Winter Pictures

It's almost the end of winter. OK, sorry, it IS the end of winter! I believe it, despite what I see with my eyes!

Well, actually it was a bit warmer today. I have to say. The snow banks are melting and people are discovering all kinds of lost items that have been burried since November.

These are some pics I had in my phone that I hadn't got round to uploading yet so here they are. Each one is a link to the relevant page in my Flickr account.

Canadian Tire Cat

Canadian Tire Cat
Originally uploaded by theken.

This is rather disturbing. I was in Canadian Tire (a home hardware shop for the Brits) with Drew and we noticed this cat sitting around like he owned the place. It was so bizarre. The weird thing was that I think he did own the place. He didn't have a name badge saying he was the manager or anything like that but I had this "sense" that he was in charge.

 

The day Jeremy Wright came to play

Jeremy Wright
Originally uploaded by theken.

It was a very odd day, last Wednesday. It was especially odd for my old boss Jeremy who tried to fly to the US for a blogging job. He was prompty stopped at the airport and detained for two hours with a couple of strip searches thrown in for good measure.

He came over to our office instead to regroup after his ordeal. (The US Customs authorities have a place at Toronto Airport, before you get on the plane) We ended up making the most of the visit and playing CounterStrike:Source for the better part of the evening on our LAN. I won, incidentally. :)

I happened to spot an article about it in today's Toronto Metro magazine. (Jeremy not getting into the US, not me beating him at CS:Source) It was so bizarre. I was on the subway, heading downtown to an MSDN seminar and I happened to notice Jeremy's picture on someone's newspaper. Here's a link to the paper. He's on page 3. (Trying hard not to make a page 3 joke for british readers.)

 

What's worse than having to re-write a post?

I'll tell you - it's looking at your blog and discovering that the first time round it was published after all. Aagh! Well, you got a slightly better story the second time around but I could have done without the 20 extra minutes of writing that it took. Boo hoo.

I'm going to Denmark!

Ok, so I know this is pretty random, even by my standards but I've decided to go to Denmark for a week. Work's been really stressing me out a lot recently. I just feel so overwhelmed with the amount of things that need done and the pile only gets bigger. People keep coming up with great ideas for new programs we could write but I'm only one developer and it's getting insane.

You could be excused for asking "Why Denmark" as you may have guessed I'm not just going to hop across the Atlantic to a country chosen entirely at random. No, there is a significance to this nation. I have a friend there who I've been getting to know over the past 3 months and I thought it'd be fun to just head on over to say "Hi".

I should mention here that this is my second attempt to post this message. I was in the middle of publishing it earlier and I pressed the backspace key, thinking the focus was on another window. It had the effect of choosing the "Back" function of my browser. When I clicked "Forward" again it was too late. My post had evaporated in a puff of cosmic dust. Gah, I hate it when that happens. If I had a penny for every e-mail that went up in a puff of cosmic dust I'd have...well one penny. Anyway...

I'm really hoping there's blossom on the trees when I'm in Denmark. I love blossom. I just figured out why I like it so much. Consider snow. Snow is great, snow is fun but snow can become tiring after a while - especially here in Ontario. It's like pre-Aslan Narnia. The winter never seems to end. On the other hand, consider the fleeting life of blossom. It just bursts out of nowhere, adorns the trees like Solomon's splendour and then in no time at all is trampled underfoot. It's an amazing explosion of artistic colour, a heavenly exclamation that life has returned to the trees and warmer weather is just around the corner. I love blossom.

Four weeks today I'll be at the airport. If only I could go sooner. I love being spontaneous and even four weeks seems a long time to wait. Ah, it'll pass soon enough!

St. Patrick was an amazing man!

I was reflecting on the amount of aggressive "Why aren't you wearing green?" attacks that have been hurled my way today. It's just interesting how something that started out as a holy day, a commemoration of a life of sacrifice, has degenerated into Guinness, wearing green, Leprichauns, shamrocks, pots of gold etc...

The truth is that in St. Patrick we see a man who was born in Scotland and captured by Irish warriors who sold him into slavery when he was 16 years old. He then spent 6 years as a farmer for a chieftan who was also a druidical high priest. He escaped back to Britain and chose to devote his life to God. He returned to Ireland and pretty much converted the nation from Druidism to Christianity.

That's an amazing life, a great story. It's such a great story that green beer just seems childish by comparison. (No, not child-like - childish, pointless, shallow, trivial.) What have we done to the holy days of our past? How do we remember the people God's used as instruments of his signs and wonders? We see how much Guinness we can drink. (sigh) It bothers me.

The whole story of St. Patrick can be read here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm

I leave you with one of St. Patrick's prayers, known as "St. Patrick's Breast-Plate".

I bind to myself today
The strong virtue of the Invocation of the Trinity:
I believe the Trinity in the Unity
The Creator of the Universe.

