Fun in Copenhagen.

I've been settling in to Danish time which is 6 hours ahead of Toronto. I'm still not quite adjusted and I find myself tired in the afternoon and wide awake at bedtime. Today I got up at 8:30, though, and just had a nap before dinner.

I've been to the PIH church in Copenhagen although I couldn't tell you where it is. We took two buses and a subway to get there. I enjoyed the worship although I didn't bother getting anyone to translate for me so I spent the whole message trying to guess what they were saying.

Today I went to the Planetarium with Camilla. It's a big cinema which I think is the same as the iMax technology we have back in Scotland. We watched a documentary about natural disasters such as volcanoes, earthquakes and tornados. It made me smile when I saw the tornados and I remembered the time when I told one to go away and it did!

We still need to visit Hans Christian Andersen's grave which I believe is just across the road from where we are just now. Tomorrow morning we're getting up early to get the train to Århus. Hopefully I'll have another chance to do an update soon.

Rock On!

Rock Rings
Originally uploaded by theken.

I recently bought some Metolius Rock Rings from the Mountain Equipment Co-Op but it's taken me a while to get all the equipment to actually attach it to my wall.

Last night I finally got it all finished. This is by far the biggest Home Improvements (or DIY) adventure I've ever had. Prior to this, the biggest thing I ever did was to attach an Ikea mirror to my bathroom wall.

This latest project was a bit tricky. I had to mount a 2 by 6 (or "bit o' wid" for you Scots out there) on the wall using three 5 inch bolts that I (ok my friend Thomas) drilled all the way through the concrete wall. I also attached six "bolt hangers" to the wood so that I could clip the rock rings into a variety of positions for wider or narrower holds. Now all I need is some upper body strength to actually hold on!

 

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!"

Bed Head

bed head
Originally uploaded by theken.

I was most amused this morning while trying to focus on my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My hair is finally long enough to form "bed head", it would seem. So happy was I with this discovery that I left it protruding at a rather strange angle all day rather than flattening it down with some water.

 

Make Poverty History

I just went to the Make Poverty History website for the first time and wanted to write a bit about it here. You will notice there's now a white band at the top-right of my blog, linking to there. I think we, the blessed minority in the wealthiest nations in the world have a responsibility to the poor. The bible talks so much about caring for the poor and I think that we've not done a great deal to help people in the long term. There are so many people who are trapped in a hopeless situation, with no way of ever paying their way out. We need to communicate to our leaders that the impossible debts third world countries owe the west need to be reduced or even dropped all together.

We really are so blessed here with all that we have. Thank you, God, for my warm home, my hot running water and the abundance of food around me.

Canadian Tax Returns

Man, there's one thing that's definitely not fun about living in Canada and that is filling out your Tax Return. I've filled out so many forms in my time ranging from an application for a Visa to work in Pakistan to applications for a Canadian Work Permit and Canadian Permanent Residence.

The whole laborious process of filling out all these tax forms EVERY YEAR and sending it all away is so unbelievably annoying. It's another complicated set of forms to add to the pile. I liked it better in the UK where we didn't need to do any of that. OK, you might argue it's good this way because you get money back but I now feel like I've just earned that money all over again with all the work I did filling out the forms!

Clotheslined at Blue!

I had the most entertaining time at Blue Mountain on Friday evening. I went up with Shaun and Dave and we met up with Daniel, Chris and Chris' friend from his band whose name escapes me now. (Sorry, man!)

We were bombing it down the hill and Daniel introduced us to a pretty cool line you can take down Waterfall (one of the runs at the south end of the hill) which involves ducking under a red tape and then going through the bunny hill at the end.

After we did the run we thought it'd be fun to race it. Well, right away Dave had an advantage because he was on skis and there were some flat parts where he definitely benefitted from his poles for additional propulsion. The race went quite well although I was last or second last. I seem to remember beating Chris because I cut him off at a corner.

The second time we raced it was REALLY funny, though. We were all converging on a rather critical section of the race. The red tape was about 3 feet off the ground, between two rather solid, vertical poles which were quite close together. I noticed as we approached that we were all about to go through this small opening at the same time, heading in slightly different directions as well. I had a sudden, unexpected moment of sanity where I realized I was on a collision course with a number of people. I turned to brake and was skidding towards the (thankfully padded) pole at an alarming rate of knots. Somehow I missed the pole but didn't duck far enough under the tape and was "clotheslined" in true wrestling fashion. I somehow flipped over onto my front as well so I was left lying on my belly, facing back up the hill. I laughed so hard for a considerable time. Poor Daniel was asking me if I was ok and I couldn't stop laughing to answer him. My right hand was the only part of me that was slightly sore and I think that's because I held it up to protect myself from the tape which amazingly was not damaged by the collision.

I love snowboarding. It's so much fun!

Oh dear, technology can be a pain...

We had a bit of a disaster in the office this past weekend. There was a power outage which resulted in all kinds of disruption but by far the most significant was the loss of our Active Directory Server. I won't bore you with techy speak for why that's really bad news but to cut a long story short, we now need to re-create the user accounts (usernames & passwords) for all the people in our organization, re-create all the e-mail groups, network permissions for shared resources and the user profiles that people are using to store their settings.

It's amazing how much we depend on a computer system every day and when it fails nobody can do ANY WORK whatsoever!

Crazy.

New home

I just moved into a new place on Saturday. It's a bit different but I think things are going to be good. I'm now staying at the top of an apartment building which would allow me to see for miles around if it wasn't for the smog/fog obscuring the view.

We now have free electricity and heat which is a great deal. Also, my rent is $47 less per month than my previous place so I think I'm going to save a bit which is good.

I want to say more but I haven't forgotten that the Internet can be a bit of a freaky place at times and I don't especially want to tell the world where I live.

I find it interesting how I never feel really settled in a new place. Even with this one, I'm already thinking of how I don't know how long I'll stay there. I never feel it's time to really establish myself in a place for a long period of time. I don't know why that is.

Happy Burns' Day!

If you're not Scottish, today is just another day. However, today we remember the birthday of our national poet, Robert (or Rabbie) Burns. Many people around the world will attend a Burns Supper where his poetry will be read and many a haggis, neep and tattie will be devoured enthusiastically. His most famous work is probably Auld Lany Syne which is often sung at New Year. All I know about Burns is that he was a Freemason, a womanizer and he didn't think much of the church. So, all in all, I wouldn't vote for him but he's a famous Scot nonetheless.

Here's one of his poems about accidentally destroying a mouse's home while ploughing a field. It contains a lot of old vocabulary which I don't entirely understand myself.

To A Mouse (On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough)
1785
Type: Poem

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell-
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e.
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

New stance - new lease of life!

Last night I was at Blue Mountain for the 3rd time this season. It was rather chilly. (or flippin' baltic as we'd say back home) It was so cold, in fact that I discovered ice forming on my moustache which was the only exposed area of facial hair. Rather odd sensation, it was. I felt like I'd spilled hair gel on my lip and now it had dried.

The biggest thing about last night, though, was the significance of my new stance. For those of you not sure what I'm talking about, your stance is the positioning and orientation of your feet on the board. I made a change prior to this trip and widened the stance a bit and rotated my right foot so now I ride in a duck feet stance.

The result of the change is that now I can crouch down a lot more as I ride and I can balance over the board better. With that new-found skill, I think I probably made a new personal land speed record last night. I was going pretty fast and I hit a bumpy patch of snow and just crouched and hoped for the best. I got catapulted into the air once or twice and came out the other end with a slightly higher pulse and an amazing sense of exhilaration. It was awesome. Now I just need to get more air over these bumps...