“Check back while our fearless hero travels to lands never before visited… okay maybe for him.”
Let’s just say my trip to Nicaragua was a foreshadow for a longer trip to… Montevideo, Uruguay!
Starting tonight, I make the long commute down to Montevideo via Santiago de Chile, Chile until June 1st. 9 hours to Chile, 5 hours at the airport, and 2 hours to Montevideo.
This past weekend was the 25th anniversary of my high school opening and the 20th anniversary of my graduation from Bishop P.F. Reding Secondary School in Milton.
The school started in 1986 in Speyside which was a small village just north of Milton on, what was at the time, Highway 25. I was the last set of new students to actually set foot in Speyside, and while I might not have the appreciation for the experience at Speyside as others who spent a full year or two there, I do look back at Speyside as the starting point for a great and challenging (in a good way) time period in my life.
The school offered so much to students – so many after-school activities, athletic clubs, and so many opportunities for students to shine – if you, as a student, took them. And I’m very pleased to see that continue today.
Walking through the school this weekend, watching my former peers, students through the years, and current student perform during the Talent Show brought back some very good and fun memories of video taping the Talent Show and school play every year. The passion, watching the students and the staff put together the various productions and the famous “If I were not a teacher” skit that was put on every year.
That infectious passion was not just applicable to the Talent Show and school play, but it felt like it was in everything that everyone did at BR. Okay, so there were definitely a few curmudgeons here and there in both the teacher and student populations, and I’m aware of questionable things that happened on both sides, but hey, what work environment isn’t without it’s silly drama?
I very much look back on those years with considerable appreciation. My time at BR very much shaped who I am today. At one level I am surprised by that, but at another I am not. How I work with my clients today, my appreciation for grammar, my mentorship activities at work and within the community, my involvement with HIV/AIDS action – all started with high school. Looking back, it’s where the things that are important to me first started to form, although I was not totally aware of it.
High school allowed me to get some really neat experiences that I would not have otherwise had. What stands out for me are:
I have to admit, I always thought I wasn’t that involved in the school, but truth is, and the same is true at all the companies where I’ve worked – I was very much involved – behind the scenes and people knew who I was, even those teachers I never had knew who I was. I only wish I was a little more focused in high school to direct my energies with a bit more finesse, but I will say I’ve learned.
My advice to the new high school student
My partner was somewhat curious about the Catholic school system in Ontario. Being from British Columbia, they only have Public schools and they don’t have the separate school boards that we do in Ontario.
Firstly, one of the interesting things is that I was one of the few individuals at my school that was actually a non-catholic. You would expect some degree of ostracization, but I never received any attitude for being a non-catholic – I was accepted for who I was (and in many ways still am) at the time. Where some would have problems going to a school mass, I chose to go and not make an issue out of it because I chose to take the messages received, take the best and leave the stuff that didn’t apply to me. In some cases I actively participated towards the end of my time at BR.
Ultimately I was left with an understanding of social justice, and as I grow older an appreciation of those lessons that I know I didn’ t have when I was younger. While I may not agree with certain practices of the School Board and doctrine, I see it as the difference between management and the front-line workers. I support the teachers.
As one of the teachers said to me, he felt that we had a very good group of teachers and that they did the best to make the school interesting, and to offer engaging programs.
This weekend gave me a lot of pause for reflection thinking about the impacts of BR on all of us – whether you were in drama, arts, tech, computer science, science – We did have something very special at BR; and seeing what the students have now, and the really cool programs and opportunities that exist, I would say current students are in good hands.
Despite 23 years of the physical school being open on Main St. in Milton, the school has surprisingly withstood the test of time, and over 1,700 students. The original school was only designed to handle 1,200 and a new school is breaking ground this year. Some of the art painted on the walls that were completed when I was there are still around. Check out my gallery below
Incidentally, I noticed the Athletic Department does not have a Rugby shirt as part of their collection of shirts. I’m not quite done with wearing mine but I will be happy to donate it to the school when I am. After all, it was the first step to building a Football team. *GRIN*
Scott and I were featured, today, on Toyota Canada’s Facebook for their Earth Week campaign. This started about a week before we even knew we were trading in our old 2009 Prius for the 2012 Prius. Toyota was asking for people with Hybrids to tell their stories, to be picked.
They fell in love with our story because Scott and are I pretty big guys and we fit really well in both the 2009 and 2012 Prii.
