Calgarapalooza 2009

Well at long last I flew out to Calgary, to visit Reece who moved there in December. Hadn't been back to the city since October 2007, when we flew overseas....

Shitty start to the weekend, as my flight was delayed just over 3 hours due to a problem with the left wheel. Oh well, better that than us crashing on takeoff/landing. Drank 3 pints in the airport followed by 2 beer in the plane, thus was adequately primed for the show by the time Reece picked me up in his sweet neon. The Armin show itself was pretty good - unfortunatly his trance seems to be getting gayer every time i hear it. We also met up with the Robster and his new chicka, and after the party we "smuggled" in a bottle of wisers to his hotel room and got at it until 8 AM (of which I remmeber up to 4 AM).

Friday we woke up late and headed to Spolumbos, only to find it closed... so we went to Tazza instead, then played some frisbee in the +17, picked up a heineken minikeg and went off to Rasta's. Chilled out there until about 8 PM, at which point we were going to go to the warehouse but Rob and company pussed out. So we went back to their room until 4 AM or so then had a good sleep in prep for Saturday.

After getting up, had a sweet sandwich from Spolumbos, then went to Schanks and played some virtual golf for 9 holes. Shot something like +12 ... on Bighorn. Headed back to the apartment, had some Shepherd's Pie from Ceilis, then went to the back alley for some carnage. On the way back, got into an hour long discussion about Jihad with the cab driver... Reece stole a monkey.. and after we actually got to his apartment - it got pretty stupid.

Sunday was chill, we went walking to Kensington and watched hockey and the (brutal) masters finish.

Got back to the peg expecting to have a relaxing week, only to realize that the Bodom/as i lay dying/lamb of god show was on that night, so rushed down to that. Got home around 12:30. Then I'm sitting in my living room on Wednesday, only to have Betz and Dressler show up. Cannibal Corpse show? I fucking guess so. Got home around 12 again.

What a week!

Now, queue the playoffs. GO WINGS GO.

SPP notes

From http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1429144751008474466&hl=en - The Nation's Deathbed.

The SPP asks for a "harmonizing" of trade barriers - effectively making us adopt slacker or Canada-harming practices, eg. quality of food.

It asks for proportional sharing - meaning if we start shipping out water, if we (in the future) have a shortage we may need to ship the SAME amount south, and import as necessary.  NAFTA already requires us to ship 2/3 of oil and 1/2 of natural gas.

The Bank of Canada is owned by us, the Federal Reserve is owned privately.  If the SPP turns to the NAU and the Amero is implemented, then we have lost complete soverignty (agreed).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P6VkjI6QK8

Well worth seven minutes of your time.  I highly suggest that all Canadians research the SPP and become congnizant of what it will do if implemented.

Wired's top 10 paranoia movies

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/multimedia/2009/03/gallery_paranoidfilms?slide=2&slideView=2

10. The conversation - downloading.

9. Pi - a great movie, a bit slow at times, yet nutty all around.

8. The Game - have not heard of or seen.

7. Dr. Strangelove - kubrick classic!

6. Safe (1995) - Julianne Moore.  A seemingly happy-enough housewife and stepmother in 1990s Northern California, until she begins to have unexplainable seizures. Suspecting that chemicals in water, car exhaust and beauty cream are killing her, every moment in White's suburban life turns becomes just another room in a postmodern horror-movie fun house.

Sounds fun. 

5. Blade Runner - another classic movie that first began to question what I call the "terminator" futuristic fork.  Rutger Hauer perfectly casted.

4. A Scanner Darkly - decent movie, not as great IMO as some said it was.  Very similar to Waking Life, also by Linklater, of course.

3. Brazil - Brazil (1985)

In Terry Gilliam's classic dystopia, the government plasters the grimy walls with exhortations like "Don't suspect a friend. Report him." Terrorists strike everywhere, the Ministry of Information Retrieval does its work with pliers, and storm troopers are at the disposal of a bumbling bureaucracy. Bumbling bureaucrat Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) finds himself battling for love and justice and sanity after rogue electrician and wanted 'terrorist' Harry Tuttle ziplines into his life. What happens to an honest man in a world where the government is paranoid, inept and yet, all-powerful?

I havn't heard of this either?  Downloading..

2.  Three days of the Condor - 1975 - Robert Redford - many moons since i've seen that one.

1. Dark City - I found this mediocre, at best.

Calgary april 9.  Very Excite.

Wow have I been busy.. or have I

Just arrived back from Cuba.. an interesting trip to say the least.  Went with Kayla, her Mom and Dennis, Rory, KristinX2.  Pretty much a week of drinking and relaxing.  First all-inclusive trip, and to be honest I don't think I am much of a beach guy as I've always got to be doing something.  Thankfully, we got in 36 holes of golf, which went well as soon as I tamed the slice.  Plenty of frisbee and football were played, and I'm still peeling.

We left on Friday the 13th in the early hours, arriving at Varadero around 2-3 PM local time (which is only one hour ahead, equivalent to EST).  Took a bus to Barcelo Marina Palace, checked in, went out for supper, and everyone went to bed early as we had awoken around 4 AM to get to the airport.  Saturday was fairly relaxed, lots of frisbee and beach, the girls went out and partied while we rested up for the golf game on Sunday.. turns out we shouldn't have, as We both shot over 90.  Course was OK, I mean what are you going to do with it being the only course in the country.  Dry.  SOme nice ocean views.

