I threatened (and anyone who knows me knows that means it’s as good as done) to do a snow dance naked in order to get some white stuff on the local ski hills.
Looks like it worked.
For anyone who was driving around Sunset Gardens earlier in the week and saw a pasty, pudgy, and damn cold blur go by their window – that was me.
Yikes. GB and I went up to Cypress today, even though we knew the only lift open was the Easy Rider chair which services the bunny hill (Runway).
I was really surprised to see how little snow there is on the mountain. Thanks to last week’s pineapple express, there’s no base left what-so-ever, even though the web site says they have 61 cm at mid-mountain. You can see from this picture at the top of the Easy Rider lift that the terrain above is pretty much rocks.
When you drive up you can see most of the way up the mountain, and there’s very little snow up there – the runs are all showing gravel or grass through the light dusting of snow. I actually think there was more snow in mid-October than there is today.
I gather they’re hauling snow up from the parking lots to keep the bunny hill open, which means it’s festooned with bits of rock and gravel. So if you’re going up, better buy some P-Tex. Better yet, leave your good board at home.
It sure brings home the vagaries of local weather. Last year, most of the mountain was open by mid-November.
I’m disappointed to hear the forecast calls for clearing tomorrow. Damn. We just need a couple of days of snowfall like we had a couple of weeks ago and we should be good to go.
I’m doing a snow dance tonite.
Naked.
I’m about a year and a half into my Mac conversion (My name is Robert, and I’m a Windows User).
I’m crazy about my MacBook Pro, but I have to be honest, in terms of hardware and software issues, its probably been more trouble than any of my previous laptops.
First there was the battery recall. Then my “magsafe” plug burned up. I’ve also gone through 2 keyboards (not on the MacBook itself, but regular full sized and NEW Mac keyboards). And the click button on my MacBook is sticky and has been for ages now. By comparison, my old Sony Viao only suffered a battery recall, is 6 years old and still running great.
It’s true the Mac doesn’t suffer the blue screen of death. It has a much prettier version, where a multi-language notice comes up all transparent like and tells you the machine is shutting down. A crash that’s so graceful and pretty is, well, so un-crash-like.
Since updating to Leopard I’ve had a myriad of software issues. I also find that I have to institute Mac’s version of CTL-ALT-DEL pretty often, except Mac calls is ‘force quit’ and it’s, well, every so graceful as well.
For you PC users – does any of this sound familiar ?
I’m just saying.
But here’s the thing. I’ve never had warranty service as outstanding as Apple Care. When I was going to switch to Mac, my pal Loc said whatever I did, make sure to buy Apple Care.
I did, and I’ve not regretted the expense.
Why ?
Because when I call to get something fixed, they fix/replace it right away, no questions asked. And they do things fast. When I called about my burned-up magsafe plug, I received a replacement via courier THE NEXT DAY.
I’m sure there are loads of Macs that never suffer any issues. However, don’t buy the hype because I don’t think my experience is all that unusual.
The thing that’s saved the entire switch for me – Apple Care.
Do you remember this man ? Obviously someone in Montreal does.
We’re just finding out now about an incident in downtown Montreal that saw former Prime Minister Joe Clark get punched in the face
“A fellow called my name and said: ‘Are you Joe Clark, the former prime minister?’ ” Clark said in an interview yesterday.
“My initial response was to say ‘Hi,’ and off I went. He then came along beside me and repeated it. And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he then hit me once on the face. He then swiveled and was away quickly.” Clark said he was shocked but not severely injured. Full story in the Montreal Gazette
This happened the 3rd week in November – and Clark didn’t actually report it to police until two days later.
Its snappy across Canada tonight.
Break out the shortie long johns in St. John’s Newfoundland, they’re burning up the joint with an overnight low of minus 3 C.
Good old Winnipeg holds the honour for tonight’s low. As Jay puts it, cold enough to freeze your goolies.
Oh yeah, “but it’s a dry cold”.
Entrance to Waterfront Park in North Vancouver
I’m a Scot by marriage only, but this is devastating news
More than 10,000 bottles of single malt Scotch Whisky have been stolen in a raid, police have revealed.
The bottles of Bowmore Islay Single Malt, with a retail value of almost £300,000, were taken from a haulier in Hertfordshire on Tuesday.
The haul included various aged bottles of Bowmore, from 12 years old to 25 years old.
EB and I spent our honeymoon driving around Northern Scotland in a much-too-small rental car, and we did visit the occasional distillery.
You’d never drink the stuff if you had a wiff of the residue, but there’s something about a single malt that’ll make a Scot out of just about anyone.
A lump of coal for Christmas for the mastermind behind this cruel assault on Scottish sensibility (and good taste).
I think we should all visit the Bowmore web site and pay our respect.
Hang on, I see you can even order on line or rent one of their cottages. Rent a cottage at a Scotch distillery ? Hmmmm, I might be busy for a bit…
Aeroplan reminds of a Vegas casino. It’s Air Canada’s rewards program, and the no matter whether you’re high roller or a low roller, odds are Aeroplan comes out on top.
Over the last few years, they’ve crawled back the number of miles you earn, while at the same time, increasing the number of miles required to fly. Plus, they make using reward miles a real pain. Just try to book a non-stop flight in Canada on reward miles. Almost impossible.
My parter EB is still ticked at them for having to forfeit what few miles she had in last spring’s “use em or lose em” promotion. She was in a classic Aeroplan Catch 22. She hardly flies any more but still had 750 reward miles sitting in her account.
