Baby deer in our front yard

One of the many reasons I love our neighbourhood... these guys were in our front yard but walked away when I grabbed the camera.

New Puppy

We got a puppy last weekend. He's an 8 week old golden doodle -- a lab/poodle cross. He's an awesome little pup!

Hitmen Game

We got to go to a fun Calgary Hitmen game last weekend, and the kids got to go down to the ice level after the game to meet one of the players, sit on zambonis, and touch the ice. Great fun!

Hacking work

Decent enough book. Contradicted itself in several places and didn't appeal as much as simpler work. By the core ideas were strong:
1. Corporate work is profoundly stupid because it's an aggregate of rules put in place to keep the lowest common denominator safe.
2. Most execs don't follow the stupid rules.
3. You have a 2% chance of getting fired for not following th unimportant rules (mostly IT).
4. Give yourself the freedom to break the rules to get the job done.

Couldnt agree with this more. My job didn't exist until my boss and I broke the rules and made it up as we went along. Now I have the best job I could have; because I made it up for myself.

Maya's lost her first tooth

Maya lost her first tooth today. It's been wiggling for weeks and she's been afraid to have us pull it out. Then out of the blue she pulled it out herself when her cousins came buy today! Always a surprise that princess of mine.

Gabe and I at the Flames Game

Gabe and I had a great time at the Flames game tonight against St. Lois. We didn't stay for the whole game because it was a late start and a school night, but the seats were killer -- right behind the bench.
Our kids are spoiled for games! When they're not in a box they're down by the ice.
Glad to have a boys night with my son.

Sweet

Want to know what the definition of sweet is? Maya went to the dentist today, got a needle, and got a filling for 45 minutes. They gave her two toys for being so good: a big one and and a small one. The small one she picked for herself (a small bear) and the big one she picked not for herself, but for her little brother Zach. How sweet is that?

Goin' on the cloud

This is the first post after a big conversion to blogger from my custom blog software cobbled together. It became too difficult to keep the old system going with multiple upgrades, versions, etc. And I just don't have the time to keep it going.
But now that it's being run through blogger I should be able to post more frequently! To get it here, I had to write a custom php rss export for my blog, upload it to a local wordpress install, export it in wordpress format, run a conversion to blogger format, and upload. Whew!

Warehouse Closes - This Time For Good (Probably)

There once was a time when this was my second home. A place that played my kind of music and with people weird enough to be interesting. Haven't been in a decade but somehow it was good that I knew it was there.

The main reason the Class A status wouldn't work for the Warehouse/ Underground, said Hewitt, is that it would force the club to clear out its premises every night by 3 a.m., thus eliminating its status as an afterhours hot spot.

"There's going to be a very big hole (when it comes to) mid-size concert venues," he said.

In recent years, internationally acclaimed indie rock acts such as Caribou, Jello Biafra, the Boredoms, King Khan & The Shrines, the Hold Steady and Gaslight Anthem have performed at the Warehouse/Underground.

Before it became a live venue, the club was central to Calgary's DJ dance scene, added Hewitt, a DJ himself.

Ultimately, Hewitt feels he was mistreated by the commission.

"It's not like I was running some underground crime scene," he said. "It's not like this was a blight on Calgary and everybody will breath a sigh of relief. . .

http://www.calgaryherald.com/Warehouse+Underground+nightclubs+lose+liquor+licence/2497900/story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+canwest/F233+(Calgary+Herald+-+News)

Another Christmas and New Years Come And Gone

Well, another Christmas and New Years come and gone. Had a great year. Gabe is in grade 1, Maya in preschool and Zach is still at home. We took the past couple of weeks off to get some downtime after the year.

Had a fun time with the kids. Zach and I did a killer walk one day through fish creek for two hours in the cold and he still didn't want to come home. Had both Hiyat's family and mine over on the 23rd for dinner. Went to Mom's on Christmas eve and back for brunch the next day. Went to Jason and Sharon's for New Years as usual and for the second time in a row everybody made it to midnight.

