Thursday, February 28, 2008

To cold for the pigeons to fly...

The past couple of days I've been working in downtown Ottawa allowing me to see things I normally wouldn't notice. This morning it was a crisp -21C/-5F and sunny. As I was getting off the bus, I noticed something about a gaggles of pigeons. It was to cold for them to fly. They were all perched next to a exhaust heating duct from a nearby parking garage. They were extremely reluctant to move. I was bundled up in winter clothing but less than I have been in the past. My REI down jacket allowed me to drop a layer of clothing, my Polar fleece 300 jacket which I normally wear as a base layer. In its place, I'm wearing a Polar fleece 200 weight vest. On top, I wear a Mountain hardware toque and on my hands I wear a Mountain hardware primaloft gloves. Tomorrow, I head south to warmer weather and hopefully little or no snow.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Lindy Hop -- Swing Dance

At the start of the year I set out a couple of goals that I wanted to achieve in 2008. I am making good progress on many of the goals. One of them is to dance the Lindy Hop. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been taking Lindy Hop lessons at the UOttawa which are taught by a couple of students. These lessons have been a lead up to the Lindy Hop weekend in Baltimore at the end of the month. Charm City Swing is having a Lindy Hop marathon weekend of 20 hours of lessons and three night of dancing to a live band. I view dancing the Lindy Hop like a journey as the number of the dance moves is broad and it will take a little while to become total comfortable with basic footwork(RS(1-2) TS(3&4)-S(5)-S(6)-TS(7&8). I want to thank Jason for suggesting that I come to Baltimore for the Lindy weekend. It has been a relief to find that many of the dance moves in West Coast swing can be translated over to Lindy Hop with a little variation.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Genius Bar -- I like Apple!

Earlier this year, I bought an Apple iPod touch and am still amazed with what I can do with it. The five iPod touch applications Apple released in January made the toy more powerful. On Saturday, the home button stopped working. I would select the Safari icon and do some surfing and hit the home button expecting it to return to the home screen but nothing happened. It would stubbornly stay on the safari screen. The only way to return to the home screen was to turn it off and then on. I checked the discussion groups on the Apple site and didn’t find any hints as what to do. I had two choice drive to Montreal (2 hours) or head down to Toronto (5 hours). I signed up for a 3:00 pm appointment at the Genius bar on Monday in Laval, Quebec. The web interface for the Genius bar is fun to use. I headed to Montreal on Monday morning and took the subway north and tried to follow the directions on the Apple retail store web page but made an attempt to speak in broken French to the subway conductor who said to keep heading north. I jumped on the subway again and headed underneath the St. Lawrence River and took the subway/metro to the last stop on the line known as Montmorency. I was now in a different city with a different bus system and rules. There were a couple of buses that would take you to La Carrefour shopping center. I caught the first bus apparently destined for the mall and ended in north Laval miles from anywhere. After talking to the driver in broken French he suggested an express bus and I headed back to the bus hub. The second bus took me to the shopping center.

The Apple store was a hive of activity with a lot of people receiving 1-on-1 Apple training. I spoke to one of the “blue” shirts girls would confirmed that my appointment was still good. In the meantime, I explored the fun on display and imagined what it would be like to use a Macbook. It was sort of like being in a toy store for adult with all this neat gear. A little while later I met with the genius “black” shirt and we tried to do an iPod restore which didn’t work. The iPod was sicker than we thought. Apple replaced the iPod touch as it was still on warranty (Thanks Apple). It was a fun experience and my first visit to an Apple store and hopefully not my last as it was a fun place.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Mundane jobs

I was at a wine and cheese last night and as we drank more wine the topics of the conversations started to get more interesting. We all started to describe some of the more boring and mundane summer jobs we had when we were younger. One of my friends Jessica talked about spending the summer filing forms in folders. All day long she would file forms for the city. The discussion eventually came around to me and I describe how I was part of a team that sorted 10 tons of pears for a local cannery. Each pear had to be measured. If it was larger than 2.25" it would be sent to the fresh fruit market and if it was smaller it went to a cannery to become part of a fruit cocktail. We would sort the pears that had been picked during the day in a large barn just after dusk. During the day I would pick a ton of pears or 60 bushels. It was hard work at the same time it was fun and rewarding work as you could see your progress at the end of each day.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Shoveling with an ice scraper

Over the last little while the Ottawa area has been getting a record amount of snow. On the weekend, I saw something that caused me to stop and have a good laugh as a parent was trying to shovel snow in their driveway using an ice scraper. They were I think on their way to a son's hockey practice didn't have enough time to clear the driveway so they were clearing a path for the tires to drive down with an ice scraper. Meanwhile, I could hear the son in the car beckoning the father to hurry up otherwise they were going to be late. It was funny as I've never seen an ice scraper used this way.

wo -- 8 hill repeats -- warm legs, sore and tired