A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
A couple weeks ago I hit up the Kananaskis River for some kayaking with my friend Andy. Just for fun I decided to launch myself from the edge of a steep bank. Andy recorded the event for posterity and I uploaded it as the first video I’ve ever put on YouTube.
[Kayaking Drop – YouTube]
It’s been a busy week. One of those weeks where you don’t have time to do much, but at the end of the week, you ask yourself—well, what did I actually accomplish? The only thing I can say for sure is, I DIDN’T have time to write on the old web page. Fear not, after another week or so, I should return to my regular blogging schedule… and also get to all the stuff I’ve been too busy to get to.
Wow, this post is lackluster. I’ll try to spice it up with a blurry photo and story of the bear I saw last weekend in Waterton:
This bear was down in the town-site very close to Cameron Falls. Park Rangers surrounded it and kept noisy tourists (and photographers) at a distance.
Suddenly we heard a loud bang and the bear started running. Then lots more bangs and pops (and some might say explosions) as the rangers made more noise to scare the bear away from the town.
One lady we talked to afterward said the bear came running up the trail very close to where she and her grand daughter were and the excitement was enough to bring the little girl to tears.
Nobody was hurt, and the bear was just a little scared. It left town without further incident.
I just looked in the fridge and discovered the leftovers that I planned to eat yesterday were still there. Putting two and two together, I quickly realized that my rather slender girlfriend and I FORGOT TO EAT SUPPER LAST NIGHT! At least the movie was good— I think.
My trip to San Francisco was pretty awesome and I think it’s my new favorite city—in the United States anyway. Here’s a photo I took from the plane coming into Calgary. And here’s my San Francisco Flickr Set (it’s a work in progress as I continue to sort through the nearly 500 photos from last week).
I’ll write more about my trip later including a glimpse into the Social Media Club event where we were lucky enough to meet Jimmy Wales and listen to him speak a little bit about social media and Wikipedia. (Also thanks for the t-shirt SMC). I also really enjoyed trying out the The World Café format, a way in which the best ideas in the room can be shared with everyone through smaller discussions that leads to one large one.
It was disappointing to have to leave so soon, but I’m sure another adventure is just around the corner.
On Sunday I’m taking off for a few days in the California sun. No, I’m not off to MacWorld, but I am going to San Francisco to take part in a Social Media Club round table discussion.
Chris Heuer (SMC Co-Founder) will lead a roundtable discussion on blogs, podcasting and all the cool things we want to do and would like to see happen in 2007. SMC is working to connect Social Media groups all over the world, so it’s a great way to take a part in universal efforts to spread the Social Media love.
I’m really looking forward to it, for one thing, my skin is getting a little pasty white up here in the Great White North—but also it will be a great opportunity to make some interesting new friends south of the border. Maybe it’ll even inspire me to start my own podcast.
Recently I began reading Richard Dawkins new book, The God Delusion. In it the author describes his reasons for not believing in supernatural beings. He points out that if one considers himself an atheist about the Greek gods or believes that “Mother Nature” is merely a fairy tale and not an actual creator, then why not take it one step further and rule out Abraham’s deity as well?
It’s an interesting and logical way of thinking. Pondering this, I decided last night to get out of my shell and do something rather uncharacteristic. I took Dawkins’ advice and kind of twisted it. I met with some nice folks who believe in a creed _not_ rooted in the God of Abraham.
We met at a coffee shop, it was explained to me, because meeting in public is a privilege that those with such radical beliefs were not always granted. Now that freedom of assembly is a protected right, they choose to take advantage of it.
The three women sitting across from me were real live witches; the older gentleman beside me, a druid. Though they followed different paths, they were all adherents, in one way or another, under the umbrella of belief known as paganism. Nothing about their appearance made them stand out; they didn’t wear pointy hats or carry brooms. One of the girls did say she was in the process of adopting a kitten and another admitted that she owned a cloak but that was where the stereotypes ended. Over the course of the evening, I learned what it meant to these people to be a pagan. Wikipedia’s introductory paragraph on Paganism provides an accurate summary:
Paganism is a term which, from a western perspective, has come to connote a broad set of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices of natural or polytheistic religions. The term can be defined broadly, to encompass many or most of the faith traditions outside the Abrahamic monotheistic group of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. “Pagan” is the usual translation of the Islamic term mushrik, which refers to ‘one who worships something other than The God of Abraham’. Ethnologists avoid the term “paganism,” with its uncertain and varied meanings, in referring to traditional or historic faiths, preferring more precise categories such as shamanism, polytheism or animism. The term is also used to describe earth-based Native American religions and mythologies, though few Native Americans call themselves or their cultures “pagan”. Historically, the term “pagan” has usually had pejorative connotations among westerners, comparable to heathen, infidel and kaffir (‘unbeliever’) in Islam.
