or "f", it wasn't too bad, but ... well heck, I have a soft spot for all the letters of the alphabet, and I wasn't willing to continue in this hobbled manner. Leave no alphanumerical behind, and all that. Off I went (in the rain, I might add - stupid keyboard) to Future Shop (stupid keyboard) to buy a brand new unit.

[start rant] Keyboards these days are ridiculous. All curvy and bent and extra-button-laden and rearranged for optimium STUPIDNESS and holy cow, who's designing these? Morons. All I want is my standard 101-key keyboard where the keys line up like they're supposed to, and there aren't any surprise buttons anywhere. I haven't imprinted this design on my brain in permanent marker for nothing, people! It's bad enough I couldn't find the uber-simple keyboard I wanted - it has the Windows keys and whatever the heck that stupid menu key is - but it also has those stupid media and launcher buttons on each side. Stupid. [end rant... for now]

Once we got the new keyboard plugged in, it all worked like a charm again. The only thing left to do was to dismantle the old keyboard, be amazed by all the dust and detritus lodged amongst the keys, and pop the individual keys off for use in crafts or similar. If you want a ring with a "5" on it, let me know. I'll hook you up.

kdesudo vs. gksudo

So I've written a little Python script that deals with downloading pics from our camera - it puts them in a dated directory, auto-rotates them, etc. The usual stuff that a pre-made program does, but makes me feel more important and talented than just downloading a program that'll do it for me. I like to feel special.

Anyway, the point is that to achieve downloading goodness, my script needs root access in order to successfully talk to the camera. But it's a GUI - a visual point and click interface. With buttons! How to run sudo to give my camera-talking commands the power they need?

The answer is that there are a handful of graphical sudo tools out there - commands that will pop up a little window to accept your password and authenticate that way. The first one I tried was kdesudo, which seemed to work great. However, I noticed that when the camera downloaded, it would hack up a hairball on about every 16th image. The output for each image was 64 characters long, which when multiplied by 16 is 1024 - a common limit for some shell-related stuff, although not one I've run into in a while. Dead giveaway that something was hoopy somewhere.

After trying to pin this on Python's commands.getstatusoutput() for a while, I did some simple tests that showed that it was only a problem when run through kdesudo! It seems there's something in there with some kind of limit on output - not exactly sure what, because it would get so far, then choke, then continue with the next image on the next fresh line. Very odd.

Long boring story short, I swapped it out for gksudo, and my problems evaporated. gksudo ftw!

101 Things In 1001 Days (2008-2011)

From what I hear on the street, this "101 Things To Do In 1001 Days" thing is all the rage. So I'm officially jumping on the bandwagon - seems like it should be fun! (Note that I didn't include "Make 101 things list" as my first item, that would have taken precious time away from my doing-stuff phase.)

Oh, and I'm starting tomorrow, so by my calculations (hooray for writing quick Python scripts!), I have until end of day, July 27th, 2011.

Here's my list, broken up into arbitrary categories:

(Progress: 60 done out of 101. 41 to go. Most recently done: 101, 100, 69, 67, 31.)

Travel - 5/10
1. Go to Tofino in storm season.
2. Take the train out of Vancouver and back. (Update: Looks like the only trains that go towards the interior go overnight.)
3. Ride the Dayliner on Vancouver Island.
4. Take a weekend trip to Seattle.
5. Go overnight backpack hiking with Holly and Sophie.
6. See an orca in the wild.
7. Take Sophie to see the woolly mammoth in Victoria.
8. Go to the top of Mt Prevost.
9. Take Sophie to Dinotown/water slides out in the valley.
10. Spend a few days in the San Juan islands.

Health/Exercise - 11/14
11. Get a hat trick in a hockey game.
12. Bike to work and back 40 work days in a row.
13. Take Sophie and Holly skating. (Nov. 30, 2008 - Took Sophie skating on her new bob skates at Kits rink with Holly (skating) and Jan and Ken (fans in the stands, taking pictures). Soph loved it, wanting more, more.)
14. Swim in Kits pool.
15. Do the Grouse Grind.
16. Walk to work at Radical.
17. Walk home from work at Radical. (Nov. 7, 2008 - Walked home, in the rain, without an umbrella. Stopped for a wrap and to see a movie. Total walking time: roughly 1 hour 20 minutes.)
18. Climb a tree.
19. Try indoor rock climbing.
20. Tube down the Cowichan River.
21. Swim in the Pacific Ocean.
22. Drink nothing but water for an entire month.
23. Bike to SFU and back.
24. Take Holly 10-pin bowling.

