Chance encounters

So this morning on my morning commute, I recognized one of the other Skytrain passengers as a guy I used to work with years ago at WebCT. We recognized each other instantly and spent the rest of our commute getting caught up. Just one of those little surprises that make the start of a day interesting. As it turns out, both of us have started new jobs, and are waist deep in the kind of work we want to be doing.

Then, on my way home, I run into ANOTHER person I used to work with at WebCT, and this one just happened to have heard from the first guy later that same day. Since he was at the mall to do some Christmas shopping, I was only too happy to help him procrastinate by taking time out to eat dinner. He started his new job a full week before I did.

All in all, it has been a pretty good day. I have been looking forward to getting in touch with people now that I'm back in town, so running into two of them unexpectedly was almost like an early Christmas present.

The building next door

The building next to our office is getting torn down. It's fun to watch, because they are paid to break stuff and make a mess. I really missed my calling, I think.

To be honest, I think I would want to be one of those crane operators. Hundreds of feet in the air, lifting and dropping heavy stuff. I'd at least like to try it out for a day.

I expect this is just one of many buildings that will be cleared off to make ready for nice shiny new buildings near to the Olympic Village site. Our neighborhood is due for a transformation, I guess. One thing that I will miss though is the graffiti. The second picture shows how busy the graffiti artists were - they went the entire length of the inside of this building. It went unnoticed until the construction crew took out the back wall.

Sometimes we get it right

Be patient with this link - it made it onto the digg front page and is suffering a bit. But it's calming down a bit now. I happened to get in and read this lady's article and agree with her. She basically rants for a while about how the phrase 'the customer is always right' is destroying common decency in north america these days. It's well written, kind of abusive (she's ranting, remember?) and articulates a valid point, at least in my mind.

Blues night

Last night, AMC was playing The Blues Brothers 2000. I just love that old movie. So much so, that I was having trouble staying focused on the chat conversation I had going on with my wife. She could tell and was laughing at me a bit whenever I lost place.

The hard part came when it was time to go to bed. Right after the movie finished, AMC decided to follow it up with the original The Blues Brothers movie. I watched about the first half hour or so, to see just how young Dan Ackroyd looked, etc.

Other than that, just working, commuting and sleeping. Oh yeah - and praying to God for some help selling our condo quickly.

Dreaming about being late for work

This morning I slept through my alarm. Not by a lot, but enough to put me a little behind schedule. The odd thing was that during that time, I was dreaming that I was late for work, and that I was rushing to finish whatever I was doing (there were a variety of activities) so that I might eventually get to the office.

But every activity I was doing seemed to take twice as long as usual to complete.

Needless to say, the theme of the dream remained constant until I eventually did wake up. And man, did I ever rush around at that point. So much so that I wasn't really late for work. On a side note, while at work I tend to use iTunes to listen to music. There are a bunch of others here who have shared their playlists, so I have taken to listening to what my co-workers have.

It has been an eye-opening experience, to say the least.

At the moment, I'm listening to Rick James, of all people. I can't help but think of Dave Chappelle as I listen. Well, specifically Charlie Murphy and his Rick James stories. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I suggest you rent Season Two of The Chappelle Show - it's on DVD. It will all make sense then.

UPDATE: BeeGees?? WTF? I can't believe I work with someone who still listens to disco. [skipping to next track]

No more ban on the water

I was in Metrotown mall yesterday, which is not all that exciting, since that is also where I catch the bus. So I'm pretty much there every weekday. But it was different yesterday.

Yesterday they had the Nintendo Wii on display.

There were four units available to be tried out, and they even had a fair amount of Nintendo staff to assist people with trying out the games. The whole thing was very well planned, and drew the kind of crowd I think that Nintendo would have been hoping for. They were also pretty smart to include a wide selection of titles to display. There was a bowling game, a first person shooter, a boxing game and another sporting title that I failed to pay attention to.

What interested me the most was the first person shooter. The staff on hand spent most of their time explaining how to use the controller to play the game. Some of the moves required were somewhat non-intuitive, I thought, but until I try for myself, I'll reserve judgement. An example of what I am talking about is the reload action, which involves 'shaking' the 'nunchuk' half of the controller. (I didn't actually speak with any of the staff, so I'm not 100% certain on the terminology.) The same action was used to open doors, and to change weapons. At times the player would crouch in the game, but I got the impression that he wasn't completely in control of that action.

The game also supported a zoom feature, which was very slick. The player would merely thrust the wand forward and the view would zoom in. Pull back, and the view would zoom out. From watching the people playing the Wii demo units, it looks like Nintendo hopes to reintroduce exercise into the living room. I think it is this factor more than any other that will relegate the Wii to the recreation rooms of family's households, instead of hooked up to the big screen in the living room. Mom's not going to want the kids jumping about, flailing their arms wildly in the living room.

Second worst trip to date

I made the trip from Vernon to Burnaby yesterday and it was one of the worst I have ever experienced to date.

Having said that, I managed to not have any accidents or mechanical failure, which means it was still a good trip. This is unlike the time when I blew an engine in my Jeep on the return trip from Vancouver - not so much fun.

Pictured right is a shot from inside the Great Bear Snow Shed - one of the few moments when the road conditions permitted me to actually grab a picture. I was doing about 40 kph here, so not very fast. (The posted limit is 110 kph through this stretch, and it's downhill.)

During the course of my trip, which took me approximately 8 hours to complete, I saw roughly a hundred cars either in the ditch, or in accidents, or stalled in a random lane of the highway. In all cases, it forced the drivers still on the road to slow down even more to ensure safe passage beyond.

I am not going to rant about the 'quality' of the other drivers who shared the road with me yesterday because quite frankly, many of those on the road were very cautious, responsible and courteous. For the most part, people were allowing extra space between vehicles, driving slower and generally not driving like an idiot. For the most part. Whenever an aggressive driver appeared, my general reaction was to slow down and let them go by - I really didn't feel like dealing with any bad driver drama yesterday.

The coup de grace came as I arrived at my destination - only to find a driveway in need of shovelling. Past experience has taught me to do it that night and not put it off until morning, as it tends to freeze and make life miserable.

I am really going to enjoy taking the Skytrain home tonight.

Overdue for a post

Vancouver has a water problem. Let me say that again, as it sounds wrong: Vancouver has a water problem. It's been raining steadily (as it always does this time of year) yet because of that, and the runoff into our water reservoir, nobody can drink the water.

Well, almost nobody. Basically the water is muddy, and because of that, the UV sterilization that normally helps kill bacteria doesn't work anymore. So how does this affect me? For one, I cannot drink the water at home. But more importantly, it is affecting coffee shops across the city in a much larger way - places like Starbucks and Tim Hortons are resorting to making coffee from bottled water, since they actually care about the taste of coffee. Other shops have taken the position that since the water gets heated up to a very hot temp, that the bacteria would be killed off anyway, so the water is safe for use. What they fail to mention is that they are still making coffee with muddy water. So basically the only people getting coffee from those shops are the people who want caffeine and don't care about the taste of what they are drinking.

Which is perfectly valid. It is safe, afterall. And for most folks, they won't be awake enough to care about taste until after the second (or third) cup. So the question is, where are you getting your coffee from this week?