Most of the conversation turned out to be rather ordinary. They talked about their careers, their day at work, and just the usual friendly banter that you might expect from a group of twenty-something women.
However, early in the evening one of the ladies dramatically related an interesting phenomenon that she witnessed just last night.
She said that she was giving lessons to some teens on horseback riding when she observed a brilliant ball of white light a few hundred meters away. It slowly grew changing to a beautiful blue hue and then suddenly disappeared. At that same moment the power in her house and the stables all went out. She said that about three minutes later the power came back on and although there were a few other students and adults nearby, nobody but herself and two of the 14 year old teens had been around to witness the light.
She asked the druid if he knew what it might be, explaining that her friends at work thought she was nuts. At first he appeared just as baffled as she, but then in a humorous tone he pronounced, UFO’s. I think he was joking.
I asked her what she thought it might be. She replied that she had a hunch it was some kind of supernatural being trying to give her a message, however she wasn’t sure if that message was she was on the right path and should keep doing what she was doing, or if she needed to change her life to get her life back on track. We all agreed it was not very helpful with the possible interpretations being polar opposites.
Always the sceptic, I knew right away what it was she had seen: ball lightning.
The interesting thing about ball lightning is, it seems that nobody really knows what it is exactly, let alone what causes the phenomenon.
During World War II ball lightning was reported as “escorting” bombers, flying alongside their wingtips. Pilots of the time referred to the phenomenon as “foo fighters,” initially believing that the lights were from enemy planes. UFO enthusiasts have reported seeing the mysterious lights at crop circle sites and ball lightning has also been used to explain the eerie moving lights known as will o’ wisps.
They accepted my answer more readily than I would have expected. Very modern in their thinking despite what one may expect from pagans. It is clear that although they like believing, a scientific answer would trump the unexplained if one was available. I respect that.
We chatted for the rest of the evening, sometimes about déjà vu, sometimes about the history of paganism. I found the entire evening extremely interesting, but in the end, I have to say, I still feel closer to believing in the kind of belief that Einstein professed when he said, “if something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
But remember science isn’t always right, and who’s to say for sure that the ball of light wasn’t actually a magical being sent from another dimension for some deep mysterious purpose? Despite my scepticism, believing would be much more fun.
There was an accident at work last week. No one was hurt, but I was almost seriously injured.
Here’s the situation, some walls were taken out of the change rooms because they are rebuilding everything. At least one wall had heating vents going through it and when they moved the wall out, they left the bricks on top of the vent.
There was a guy grinding some metal bits out of the ground right where I wanted to pile some blocks. If he hadn’t been there, I would have just been piling away happily. Instead I asked him if I could start my pile beside him—if I would be out of his way or if I should just wait until he was done. He said yes so I just walked a few steps away to grab some blocks from the pallet and a couple of guys—I’m not sure who they are, (they call them the tin-bangers), started hammering on the vents, presumably to bring them down. Even though this particular job was supposed to have been done long before the bricklayers got there and certainly it shouldn’t have been done while there were four of us working beneath the vents, I guess they thought it was a good idea to be working on it right then.
All of a sudden about six bricks came falling out of the sky and landed beside the grinding guy on the ground and right where I was about to pile my blocks. It was so close to hitting him, and me, it was just CRAZY.
Some of the bricks hit the new wall that had just been built and knocked one of its blocks right out of the fresh cement onto the ground.
One of the guys stopped pounding when he saw the accident but the other idiot—probably the one that actually caused the bricks to fall, didn’t even stop for a good 30 seconds. Somebody yelled at the grinding guy to get out of the way because there were still more bricks up there and the guy just kept pounding. Did I mention he’s an idiot!?
Anyway, needless to say, I was pretty shocked that I was almost struck down by six bricks that fell from about four meters. That would have left a pretty deep mark.
Some might call it a near miss, but I think a near hit is a more accurate description. I also don’t think anyone reported the incident. “No blood; no foul” I guess. I can’t wait to finish this job.
A few weeks ago, when I visited my sister and her family in Drayton Valley, she was so kind as to send me home with a few odds and ends of food from her storage room. One of the items was a can of beef broth with an expiration date of October 2006.
The other day I made Chicken Stir Fry with my friend Heather and she suggested that I use chicken broth instead of water to cook the vegetables. It was a great idea.
So the next time I cooked Stir Fry, this time just for myself, since I didn’t have any more chicken broth, I decided to use the can of beef broth that Jackie gave to me—even though it said October 2006 on the top of the can, I thought, well, technically it’s only the beginning of October, so it’s probably still good.1
BIG MISTAKE.2
The first time I ate it, it was not bad. I had a bit of an upset stomach but I thought it must just be heart burn. As I packed up the leftovers into plastic containers, I poured the broth from the bottom of the pan right over the rice. MMMM, extra flavour I thought to myself—extra food poisoning is what I SHOULD have been thinking.