Family - 6/7
25. Leave Sophie with Star & Russ and have a weekend getaway with Holly.
26. Leave Sophie with Jan & Ken and have a weekend getaway with Holly.
27. Teach Sophie to read. Simple words count.
28. Give Holly a group of tangled-up necklaces to sort out.
29. Make a will.
30. Either get life insurance, or decide not to.
31. Write a birthday email to Sophie each year.

Entertainment - 11/18
32. Watch all six Star Wars movies plus Clone Wars in one weekend.
33. Watch all four Indiana Jones movies in one weekend.
34. Beat a computer/video game made before 1990.
35. Beat a computer/video game made after 2005.
36. Ask five friends/family members what their favourite books are, and read them. (Update: Have asked for recommendations and have received replies. List contains:

• Song of the Dodo - David Quammen (Davo)
  
• The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley (Alissa)
  
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie (Janet)
  
• In a Sunburned Country - Bill Bryson (Trish)
  
• The Book Nobody Read - Chasing the revelations of Nicolaus Coprenicus - Owen Gingerich (Erik)
  

)
37. Read 3 books from Handy's book list:
Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" (A pretty quick read. Great book. At first, I hated the lingo. Usually, books that rely on their own made-up language are weak and annoying, but in this case, it really worked to draw you in. By the end of the book, I was starting to think in nadsat.)
Joseph Heller's "Catch-22"
John Milton's "Paradise Lost" (Started reading this, and I'm vaguely worried that this may be my Achilles' heel... Seems like a tough read.)
38. Find and buy a copy of Peggy Parish's "Key to the Treasure" in a used bookstore.
39. Take Holly to the opera or symphony.
40. Take Holly to Bard on the Beach.
41. Finish a Sunday NY Times crossword with help from only three people, chosen beforehand.
42. Get to level 50 in n0tpr0n, documenting the steps required to get there. (Update: Getting closer. Stuck on level 30. All steps documented so far.)
43. Attend at least one Olympic event, either qualifying round or medal round.
44. Lose $27.50 at a casino.
45. Take Sophie to a movie.
46. See an Imax or Omnimax film.
47. Ask five friends/family members what their favourite movies are, and watch them.
48. Go to a double-header at the Hollywood. (Nov. 8, 2008 - Saw the double-header matinee: Clone Wars and Tropic Thunder. I thought Clone Wars was very well done, very engaging. Glad I saw it on the big screen. And Tropic Thunder was stupid humour, just what I was in the mood for.)
49. Send something unexpected and stupid to Trish in the mail. (Update: Bwa ha ha! Ha ha! Snicker. Haven't sent anything yet, but found a good possibility.)

Creative - 2/11
50. Write a short story including 20 snippets of conversations overheard while walking along the seawall.
51. Write a text-based adventure game, make it available on the Internet.
52. Plan, film, and produce a short film (final format: watchable DVD with menus), possibly starring Sophie.
53. Draw five episodes of a webcomic and put it online.
54. Make a significant effort to have a cool Hallowe'en costume at least one year.
55. Enter a photo in a photo contest.
56. Go outside somewhere and either sketch or paint an interesting scene.
57. Plan (but don't execute) an elaborate heist.
58. Finish that darned soapstone owl.
59. Make an awesome mixed-tape-style CD.
60. Make a list of 20 predictions for the future, seal the envelope, and put it in a safety deposit box for 20 years.

Work - 1/4
61. Update my resume, both the long master copy and the ready to use copy.
62. Design and create a website (for money) for two small businesses not related to me through friends/family.
63. Create a web design company with a website and small portfolio.
64. Write a treatise on the evils of video games.

Computers - 4/8
65. Buy a big widescreen computer monitor.
66. Make media player (music and video) completely runable from remote control.
67. Make camera (still and video) download/organization system.
68. Finish Remindomatic V2.
69. Finish digitizing CD collection and get rid of a lot of it.
70. Write a Rubix-cube solving program that doesn't blow up my computer.
71. Digitize our VHS tapes and get rid of them.
72. Go 100 days without a major computer malfunction.