I bind to myself today
The virtue of the Incarnation of Christ with His Baptism,
The virtue of His crucifixion with His burial,
The virtue of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
The virtue of His coming on the Judgement Day.

I bind to myself today
The virtue of the love of seraphim,
In the obedience of angels,
In the hope of resurrection unto reward,
In prayers of Patriarchs,
In predictions of Prophets,
In preaching of Apostles,
In faith of Confessors,
In purity of holy Virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I bind to myself today
The power of Heaven,
The light of the sun,
The brightness of the moon,
The splendour of fire,
The flashing of lightning,
The swiftness of wind,
The depth of sea,
The stability of earth,
The compactness of rocks.

I bind to myself today
God's Power to guide me,
God's Might to uphold me,
God's Wisdom to teach me,
God's Eye to watch over me,
God's Ear to hear me,
God's Word to give me speech,
God's Hand to guide me,
God's Way to lie before me,
God's Shield to shelter me,
God's Host to secure me,
Against the snares of demons,
Against the seductions of vices,
Against the lusts of nature,
Against everyone who meditates injury to me,
Whether far or near,
Whether few or with many.

I invoke today all these virtues
Against every hostile merciless power
Which may assail my body and my soul,
Against the incantations of false prophets,
Against the black laws of heathenism,
Against the false laws of heresy,
Against the deceits of idolatry,
Against the spells of women, and smiths, and druids,
Against every knowledge that binds the soul of man.

Christ, protect me today
Against every poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against death-wound,
That I may receive abundant reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ within me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ at my right, Christ at my left,
Christ in the fort,
Christ in the chariot seat,
Christ in the poop,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I bind to myself today
The strong virtue of an invocation of the Trinity,
I believe the Trinity in the Unity
The Creator of the Universe.

Butter or Margarine?

It's the age-old debate that came to the fore last night as I tried to butter my bread for my sandwiches for today's lunch. You see, I've learned that margarine isn't good for you and in fact is only one molecule away from plastic (thanks to Mr. Gazaneo for that) but I'm having issues with butter, too. If you try to spread butter straight after taking it out of the fridge, you end up tearing the helpless bread into tatters. I have also tried to store my butter in the cupboard, resulting in a nasty, oily puddle forming in my cupboard. Grr! Is there no end to the madness? Someone must know of a way of getting butter to do its job without driving me INSANE!

Moving an IT Department

It's really not a small task by any means to move an entire IT Department. Admittedly, we don't have many employees in IT but I'm thinking more of servers and network cables. Yesterday, we did a 12 hour shift and managed to move all the servers into the new location as well as redirect a few critical cables that connect to our other building. We had already re-routed the the network cabling for the upstairs of the office a couple of days earlier so that saved some time. Now everything's up and running except for the downstairs computers in the same building as the servers. We were re-routing 34 cables that were all converging on one patch panel in the old server room and it turns out that they're about 8 feet short of the new location of the patch panel. As I write this, my boss is pummelling the floor of our new office with a variety of chisels, hammers and drills to make a hole through to downstairs so we can take a shorter route and hopefully have enough cable to spare. I can see why some bright spark invented wireless networking. It certainly saves time when moving office. On the other hand, it's not quite as reliable as old fashioned cat5 cables.

On the downside, my back's sore again today. I think it's from all the active work twisting, pulling and climbing yesterday while re-routing the cables. God, please heal my back! I know you can! This healing belongs to me because of what Jesus did on the cross. I receive it now in Jesus' name. Amen!

Blue Mountain - 7th time this season

On thursday night, I went to Blue Mountain for the seventh time this season. I like to count because I want to be sure I've got the value out of my night pass. It cost me $100 and if I bought a lift pass each visit, it would cost me $30 a time so I've definitely saved money with the pass. Last year I went 12 times, though, and I feel I'm still a bit behind on my quota!

I was taking it easy this week because last time I hurt my back a bit. Now Mum, I know you're reading this and are going to say "be careful" but I didn't actually fall when my back got sore. I went over a small jump and when I landed my back started to hurt. It turns out I should stretch before and after exercise. Who'd have thought it?

I've been re-acquainting myself with the chiropractor and physiotherapist and I'm back on the stretches. It's so hard to find the motivation when you don't hurt any more. One day I will touch my toes! I believe it! I can do it!

The conditions at Blue were really good, though. It wasn't very cold and there was a nice layer of snow on the surface. We're not talking deep powder here, but enough that when you turn you kick up a nice cloud. It was so hard to hold back, though. I want to keep going faster and higher. I love the feeling of being in control at high speed and zipping down the hill. It's such a great sense of freedom.

Crazy hours

It's saturday morning but rather than sleeping which would be my normal endeavour, I'm in work for a day of re-directing network cabling throughout the building. It's a pretty big job when you think how many computers are concerned. I can see why wireless networks were invented. I think it was probably some frustrated guy installing cables that thought to himself one day, "There must be a better way of doing it than this!"