As I have said before, I have no problem supporting Toyota this way. My partner and I chose Toyota initially, in 2001, because Toyota was the only company, we thought, doing anything really significant around fuel economy and technology in line with my beliefs.
Some people have argued that it’s possible that some hybrids and even plug-in hybrids (Prius PHV, Volt) could be more polluting than their petrol counterparts.
To people who say “It’s not enough”, “We need to do more” – I believe it’s something people need to make baby steps on but I do agree people need to take the time and make changes – global warming is a fact not a theory and the politics of gas is out of hand. I’d say Scott and I have done a fair bit to help. We always recycle, we’ve always chosen greener cars, I’m now using EV mode as much as possible, we’ve completely switched to efficient LCD TVs (my Samsung actually tells me how much power it’s drawing!), we’re using dimmers where needed in our condo, and switched to long lasting fluorescent bulbs in some of our rooms (not that there is much of a choice but I would have switched anyway).
There is more we could be doing, for sure. I wonder if our condo building would consider switching to Bullfrog Power, and if it could help with cost savings? Could we get solar panels for the building to drive our hot water heaters? And the questions go on…
Scott and I did it – we picked up our new 2012 Nautical Blue Prius with Solar Panel Moonroof on Saturday!
After much pacing and needing to get out of the condo, we took our 2009 Black Prius on it’s last journey to the store, Starbucks for lunch and then home to the dealer where we left the car.
To be clear – we loved our 2009. Admittedly, we love the 2012 just that little bit more. Believe me, the two cars are night and day when it comes to the sound system, the connectivity and the design. It’s like going from the Enterprise NCC-1701A (Kirk era) and being upgraded to the Enterprise NCC-1701D (Picard era). And surprisingly, what I thought would be an annoying feature has turned out to be a really cool one – the Vehicle Proximity Notification System!
I have to gush over the sound system. It sounds amazing relative to the 2009 and the 2012 came with an HD Radio so I can pick up HD Radio broadcasts from the US. I wonder if this will help to spur the adoption of HD Radio in Canada. Knowing what the broadcasting systems are doing these days, it would not surprise me if Canada remains on regular analogue FM. DAB (or DRB here) was being tested but has been stopped.
Seriously though, listening to WNED on the HD signal – just wow, when listening to classical. It’s getting close to feeling like you are sitting in a concert hall. Same with XM listening to 075 (Pops).
The Navigation system was a real surprise providing a 3D look and voice recognition capabilities. It’s something I’ll have to play around with more.
I am less impressed with the voice recognition, but I think that may just be a matter of getting used to. Firstly, it did not recognize my iPod Classic, but did work with my iPhone really well. I realized it had something to do with not syncing the titles from the iPod. I’m not quite sure why but I got it syncing at 2am this morning, so we’ll see what happens.
When trying to use a street address, despite giving all the details it still had me go through each to confirm one at a time. It may just because I am still getting used to giving commands.
The phone capabilities are amazing and very clear. I am surprised that it does not support multiple phones connected at the same time so someone could make an outbound call on their own phone while keeping another phone as the master phone for outbound calls by voice. My old BlueAnt S4 speaker phone supported that.
I’ve not had a chance to use the solar panel to keep the car cool – yet. It has been a relatively cool and wet period of the week so the fan isn’t going to be turned on. I did however, notice that the car can be remotely controlled from our condo while it is outside, so I could turn on the AC remotely to cool it down when we’re ready to head off. How cool is that?!
And the famous Vehicle Proximity Notification System – At low speeds the car purposely makes noises so that people know the car is around. It sounds like a car on the Jetson’s and a Light Cycle.
The sheer volume of statistics this car pumps out is also quite something. I’m sure I’ll be writing up more about that.
Such a cool car!
Following up to my Family Car History post, I definitely do have pictures of our second car. The problem is, I just can’t find them but I did find one I could share.
Back in October 2006 when I was writing music, I wrote a track called “Absolutely Red (Indigo Ink)” as a homage to to my first two cars.
Check it out by clicking on the image:
Does this mean I need to write a new track called “Black Nautical Blue”?
Scott and I live in a condo building built in the late 70s and completed around 1979/1980 in Etobicoke. As such, the building has gone through a number fixes since we’ve lived here in 5 years.
The biggest project to date is the repair to the parking garage under the ground. This involves completely scraping up all of the parking surfaces above ground, some of the park as well. The project is being completed in three phases with the first two phases complete.