Home - 9/12
73. Put in new flooring, can be carpet, wood, self-installed, professionally done, whatever.
74. Have bathroom renovated - new shower, towel rack, shelves.
75. Do another big frame full of bizarre/unusual/interesting pictures.
76. Finish going through the Dean-piles of paper.
77. Paint a mural on a wall in our apartment.
78. Make a pie for myself.
79. Make a pie for someone else.
80. Set up emergency supplies - water, food, candles, etc. (Nov. 16, 2008: 36L of water, 6 cans of soup, some dried fruit, 4 cans of beans (fun fact: apparently, beans don't expire!), some apple juice, some candles and matches, and a printed out list of phone numbers. Oh, and we set up automatic reminders for us to replace the food when it expires. There's more we could add, but I'm pretty happy with this as a good start.)
81. Go to three open houses.
82. Paint one of our rooms something other than off-white.
83. Learn to bake oatmeal raisin cookies.
84. Fix (properly) the broken bit of wall that's currently held together with duct tape.

Social/Volunteer - 3/7
85. Volunteer for three different charities or non-profit organizations.
86. Donate to three other different charities or non-profit organizations. (Food bank, Pacific Post Partum Support Society, Cancer Society.)
87. Give blood at least twice.
88. Ride in a June Critical Mass with Sophie and Holly.
89. Write a letter to my MP about the deficiencies in our electoral system.
90. Write a letter to the city about Burrard Bridge's bike lanes.
91. Clean up the garbage in a park, or along one block of a street, or along a stretch of beach.

Self - 8/10
92. Get new glasses and contacts. (Dec. 4, 2008 - Picked up new glasses and contacts today. I'm officially slightly hipper-looking than before.)
93. Get an autograph from a famous person.
94. Eat an entire pizza (medium or large) in one sitting.
95. Take a course.
96. Buy a new tshirt on the Internet.
97. Invent a bold (i.e. stupid) new recipe, possibly involving cheese and a blender.
98. Try an exotic new fruit that I've never eaten before.
99. Write a fan letter to a favourite author or TV star or something.
100. Leave a 100% tip (or $20, whichever is greater) at a restaurant to a deserving server.
101. Retroactively claim something awesome that I did as this last item.

There we go. I'll try to update the list as I do stuff, and I'll add commentary as appropriate.

Wish me luck, especially on the stuff I'll need Holly's permission to do! :D

1001 things list

Man, the last 7 pounds, er, items on my 1001-things list are the hardest! I'm up to 94, and I'm having trouble thinking up more. Holly's helping, though, so I'm sure I'll have them all thought up in no time, even if a bunch of them are like "get rid of my university textbooks" and "get rid of my childhood toys".

Stupid Windows

Have I mentioned lately how much I loathe Windows? I had a whole big annoying morning which started with Windows' brand new inability to read DVD-R disks (e.g. all of our backups), progressing to reading all about similar problems of the general populace of the Interwebs, leading to following one person's instructions on removing Service Pack 2, and culminating in the complete borkedness of my computer - it won't even boot. (The Windows half, at least - Ubuntu is not only still working great, but has now completely taken over the video editing from Windows. Take that, Windows!)

Now I'm just hoping Wine will be good enough to let me install and play Diablo II. Then I'll be happy never to boot into anything Microsoft again.

gnome-blog

This is a test of gnome-blog (a.k.a. Blog Entry Poster), a Linux application that runs directly from the desktop. I'm typing this in a little window that popped up from an icon on my desktop - it gives me a place to put a title, content, and I can add links and do simple text formatting. The downsides are that I can't do images, and I can't easily choose who I am / what blog I'm writing for. Still, pretty cool!

Dean out.

Update: Looks like you can do images, but it's not intuitive - you can drag and drop them from Nautilus. Also annoying is that it doesn't heading-ify my title. Boo.

1 thing to do in 7 or so days

This post is partly:
a) to show a certain stupidhead that my blog is updated regularly, and
b) to motivate myself.

The aforementioned stupidhead somehow stumbled upon a neat idea, this 101 Things in 1001 Days fad. While I openly mock her list (except the bit where I get to make her read a terrible book, that's awesome!), the idea itself appeals to me, so I've been working on my own list. So far, I have 64 items out of the required 101. When I'm done, I'll post it here, and then keep you (my enormous global audience) informed as to my progress.

If I can't get to 101 ideas, I'll ask my studio audience for suggestions, most of which I will discard with much derision. If you pay me, I may consider your ideas more seriously.

Stay tuned. I hope to have this list sorted out within the week.

Nuclear dream

I dreamed last night (on 9/11, I might add) that four cities got nuked - L.A., one of those Cleveland/Chicago/Detroit ones, Calgary (!), and some other one. Pretty crazy, I haven't woken up in a panic from a dream in quite a while.

I consulted a dream book about it, and it says that I'm anxious for the new season of 24 to start.