Everyone except for Rory and I went on a catamaran on Monday, so we commenced drinking around 10 AM.  It was a mess.  Lots of cards were played, we met a few peeps and didn't stop drinking until the supper buffet, where I couldn't remember where I was.. then we went to the disco, which was a sweet call as I don't remember a thing.  

Tuesday was into Havana, another sweet day.  Snapped a few decent pics of their city architecture/landscape and the fort that was used to protect the city back in the day.   Two hour trip by bus to and from Havana from Varadero.  Worth it.

Wednesday was our last golf game, shot a bit better (83) with 5 or 6 three putts.  Really too bad because the rest of my game was starting to round into form.  Then Thursday was chillaxed as we prepped for our Friday trip home.

What else.. prepping my IT return , it is default $1609 but with 2000$ contribution it becomes 2167 and with $3000 $2446.  Essentially creating $2554 out of thin air, me likey.

Fallout 3 has also consumed many hours since our arrival back - should be completed it this week so I can start going hard on 70-642:Configuring Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure (MCP).

Weighed in at 182, was expecting under 180 considering the abs I have now that I did not have pre-trip.  BCAA (Leukic) gains = impressive.

Soyuz 4/5

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2009/01/dayintech_0116
So basically, after a rendezvous in earth orbit as a training mission for a potential moon mission:

- Soyuz 5's service module failed to detach at retrofire, twisting the vehicle and leaving the heat shield pointed the wrong way as it re-entered the atmosphere. The interior filled with noxious fumes as the gaskets sealing the hatch started to burn. Eventually, the stress and heat being generated outside the spacecraft caused the connecting struts on the service module to finally give way and flip the heat shield the right way.
- In the chaos of re-entry, some of Soyuz 5's parachute cables fouled, resulting in only a partial chute deployment. Just to ice the cake a bit, the soft-landing rockets failed, too, so Volynov was very aware of impact when his hardy Soyuz module plowed into the earth. It hit the ground so hard, in fact, that Volynov broke his teeth.
- he landed in the Ural Mountains, where he was greeted by a local temperature measuring a brisk minus 36 degrees Fahrenheit With rescue several hours away at best, our intrepid cosmonaut decided to hoof it for safety. He plodded a few kilometers before finding a cheery fire and a brimming samovar in the cottage of a welcoming peasant.

Amazing!

Holidasy are over

And yet again, I completely forget about this thing..

- Was able to get to the farm from Dec. 23 to 28.. well, some of those to town and some to the farm. On the 26th Adams came down and we hit up the boxing day cab in Hazy.. good times, saw maner and kramer as well as ATP - hadn't seen any of them since mid 07 / 06 . The next day was the Lang cab, which culminated back at Betz's place with a 40 of the spiced....

- I'm buying a ping pong table for my basement.

- New Years was farily eventful, went to a party at Pantages' Play House here in Winnipeg. Everyone came up, and we did 'er up until 8 AM. I awoke around 2 PM in decent shape, but by nighttime I had developed a monster cold so I had to miss work the next day and ended up with a 4 day weekend.

- Dec. 30 also brought me a PS3 along with 2 wireless dualshocks, hot shots outtabounds, and HL2: Orange Box. Been gaming those quite a bit lately, as I havn't really gamed at all since early 2004 (ommitting my NES bootable disk for DC, of course...)

- Jan. 3 was the best night of sports in a long long while. I was PIP'ing the SD/IND and the WJHC games, can't believe Indy lost all because of losing a coin flip. I can't believe the format for NFL overtime games, it makes little to no sense to have a game decided (potentially) on random chance. So now my NFL team is gone, at least the Red Wings are still obliterating the competition.

- Started a six week routine in preparation for Cuba. Bought 180 caps of leukic, and devised the following split (of which I have done one workout (1) ):

1) Back/Bi
i.BO ROW 10-8-6-4-4
ii.Lat PD 10x4
iii.Cable Row 4x10-8-6-6 superset with Pullover 3x12
v.Bicep triset (pronated, neutral, supinated) x3x6-8 each
vi. 2xfail of DB preacher curls

2)Shoulder/Tri, rest, 3) Legs, 4) Chest/Bi to be added in here as they are completed.

175 lb. as of Jan. 5/2009 .

Also starting to count calories. 3400 today... should be enough.

Part research

Time to start getting a grasp of the new hardware technologies available. Post one: hard drives.

Obviously we're going SATA II here. I am doing a RAID mirror (1) with two Seagate drives minimum 1 TB.

15TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA II (32mb Cache) - http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX21884(ME).aspx


1 TB (same specs but iwth NCQ) - http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX18814(ME).aspx


NCQ = native command queuing. Review @ http://techreport.com/articles.x/7750

[img]http://techreport.com/r.x/nforce4-ultra/ncq-diagram.gif[/img]
simple. if it works.

But to read the conclusion, it really has little effect on benching at this time.

A review of the 1.5 TB @ http://techreport.com/articles.x/15730/12 also is alarming -

"The fact that the 1.5TB Barracuda excels in some arenas and stumbles badly in others makes me question Seagate's decision to pair its new 375GB platters with a year-old 7200.11 core. Even in its day, the original 7200.11 wasn't the fastest drive on the market; in some instances, the one-point-five is actually slower. If you're looking to cram as much capacity as possible into a 3.5" drive bay, the 'cuda is certainly the best option by a good 500GB. However, the drive's poor real-world write speeds make it a tough sell for PC enthusiasts who can find much better all-around performance elsewhere."

tbc..