During each phase, owners have had to vacate the garage and park on the road, or if lucky, in visitor spots.
I’m noticing a sense of entitlement building up as owners duke it out for parking space in the visitor lot so they don’t have to park their car on the road including
Scott and a friend of ours noticed an Audi in the parking lot with a $250 parking ticket.
Now, I admit, after tomorrow when we pick up the new car, I want to ensure the car is going to be safe, not going to be in an accident, scratched all to hell, etc… But I’m not going to sit in the parking lot waiting for spots to open and I’m sure as heck not going to park in a fire route.
I accept that the construction is happening, I know it will increase the value of the building, and it’s necessary. Having a sense of entitlement and an inflated ego because you’re feeling like you’re inconvenienced is not. All of us have had to deal with the construction at some point.
As far as I’m concerned – shut up and deal. It’s going to take about three months to finish the project.
I have ALWAYS been a car fanatic. I don’t know why but I’ve always been interested in those four rolling wheels, a multitude of designs and interiors. Options galore.
My parents, before we left Newfoundland had a Renault (no idea what model) and a Fiat 124.
My grandparents had an AMC Pacer Wagon with a burgundy interior and a 1974 Ford Capri with black vinyl seats.
My mother purchased a two-tone blue 1986 Ford Escort which she still keeps in the garage at the house. I can totally understand why she keeps the car, even though I doubt it runs today from sitting idle and other issues. It was her first car, she bought it herself and she has an attachment to it. Sadly, I don’t think it will ever drive again.
My aunt, uncle and cousins through the years had, at different times a Toyota Land Cruiser (Blue! It was cool!), a Datsan, a Mazda Wagon (GLC I think), a Green Volvo, a Grey Hyundai Stellar, a BMW 3-series, Chrysler Sundance, several Suzuki Swifts, Toyota Yaris, and several Saturns.
I’m not sure what other cars my Dad had over the years, but I know he and my step mother had two Subarus in the 1990s.
So I got exposed to a number of different types of vehicles, and I learned what I liked based on those experiences. I really liked the Volvo; despite Hyundai’s reputation at the time, the Stellar was a cool car, big for a family of 5; the BMW was the very first car I drove, standard in downtown Toronto; I learned to really drive on the Chrysler Sundance which I also liked at the time. The Escort was also kind of fun to drive too.
Courtesy of my family, I took a preference to smaller cars. All of the cars except for the Volvo, the Hyundai and the Land Cruiser were smaller cars.
My mother even gave me Camaro magazines with women on the front. Well, I liked the cars… LOL!
I grew up when gas was $0.49/L – possibly even cheaper. Today it’s between $1.36 and $1.40/L; so it’s not surprising that when looking for a car in 2001, I wanted something that was fuel efficient. I don’t want to have to pay for gas and put it in the hands of the petrol companies. At the same time, I want to be environmentally conscious. Alright, if I truly wanted to be fully environmentally conscious, I would take public transit more often.
At the time North American cars were getting a bad rap for being gas guzzlers, and they were at the time. To me, there were only two companies that made sense to me – Honda and Toyota.
Way back in 2001, I actually did not have the intention to buy a car when I did, but I was in the market and taking a serious look. It was between a Honda Civic and a Toyota Echo. The Civic we knew to be reliable, and the Echo was the prefect Bear-friendly car that was tall enough to handle Scott and me comfortably. Being 6ft3, myself, I need height in a car.
We got the price quote on the Honda and it was well within my range. We then checked out a Toyota dealership and they had an amazing deal on what was supposed to be an “Absolutely Red” 2000 Toyota Echo without Air Conditioning, but it was a 2001 Toyota Echo with AC and a really great deal. I spent about two hours humming and ha-ing at the dealership and I proceeded to put the downpayment on the corporate AMEX the company I was working for, had given me. Okay, not something you’re supposed to do. *GRIN*
That car got beaten up so many times, gosh. The thing attracted accidents, it was actually quite sad. Still, we loved the car and with 4 men, our size or bigger in the car it looked like a clown car.
Sadly, the car was returned after an accident right at the end of it’s lease. It was time to get a new car and just cut our ties with the accident prone Echo.
Sossi, who is now at Markville Toyota (I believe), did a great job selling us the first car. I wanted her to sell us our second Toyota but she wasn’t at the dealer where we bought our first Echo. I highly recommend her.