Bad Day

I had a bad day yesterday - frustration, computer woes, bad luck, that kind of thing. Just a total waste** of a day. I was still feeling the after-effects this morning, but I found that this video totally turned my mood around. Catchy song, great video, the feel-good hit of the summer. (At least, of some summer?) And apparently, Daniel Powter is Canadian!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6LOhkzknGQ&NR=1

And if you're wondering where you've heard this song before, it might be from this viral video hit, starring jammed printers and other office frustrations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4a1z7NLnNk

** It actually wasn't a completely bad day, as we went over to Janet's for an amazing dinner, complete with easy, ego-refurbishing tech support questions. :)

Lucky 13

I won the 50/50 at my work today, continuing my lifelong streak of having good luck on Friday the 13th. Hooray!

The T-Rex salute

I was biking home from work today, and while I was waiting at a light, I heard this "rowwwwrr!" noise. I turn to look, and there's a young boy (maybe two years old?) in the back seat of a car with his window rolled down, and he's making the biggest dinosaur face at me, to accompany his noise - complete with the clawed hands and many bared teeth. So naturally, I growled/roared back at him, which seemed to please him greatly. He laughed, and gave me a dinosaur salute - one arm outstretched, with a claw hand on the end.

I tell you, when you're biking in the cold, drizzly weather, nothing cheers you up like a random dinosaur encounter. Rooowwwwrrr!

Happy birthday Holly, from your nerd

Holly just had a birthday, and I had a flash of inspiration when I was putting candles on her birthday pie... See if you can tell how old she is - with as few hints as you can! :)



Hint 1: I'm a computer programmer by trade.

Hint 2: Next year, she'll only get one candle. (And it'll be way over on the left.)

Hint 3: Read the candles as "11111".

Solution: It's in binary - she's 31 years old. My inspiration was that her age, plus one year, is a perfect power of two. Therefore, her current birthday would be represented as all ones. Here's roughly how it works, in binary (2-based counting that computers use) as compared to decimal (our regular, 10-based counting).

(X^Y means X to the power of Y.)

11111 (decimal, "regular"):
Each 1 means 10^X, where X is the position from the right, minus one.
10^4 + 10^3 + 10^2 + 10^1 + 10^0 = 10,000 + 1,000 + 100 + 10 + 1 = 11111

11111 (binary):
Each 1 means 2^X, where X is the position from the right, minus one.
2^4 + 2^3 + 2^2 + 2^1 + 2^0 = 16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 31

Next year, she (and I) will turn 32 = 100000 in binary. When I said I wished I could hit six figures by my early thirties, this isn't what I had in mind...

A quest for Oscar

Yesterday, I went on a quest. A quest for Oscar. Seems that our 13+ year old, 6-CD changer stereo finally pushed the limit of how much bad behaviour it could get away with. Lose track of how many CDs are in it, fine. Swear up and down to us that it doesn't have a CD in it when it does, fine. But when it took our Oscar Peterson CD, told us it didn't have it, and then (by the sound of things) drop the CD out of the internal CD tray into the guts of the stereo... That's going too far.

Since the stereo had been repaired before, and was (in our opinions) too far gone for further repair, and because we can now recycle electronic equipment, I was given permission to disassemble the Oscar-eating stereo and go on a recovery mission.

Here's what it looked like to begin with (sans speakers):



The first roadblock I hit was getting the faceplate off. It had 12 or so screws holding it in place, most of which I could get out, no problem. But three of them were in this crazy-recessed holes, and I didn't have any screwdrivers long/skinny enough to get in there. I went as far as going to the hardware store to buy a new screwdriver, but the head on the one I got was too thick for the screws. Curses. Luckily, I had a stupid idea that actually turned out to work. I taped a Phillips-head bit onto the end of a long flathead screwdriver, and presto!



Once those tricky screws were out, it was a simple matter of taking out about a hundred more screws, in a very particular order. Every piece removed exposed more screws to enable me to take out the next part.



At this point, the CD was in sight! Still not even close to accessible, but it was nice to know that it was actually in there.



By now, the CD-changing mechanism was separated from the rest of the stereo, but the CD itself was still surrounded by many intricate, interlocking parts. Time for the smaller screwdrivers.



Huzzah! The parts have all been taken off, and now the CD is free! Sadly, the now-defunct stereo had one last nasty secret. It had not only hidden the Oscar Peterson CD, it had broken it in the process. Boo-urns...



The last step was to put it back together. I'm going to offer it up for sale on eBay. $250 obo, some assembly required.