Career wise had a killer year. Built an entirely new insourced project team that started around ~20 people and peaked at ~130. Saved the company millions and got more than 70 projects done this year, a far cry from what our outsourcer did last year at about 6 projects.

We took 3 mini vacations this year: one to Jasper with Roz and Colin, one to Whitefish with Sherrie and Dan, and one to Drumheller just with the family. Didn't have time to take a big vacation this year so the three little breaks were great.

Also got a new (to me) car - a E430 Sport Mercedes. 4 door, 275hp, and a kick ass drive. 

Want

 Warning: Caffiene Levels Dangerously Low.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/glennz/caf2/

Vegas Trip

We left the kids with the in-laws on Thursday afternoon and headed off to Vegas.

We thought we got to the airport in plenty of time - 1:45 before the plane took off but we were the last ones to get tickets (and not together!) and just made it to the plane for last call for boarding.

After some great guys all moved to let us sit together we took off... arriving on-time we met up with Stephan our limo driver and got our bags. He took us around the strip for a cruise before we got to the Bellagio. I think I tipped him too much so we went around for about an hour.

 

 

The Bellagio is amazing. It's the one with the dancing fountains in front. In the entrance they have these amazing blown glass flowers all over the ceiling... I couldn't help but think what would happen if one of the stems broke off and it came down on someone's head.

After settling in into our room (which was very nice, large, but had two queens instead of the desired king) we checked out the hotel and went to the Noodles restaurant. It sucked... luckily it was the only bad dining experience we had.

After that we walked through the conservitory and went to one of those fancy crepe places which made Hiyat happy after the rotten meal. By this time it was 11ish and we were exhausted after the day with the kids and the trip.

We woke up late the next morning and ordered room service (something we did for the remainder of the trip) and headed out for the day. We grabbed a cab from the hotel and after dropping Hiyat off at the fashion show mall I checked out the Atomic Testing Museum. It kicked ass -- had stuff from WWII right up into present day. Old style relays and monitors for underground testing, lots of photos, and full scale models from tactical nukes back in the day.

I spent a couple of hours there and headed back to the mall to pick up Hiyat -- or so I thought. When I returned two hours later Hiyat still hadn't left Nordstroms and by this time had a personal shopper running around for her.

After spending a few more hours cruising the mall... which was much bigger than Chinook and entirely devoted to clothes, I picked up a pair of sunglasses and we headed out. Returning to the hotel, we changed our clothes and headed out to Criss Angel. However when we tried to grab a cab, the lineup was at least 250 people long! The show started in less than half an hour, so Hiyat tipped the bellman $50 and sweet talked us into a limo 5 minutes later. We made the show in plenty of time and it was very fun. We were in the second row and right on the aisle and for one trick one of the assistants were right next to me. Criss dissapeared on stage and the assistant threw off his coat... and it was Criss less than a foot away from me. Killer! And the best part was that Eddy Van Halen and his family were sitting 5 rows back from us.

 

/will finish later

Off to Drumheller

We're off to Drumheller with the kids overnight. Should be fun seeing all the dinosaur stuff and the hoodoos.

Gabe Losing His Teeth

Gabe has lost his first baby tooth! He's becoming a big boy already.

He's very excited, the tooth fairy gave him $5. He doesn't really know how much that is so he wants to buy the biggest lego set he can with it.

I'll post pics soon.

On Our Way To Banff

We're on our way to Banff for some much-needed time away from the hectic city!

A Time Of Deconstruction

It feels like we're in a time of deconstruction.

The whole family has been sick on and off for the past month. We're tired, grumpy, and just need some rest. From colds to puking and back to colds again.

At the same time, the Aikido community has been falling apart. We've had the death of one Sensei in town, and politics and squabbling within the community have been tearing it apart. On top of impropriety, arrogance and disrespect. It's brutal -- this is not what it's about for me and it's time I thought about the amount of effort and time I put in to this at the cost of my family.