So we went back to the same dealer to crunch numbers and see what we could afford. I really wanted a Toyota Corolla, and really wanted an upgrade form the entry-level Echo but it turned out we couldn’t afford the Corolla, so another Echo, this time in Indigo Ink.
That car, I am proud to say, never got hit, never got into an accident. We put 170,000km on it and really, we probably should have bought it out at the end of the lease and drove it into the ground. Alas, I wanted something else more fuel efficient, and we wanted a mid-sized car.
The sad thing? I have no pictures of our Indigo Ink Echo except for the one picture of the dashboard while driving to Sudbury! It’s not like we didn’t like the car, it was reliable the whole time we owned it and went on many a road trip to Detroit and Sudbury – hence the 170,000km on it. Probably because of the circumstances between picking up the car, and being so over mileage on our lease given where Scott and I were at in our life at that time, we – okay, I, wanted an upgrade. We earned it.
Enter the car of my dreams.
The next car had to be a mid-size car, as fuel efficient or better than the Echo, it needed to have cruise control and power windows.
There was only one logical vehicle that met our requirements and that was a Toyota Prius.
I love the Prius. Where everyone is being a nay sayer about it’s looks, questioning my masulinity and yelling at me to, “Get a real car” – Yes that happened to me, from a guy driving a tricked out truck – I’m laughing my butt off because the Prius has way more pep than anyone thinks and way more room. It’s technologically advanced, and quite honestly, I think it’s the prefect geek car.
Once again, I didn’t have plans to necessarily swap the car when I did, but I knew what I wanted and, well, why not? I wanted blue, but got black because that’s all the dealer had in stock and it was difficult to get 2009s at that time with the 2010s coming out.
We’ve had the car three years. With it’s, what I like to call, “Retro futuristic” styling, it’s kind of like the interior of the Enterprise NCC-1701A. We’ve been known to get up to 800km on a single tank of gas in warmer weather. We’re getting between 5.8 (40 MPG and 6.0 L/100km (39 MPG) these days though in one picture below you’ll see we were able to squeeze out 5.4 L/100km (43 MPG).
It’s got everything we wanted and I’d say it’s more than we need.
The Prius, unfortunately, picked up racing stripes by kissing a concrete pillar in a parking garage. I’ve never actually done anything about them – and it doesn’t look like the ‘kiss’ got down to the lower paint levels which is great. So I’ve put it off for about two years. Other than that, no accidents!
On Friday, I decided to stop at the local dealership where I get my car maintained, not the one I purchased my previous 3 vehicles from. In short, the sales guy who sold us the Indigo Ink Echo and the Black Prius was an idiot and his lack of professionalism when we purchased the Prius was astounding. Whenever Toyota sends me a survey I point out how unhappy I was with the sales rep and the dealer.
Anyway, at the local dealership, they practically pounced on me when I asked about trading in and getting a 2012 – thinking more for next year, but the Leasing Manager suggested we could potentially trade this year:
So we are looking at:
We would get way more car for less than I’m paying now. In fact, its way more care than anyone needs. And, by the way, I do laugh at people driving up supped up expensive vehicles. Do you really need it? No, I didn’t think you did.
Anyway, I digress – if it’s the same or more than what I am paying now, then I would consider buying out my 2009 – I really am quite happy with it. Or, if someone wants to buy a 2009 Toyota Prius base package, let me know. We’ll fix up the paint scratches.
So the question is – Red or Blue if this all comes through?
I see us sticking with Toyota for a while. While it’s nice the North American car companies finally got their act together, but for me the cars are bland. Other manufacturers just don’t stand up to the quality Toyota has – despite the challenges that Toyota had a few years ago, they stepped up to the plate and are doing some cool things.
Technologically the only car companies I would look at are Toyota, Ford and Honda.
Despite my ragging on North American car companies, Ford is the only company I would look at. They were smart bringing the European styled cars over, and using Toyota’s technology in their hybrids. Unfortunately, their cars are either too big or too small for my liking.
Honda’s design language doesn’t appeal to me anymore. I just don’t like it. As for their hybrid Civic and Insight, the mileage should be better. IMA is just too over engineered and isn’t a true parallel hybrid.
I will say GM caught my eye with the Volt. The problem is three-fold
Other than that, it’s pretty cool – Good on GM!