There is absolutely NOTHING you can buy with that few miles. She tried to trade them at points.com but they wouldn’t even compute that few miles. When she tried to use Aeroplan’s ‘donate your miles to charities’ function, she discovered that there was a minimum threshold of 1000 miles. Even giving her miles to me was problematic because Aeroplan charges a fee to do that. Ouch. She ended up forfeiting the miles because there was essentially no way for her to redeem them.
Annoying to say the least.
So, a few days ago, I got an email from Aeroplan offering me FREE miles for filling out a survey. What were they offering ? 100 miles.
Well, lets see if we can establish the value on those 100 miles.
On their rewards chart, I can get a Creative Live! Cam Video IM Pro for 9500 miles.
That unit sells at Future Shop today for 69.99. But wait, there’s a 30.00 dollar rebate offer, so it’s only worth 39.99.
9500 miles = $39.99 today.
That means 1 Aeroplan mile is worth about $0.0042
That generous offer of 100 miles to do a survey ?
About 42 cents. Gee, thanks Aeroplan.
I think I’ve just invented a new ever-so-web-2-dot-oh term.
It came to me after reading this story on Om Malik’s blog:
In the pre-blog world, when you left a company, they would escort you out of the building. Now they zap your blog. There are rumors that Motorola CTO Padmasree Warrior had resigned and was leaving the beleaguered mobile phone maker. Well, those rumors must be true. Suddenly all the entires on her popular blog have been zapped. And if you try and go there, you get redirected to a generic Motorola page.
I figure this is going to be a fairly common situation, and it needs a name. I think this is perfect:
Works eh?
From CBC news via Yahoo.com
Citing a lack of respect in the workplace and low salaries, the employees at three Prince Edward Island radio stations have become unionized.
On-air personalities and office staff at Magic 93, CFCY and Spud FM were officially certified last week. They are now members of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union
Hmmmm. This is all fine and well, but I ask you – if you work for a station called Spud FM, just how much respect can you expect to get ?
Over on Facebook I set up a group called HatBook.
I’d noticed that a lot of my friends were wearing hats in their Facebook picture, so that was the inspiration for the group – though inspiration is a much too large word for the action in question.
Regardless, I’ve been strip mining for articles about hats to post on the group, and am constantly surprised at what turns up.
If you’re interested, join us on HatBook in Facebook and enjoy the mindless-but-head-warming hat fun.
My friends, particularly those from eastern Canada, often say to me:
Dude, how can you live there. It’s dark, it rains all the time, everybody’s either stoned or meat deprived and you’re always 3 hours behind the real world.
To which I say:
Click on these pictures shot today in downtown Vancouver.
Cypress is opening tomorrow Friday 30th November, but the only lift they’ll open is the easy rider (bunny hill). I guess it lets them say they opened in November.
The weather is supposed to stay cold but it’s annoyingly CLEAR and SUNNY right now – who thought anyone in Vancouver would be complaining about that. Sunday is supposed to be snowing so here’s hoping we get a dump and they can open up some terrain.
The striking writers from Late Night with David Letterman have a web site.
I’m sure it’s a joke, I just don’t get the punchline. It totally reminds me of sites we used to make in 1996, except it has YouTube. And YouTube. And YouTube.
I sure hope this strike is over soon.
I know where me and the Jeep will be on Friday if they do…from the Cypress Mountain web site.
21cm OF FRESH SNOW ! WITH MORE IN THE FORECAST FOR TODAY, THERE’S A POSIBILITY OF OPENING ON FRIDAY – STAY TUNED!
Bloomberg’s reporting that AOL and Yahoo may pull the plug entirely on their web radio. Why ? A 38% increase in royalties to air music.
Yahoo and AOL stopped directing users to their radio sites after SoundExchange, the Washington-based group representing artists and record labels, began collecting the higher fees in July. Those royalties may stifle the growth of Internet radio, which increased listeners 39 percent in the past year, according to researcher ComScore Inc. in Reston, Virginia. full story here
The wheels started coming off the bus back in March when the copyright board brought in pay-for-play fees based on recommendations by record companies.
If more internet radio stations follow suite, the people who’ll be hurt the most are the artists themselves as they watch their online exposure dwindle.
Now that makes sense.
The Pier. More from a full moon evening on Flickr.
Alien Skin has posted updates on their web site – these fix issue with various Alien Skin Photoshop plug-ins that stopped working with Leopard.
Installs went perfectly well – nice to have the plug-ins back.
The work I do centres around communication and technology. I hear the word technology a lot in my day to day work. And mostly when I hear the word ‘technology’ I think computers, the internet, video cameras, cool new gadgets, that sort of thing.
When I put a new set of tires on my car this week, I was hit smack in the head by technology. Its not sexy, and doesn’t make the tech pages of your local paper, but tire technology means I now have a smoother, quieter ride – even though I thought we had already reached tire nirvana.
Interestingly, the tires I bought have a more aggressive tread than previous, yet the ride is remarkably smoother and quieter. My old set of mud/snow tires were from the same manufacturer, Michelin.
Since I’m only using my old Jeep Cherokee occasionally now that we’ve got a Yaris, I figured a more aggressive tread would be ideal for those winter trips to Cypress and other snowboard destinations. This week I bought a brand new model, the LTX A/T 2.
I wasn’t expecting a smoother quieter ride – in fact quite the opposite.
I bought them the Tireland on the North Shore, and the guys were pretty jazzed about installing them since they’re a brand new line. They even gave me a deal on the price, on top of Michelin’s 100-dollar cash back promotion (on until the end of December in case you’re looking – get a coupon on their web site).
Bargain aside (and I like a good bargain) I couldn’t believe the difference when I drove away. Jeeps the vintage of mine (91) aren’t known for their smooth ride, so anything helps. It’s impressive when technology improvements are that pronounced – now I can’t wait to get a little snow under them.