Work is good. I'm in a new position in the project group with all the non-infrastructure people reporting to me. I finally get to set things up the way that I want and show how good a shop we can have. But to do this, we're literally taking away huge dollars from out outsource provider. So people's lives are going to be impacted yet again -- many of them are the same people we impacted by moving them from here to there. I feel a bit like the angel of death.

I guess that you have to get rid of the old to bring in the new. 

Boys and Girls Club Safe House

Had a eye opening time at the Boys and Girls Safe House in Calgary over the past several weeks. Every year as part of a United Way drive we pick a project to have the team work on to make a bit of a difference in the community. This year we chose the Safe House:

Safe House is a nine bed shelter facility that provides short term housing and basic needs for youth who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

The place was really run down when we found it. Old, moldy showers, stinky furniture, that kind of thing. We painted the entire house, replaced the couches and dining room chairs, put in two computers and a printer into the office so that the kids can work on their resumes, replaced much of the bathroom cabinets and fixtures, put in a TV... generally spruced up the place to make it more inviting.

Working with the kids were great. These are kids that go through more in a day than most of the bad stuff that we experience in a life time. Drugs, prostitution, poverty, homelessness, violence... you name it. And for the most part they are very sweet kids, but very suspicious of authority and rebellious. Shortsighted too -- it's hard to think of going back to school so your life can be better next year when you don't have enough to eat or a place to sleep.

One of the kids affected me deeply: a young girl, perhaps 15. She could have been Maya at 15. We gave all the kids blankets and she spent all day wrapped up in it huddled on the couch watching us work.

http://www.calgaryboysandgirlsclub.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=45&PHPSESSID=f9f189e2ab24df94fe6cb8c6ebf63d1e

Brad Cooper Indicted for Murder

This is freaky.

Brad was a friend of mine. A friend of my ex's more but I did go through university with this guy. Spent many classes together, many late nights in the compsci bunker underneath math sciences.

Pissed him off more than a few times, and man was he a hot head. I remember one time we ordered pizza together at our place. The pizza was an hour late and of course it ended up being free. The pizza guy finally showed up and Brad freaked on him when he complained about it being free. Brad actually pushed the guy out of my apartment, throwing him into the wall across from the door.

Another time we were playing a video game together to blow off some stress from school. He was very competitive and had the very much upper hand in this round of playing command and conquer by virtue of where he started on the map. Knowing I couldn't beat him in a fair fight, I threw my meager troops against his front door while I snuck in a bunch of engineers through the back gate and took over his main buildings and immediatly sold him off -- so he couldn't win. The line went "click" (we were playing over a modem) and he didn't speak to me for days.

Another time he threw me off a project we were working on together -- not because I didn't deliver but because I didn't put in the same amount of time that he did. I was working full-time at the time writing C code, which we were using on the project which meant that I could bash it out pretty quickly and reasonably bug free and faster than he could. So of course, I got it wrapped up by myself anyway in a few hours and got an A, which pissed him off even more. We didn't hang out after that.

Now I find out that after he split with his girlfriend at the time, he got married and moved to the US. He cheated on his wife (just like he had cheated on his girlfriend repeatedly when I new him) and she was going to leave him with her two kids back to Canada.

So apparently he killed her. Remember this is a guy I've had in my home many times.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=5e298fc7-cd30-449b-84d0-a2b5b21de9b3

My New Outdoor Office

 

I've caught some kind of bug and I'm working from home today.

Hiyat left Zach with me while she's running Gabe and Maya around. He's an outdoor kid and really wanted to go outside. This usually means climbing by himself to the top of the jungle gym, so I've relocated my "home office" to the top of it (to help him stay safe).

Wifi + EEE PC + Outlook Web Access + blackberry = home use goodness.  Especially on a beautiful fall day.

Caffè Artigiano

 

 

 

Don't go to this place if you want Starbucks to be ruined for you for life.

This place is for real hands down the best cappuccino I've ever had. Really, really good.

Google Map Link.

http://www.caffeartigiano.com/