Toyota has a good thing going with Hybrid Synergy Drive – and now three Toyota cars and a number of Lexus vehicles that are fully hybrid. I will address that yes, you do pay a premium for a hybrid. So does it even out at all between buying a cheaper car with good gas mileage that’s not a hybrid versus buying a hybrid? I’m either putting it in the gas company’s hands, or the car company’s hands. Given the innovation at Toyota, I’m happy to put it in their hands.
And as a final side note – my aunt, Scott’s mother and Scott’s aunt are now all driving Toyotas.
On top of getting the reservation system for Scott sorted out, I’ve been working on getting back to the gym.
Since my trip to Nicaragua, my back has been screaming and twinging (if that’s even a word – it’s mine and I’m copylefting it) and it’s held me back from getting any exercise. Of course, may doctors will say, if you don’t exercise your back will get worse. Fair enough, but how do I get to that point?
Going to the Chiropractor has helped but it’s not the end-all cure, and no Chiropractor would say that. Enter Scott with his magic hands and my other RMT who both use vastly different techniques which are complementary – Scott is harder and turns me into a pretzel and my other RMT uses more of an energy work modality; which has helped quite a bit.
Enter swimming. It got to the point where lifting weights was getting boring for me and it really felt like everything was tightening up in a bad way, so I’ve completely stepped away from lifting weights. I was even humming and hawing about swimming.
Three weeks ago I decided to start building up and take my time getting back to swimming – I went once; two weeks ago twice and three weeks ago – three times. That first time I went, my back felt considerably better. As my back gets tighter during the week, I go swimming and it feels better. Add in the massage therapy and such, I’m doing better.
Now waiting on the completion of my ergonomics assessment at work…
But between the project I’m doing for Scott and swimming, I’m seeing this as treating myself on so many levels:
This is all good and I’m glad to be where I am right now.
I was in the cloud before there was a cloud…
But I digress. I’m feeling very proud of myself right now. Amazing what happens when you ‘call something into being’ and talk publicly about a home brew project you’re stuck on.
I’ve been able to get through all those tedious little areas of logic that I really didn’t want to deal with. Yes, memories of that really tough logic class from University came flooding back to me…
Scott needed three pieces of key logic on the reservation system – which would make sense to anyone who has been involved with any form of reservation system – and I certainly have the experience there (and in the cloud too!):
I got the ‘Unavailable’ piece mostly working last night and fully working today. I finished up the ‘Available’ piece tonight with the exception of one piece that I will be confirming with Scott tomorrow.
My biggest favourite piece of PHP coding out of this project is this:
$d_bookStart = date_create($e_createWhen->startTime);
The ability for PHP to convert datetime formats to it’s own native format. ZEND uses the RFC 3339 format within the Events class for datetime. I was dreading having to do all kinds of string manipulations just to figure out if the reservation time period touches an ‘unavailable’ or ‘available’ event and the associated logic. Instead, I can simply take two datetime variables an compare them.
So what is next?
Wheeee!
Ever since I was laid off from Nortel 10 years ago, and since my last programming job with iFire Technologies about 9 years ago, I’ve had a heck of a time trying to find something to feed my inner geek.
I can’t say I’ve sworn off software development of any kind – gaming, web application development, iPhone and iPad app development, etc…
I’ve dabbled off and on for a few years – even going as far as starting to write a simple Tic Tac Toe game that included wifi & bluetooth networking, game pieces that could be configurable, etc… I’ve just not finished what I started, and I can’t justify the $99 a year to pay for a developer license from Apple to ensure I can use my iPad or iPhone as the debugging platform.
More so, recently, I made commitment to my partner to develop a calendar web-app that would allow users to book appointments via his website, integrated with Google Calendar using the Zend gData connector and PHP.
I have to admit, I have been slow to make progress but I have made some great progress with the logic. I admit, I’ve been somewhat… scared. This would be the first ‘product’ I have developed myself that would be live in stepping away from software development in 2003. I have a bunch of what-ifs:
There is a part of me that says that I should mistrust leveraging a service like Google’s Calendar and I should just develop my own application using MySQL and PHP, that way I can control everything about the solution and keep all the various components up-to-date and let my web provider keep Apache up-to-date.
I think the plan I’m going to move forward is launch with Google Calendar, keep a close eye on how well the functionality is working and then develop the MySQL version and do a bang-up job on it.
All in the life of a home-brew CTO, I guess. This is definitely good experience for my future.