Commuting

A little while I moved a little further away from the office. This has some advantages as well disadvantages. My new place has a partial view of the Ottawa River and is twice as large as my old place. One of the disadvantages is that the commute is a little longer. But it satisfies one of my goal of being able to run, blade, ski, snowshoe and cycling to work depending on the season. My commute recently has been a little more challenging over the last two weeks. I had only been living in my place for a few days when the transit company decided to go on strike just as our first major snowstorm descended on the city. This created major havoc as the bus drivers decided to protest in front salt/sand depot in unplowed and unsanded roads. I've considered this situations as a bit of an opportunity as it has allowed my to explore my new neighborhood on foot, something, I otherwise would not have done. Each day I hike 6 miles/10 kilometers round trip to the office using I can in about an hour depending on the footing. By bus this commute would normally take about 15 minutes. Each day has been different as I'm making good use of my iPod as some days I listen to swing music, jazz and occasionally a string of symphonies. I have learned about the various plows and sanding trucks the city uses to keep the roads clear. I'm starting to see familiar faces and can sort of gauge who is late and who is early. I have been able to recall what black ice looks like and what consistency of snow is the most and least slippery. As you can see much goes through my mind on my hour to and from the office. I've been comparing notes with my briefer as to who is loosing the most weight as a result of our extended commutes. My daily adventures will most likely end soon as I head home for the holidays at the end of the week and the city will eventually have to settle with the strikers. While the drama continue I still have to see what it us like to winter run to the office. I also openly wonder what expressions I would get as I visibly stow my snowshoes in my cube after a commute through the hinterland along the Ottawa River.

Innovations in snowplows

On my morning commute, I saw something that got me excited and that is, the latest innovation in snowplows. The traditional setup is to have a concave blade that can plow straight ahead, plow right or plow left. The new plows have the blade split into two sections each which can be independently angled. What this means is that at a twist of the joystick the blade can change to a "V" shape or the shape of an arrow or one part at a 90 degree angle and the other straight ahead or whatever combination meets the needs of the situation.

Moving

I've been thinking about moving for a little while and made the plunge recently to a larger place. I am a little further from the office which may or may not be a good thing. With the help of my parents we purged, packed and cleaned my old place over a couple of days. On the weekend, I moved into my new place using a 14 foot U-Haul truck that was 3/4s full. The weather cooperated as it was a sunny and a cool 8C/46.4F. It took about two hours to fill the truck and I fell in love with the box cart as I could move three boxes at a time. The drive to the new place took about ten minutes. It a little long to unload the truck at the new place as the elevator was smaller. I think that my new place is double the size of my old one. I'll blog more on the adventure soon.

During my moving week I stayed with my parents at a downtown hotel. It was more convenience for everyone and my parents did want to tackle the Ottawa city traffic. Our bedroom looked down onto a day care. As we drank our morning tea we would watch the parents drop the kids at a really early hour of 7:00 AM. The kids were all bundled up and looked like minature Michelin-man people. Before we would head out for the day we watch the kids playing during recess. Some would be making snow angels, other on tricycles, throwing snow, shoveling snow and have fun in the cold weather. One of the things they did brought a smile to my face and that was the hoola hoop. They had learned about wiggling the hips thing and we happy to throw it five feet away and to pick it up and throw it another five feet. They were getting joy from just tossing around some plastic. Another brought back memories and that was that all the kids had their mittens on strings. I can remember having my mittens on strings.

Guest blogger segment -- my father

The most notable incident occurred when returning to the hotel as we bundled up against the sub-zero freezing weather. Outside the hotel door was a stocky fellow in just a t-shirt and shorts puffing on a cigarette with a sarcastic look on his face. He ball cap said Junior Canadian Ranger. He was an Inuit/Eskimo and a member of Canada's Army of the North and our last frontier. Somehow he found the freezing weather to his satisfaction and felt right at home.

Wordabble -- 100,000 points

This morning, I passed a landmark that has been looming for a while and that is have found 100,000 points in the Fusion Bay's iPhone/iPod Touch game Wordabble. Earlier in the month, I achieved another milestone and that was to have played my first 100 games. As I think about these two milestones, I wonder what other milestones I can achieve by playing wordabble. I'll close this entry by thanking Jason and Adam for developing wordabble. 100,000 points later and 100 games later I still get my daily mental gymnastics through Wordabble. Thanks guys!

Geocaching, the military, and bow hunting

Yesterday, I was out geocaching and with the expectation that it would be cool and quiet afternoon. This was not too be. As I was driving up to the trailhead I passed two groups of army recruits decked in cammo, face paint and carrying an assortment of rifles, sniper scopes, and machine guns. They looked like a serious and dangerous bunch. At the last moment, I noticed that most of the guns were plugged. They were hoping to ambush another platoon concealed much deeper along the trail. Lucky for me the first geocache was in the opposite direction and an easy find. I continued along the trail and noticed a guy in cammo sitting midway up a tree keeping very calm and quiet. Later I would find out that the woods were occupied by deer hunters with bows. The third cache find was what I call a "gotcha." The cache was suspended 15 feet in the air and hanging from the nub of a branch. Standing on a three foot stump and using a 10 foot long branch I was able to knock the cache down. As I was lifting the cache back into place along came a couple of deer hunters wanting to know what I was doing. I showed them the cache and my GPS and explained what geocaching was all about. Before they headed back along the trail I asked them what to do when in the woods during deer season; do you move silently or make some noise. They suggested to make more noise that you would expect of a deer prancing through the forest.

100th Wordabble game

Today I played my 100th game of Wordabble. Each day has been a lot of challenging and rewarding fun. I can say with certainty that my vocabulary has increased as I continue to learn more and more obscure words. When Jason and Adam introduced the finger-dragging with auto-entry option I found I could play the game faster. Another feature that has become more valuable over time is being able see what words I have missed at the stroke of midnight as I use it as a way to increase my vocabulary. I would like to take a moment to talk about a couple of the more entertaining days. In one of them I was able to make use of most of the urology terms I had learned a couple of years ago. In the other game, I was using my knowledge of the various components of the heart and lungs. I can say that I have enjoyed each days whether it had 200+ words or less than 100 words. In the high value games it was frustrating to find 50% of the words. When there were fewer than 100 words I would scratch my head and wonder if that four letter jumble of letters was indeed a word. In most cases it would be a new obscure word that I would park away for future reference. I'll close off this entry by thanking Jason and Adam for my first 100 days of fun playing wordabble.

Bras to Masks

I'm at home for a long weekend which gives me a chance to catch up on reading. This morning I was reading one of my father's technical magazines. It talked about a recent patent for a bra that could be quickly converted in a face mask in the event of civil emergency.