The next night as I regurgitated the leftovers, I thought to myself—even though I know I’m not going to die, food poisoning does feel mighty close. Since I had thrown up about as much as I could and still felt sick, I decided that it might be a good idea to eat a heaping bowl or two of Raisin Brain, you know to “push the poison through”.
Moments later I was revisiting the entire contents of my two bowls of cereal in several terrific “oooaghhhs”. I quickly came to realize that I should take deep breaths between bouts of vomiting because you can’t breath while your digestive track switches direction.
The next few hours were long and painful. I decided that unless I felt totally better, I would not be going into work this morning. This was not a bad prospect considering how much work “work” actually is and it would be a good chance to let the 7 blisters on my feet heal. However, number one, I didn’t want to call in sick on only my third day of work and on the Friday leading up to a long weekend (how suspicious) and besides, at 6:00am I was miraculously and disappointingly healed (disappointingly because hey, four day weekend) so it was off to work I went; other than another slightly upset stomach at lunch it now appears as though the food poisoning has completely cleared up.
The story of my blisters is another matter. Suffice it to say that the first three days of work have been an adventure. I need to get some new work boots ASAP and hopefully I’ll beef up in the muscles department so that lugging those heavy blocks around won’t be so hard. Here’s to the working life.
And for supper tonight, I went back to my trusty staple… frozen pizza cooked in the oven.
1. This is where one comes to realize how important it is to have a girlfriend/boyfriend to bounce ideas off each other, like hey do you think this mould can just be cut off or is this dark grey block of cheese a write off?
2. For those of you that skipped over this post because it seemed too long, the moral of the story is don’t play Russian Roulette with expiration dates, it will catch up with you.
Today, I took my camera into the shop to be sent away for repairs for the third time in two months. That isn’t to say that I’ve actually sent it away three times, but this was my third trip down to the store in an attempt to send it away. The first time when I heard it would take 6 to 8 weeks before I would get it back, I decided to keep it just a little longer because I really wanted to take photos with it while I was in Banff.
The second time I took it in, the lady behind the counter told me they couldn’t “look it up” on the computer and I would either need my original receipt or have to pay $50 to send it away. Yeah right! I promptly decided I would come back on another day with my receipt. What a hassle.
Today I took it in, realizing full well that this means I’ll be switching back to my little Kodak point-and-shoot camera for the next month and a half—an idea that does not please me as I’ve become quite addicted to my Nikon D70s SLR.
The problem with the camera, and they tell me this kind of thing is quite rare, is that the aperture was somehow getting stuck after I would shoot a small number of photos, and then the next shot would be extremely under exposed and the display would flash the word ERROR in nice friendly letters. After a few seconds—sometimes as many as 30—the camera would return to normal pretending like nothing happened. At other times, it would just refuse to take any more photos regardless of what I did until I hit the preview depth-of-field button clearing the aperture from its incorrect position.
Although the extra trips down to London Drugs were a little bit of a hassle, I’m glad I happened to be there today because, while I was standing there waiting for the guy to fill out some paperwork, who should I see but my ex-fiancée Janine and her husband, Jonas.
It was a pleasant, but short, reunion. She told me a few things about her life and I brought her up to date on what I’ve been doing over the last two or three years. It was too bad I didn’t have my camera working—it would have been nice to take their photo; they looked really nice together. Her husband appears like a fairly on-top-of-it kind of guy and it sounds like things are coming together nicely for her. It’s fantastic when you can have such a genuine and guilt-free conversation with someone for whom you once cared so much about but had, at one point anyway, lost the ability to communicate with due to the baggage of a relationship gone bad and the complications of a new girlfriend whom was quite jealous of the old. I am happy for Janine and pleased to have found out what her life is like now.
The whole experience got me thinking how things really have worked themselves out for the best—it was hard to see that just a little over 4 years ago when we broke up.
I’ve been spending some time with my family in Medicine Hat over the last week. While I was here, we received some very bad news. A cousin of mine, Michael Scoville, passed away last Friday at the age of 26 years old.
Of all my cousin’s, I hung out with Mike more than any other. We lived in the same city for most of our lives and were pretty much the same age. We never went to the same school at the same time for very long but I was always amazed at how many people knew Mike all over the city.
Growing up we had our share of fighting between us but within the last ten years, or so, we made up and I enjoyed running into him at his parents house on the many occasions when they would invite us all over for dinner. It’s sad that he’s gone.