Posts tagged driving
Calm Lake
Oct 26th
Diane reminded me of this picture I took with my old camera. I looked at it and remembered that I hadn’t uploaded it, and I really really like it! So here it is. This was on a trip Diane and I took to Vancouver to go to our friends Ryan and Jazz’s wedding. It was a pretty cool trip. We decided to travel by car, and stopped at a couple campgrounds along the way so that we weren’t driving non-stop. We also stopped to visit Diane’s Aunt and Uncle in Kamloops which was really nice.
This particular picture was at one of the campgrounds we stopped at. We were there fairly early and had a chance to relax and walk around. The lake here was beautiful and I got a few nice pictures, but this one is probably the best.
I caved
Sep 4th
Yup, I caved. I have re-purchased world of warcraft. My first copy fell out of my hands into my sister’s when I stopped playing ages ago. And now, I have caved after months of holding out even when everyone around me was playing.
What made me do it? I’m not sure. I’m a little frustrated with poker at the moment. I need a break – I’m not playing my best and I’m playing break even poker even though I know I can do better. That’s not entirely it, but it is a start for how I’m feeling.
It’s a very odd feeling not playing something that everyone else is playing. With normal games, it isn’t too bad. A week or a month pass and no one is talking about it anymore. WoW is entirely different though. It’s been out for how long??? And *still* everyone talks about it. As soon as someone talks about it, everyone playing starts talking about it. Increasingly, it has made me feel uncomfortable … and you’d think that would drive me away from the game.
I have fond memories of playing the game. It is an amazingly fun game – and that is a big reason why so many people are playing it and talking about it for hours and hours … and hours. I watched my sister playing in the battlegrounds for awhile. I even mentioned to her that I was not all that interested in the battlegrounds because I prefer the content side of the game rather than the PvP play. She wasn’t even playing a part of the game that I wanted to play! And yet tonight I was so tempted to go out and purchase the game that I did half an hour before the store closed.
I’m not worried about slacking in my responsibilities. I am too interested in my own success to simply waste my opportunities. My thesis is reaching a first draft stage and will be on its way with my supervisor tomorrow afternoon as he heads to Ottawa. Because I didn’t finish in time for the end of summer I needed to pay for another semester anyways which means I’ve got a ton of time to finish up (not that it will take too much longer). And beside all that, I feel like I need something other than poker to occupy my time. I don’t see myself being able to sit down in front of a computer all day playing poker just because I can make money at it. It is fun, but not *that* fun.
So here I am … installing WoW. It’ll probably be another 15 minutes before its installed. Until then, I will ponder why I finally caved…
Heraldk
Jasper in January
Jan 30th
Well, department ski trip weekend is now over, and I’m in a pleasant but kind of guilty stage of tired non-workness. I didn’t get a lot of sleep this weekened, but I think I may have got a heck of a lot more than I might’ve got had I stayed up for all the parties that went on.
Diane and I left Edmonton around 4:00 or so, and made our way into Jasper around 9:00 with a stop in Edson for dinner. It was a nice calm drive, and we didn’t see any reason to get there in a big hurry. When we did arrive we checked into the hotel and packed our gear into the hotel. Mike and company were so anxiously awaiting the arrival of guitar hero that they had already left a message for us that we were given when we arrived at the hotel.
We got our stuff into our room and brought guitar hero up to Mike’s room where it got hooked up to Nolan’s projector and the party started! It went until about 12:30-1:00 when hotel security came by and told use we were too loud. Darn. Oh well, we needed the sleep anyways. Jeff S and Jess were our roommates, so we trundled down to our room and settled in. Slept until 8:00 when Diane and I got up and went to Marmot to spend the day skiing.
We didn’t actually get out there until after 11:00 since we stopped in town to rent skis. As fate would have it, a guy needed to sell some extra lift tickets, so we saved the GST on those (they’re $40 + GST normally in January). So we got to the hill with our tickets in hand and went skiing for a few hours. My knees weren’t incredibly happy with me – does anyone know if there are any ski tips out there to reduce stress on your knees?
After the hill we returned back to the hotel to shower and clean up for the dinner at L&W with almost everyone in the department. It was fun, the food wasn’t bad and we enjoyed. Afterwards, the party was in a big room that we booked for the department. It was really fun. Guitar hero was set up against one of the walls, and games were played by all. Much fun to be had.
There was an after party which Diane and I joined for a bit. It was loud and lots of drinking happened. I was tired so both Diane and I left the party early. Didn’t get a ton of sleep as we had to get up to go on the Maligne canyon hike the next day.
As part of the tradition, the department goes to Maligne canyon and does a hike down in the canyon every year. It was a lot of fun last year … and it was similar this year. Check my photo gallery (gallery.heraldk.ca) for some pictures.
After the hike, we stopped in Hinton’s BPs for lunch/dinner and then we returned to Edmonton tired but happy with a good weekend. Its pretty incredible to spend a weekend with Diane … she’s pretty special, and I really can’t describe how wonderful it is to spend so much time with her 
Heraldk
New TV!
Jan 18th
Its been a little while since my last post, so this will be a post that catches you up with what I’ve been up to for the last little while.
First, the big news: I bought a new TV! I ended up choosing option 2 from my list of options in TV Shopping. I figure that choosing that option is the best price/performance that I can get for my money. While LCD screens are really starting to go mainstream, I decided to hold out on that and rely on a more proven technology. I decided on the Toshiba 30HF85C. Its a 30″ CRT HDTV, and a pretty massive one at 111lbs. From my eye, the TV has excellent picture quality, and has enough inputs to handle my xbox, dvd player, vcr and my roommate’s PS2.
I picked up the TV yesterday. It cost me $690 for the TV and then I bought some cables and I actually went for Vision’s extended warranty for 3 years. I usually go against buying extended warranties, but two major things swayed my decision here. First, if you don’t use the warranty, you get the same amount in store credit (so in 3 years, if I don’t use it, I can buy something new and fancy – perhaps a HD-DVD system). Second, if I ever have problems, instead of dealing with Toshiba and having to send the TV to them, I get to have people from visions come and fix it at my house. With the TV being an 111lb behemoth, I figure that’s a good bargain. I guess thirdly, the warranty was $75, which I didn’t think was unreasonable.
Alright. What else have I been up to? On the weekend, I played a bunch of poker and won about $100 over the three days. I spent some time hanging out with Diane which was wonderful as always On Sunday night, my mom, Diane and I went to a church seminar where they played a taped presentation by Lee Strobel called “A Case for a Creator”. It was pretty interesting … but I think I’ll save my comments on that for another post.
Yesterday was TV buying day. My mom was free and was thankfully willing to drive around to Ikea and then to the south side visions so I could by a TV stand and then the TV. We got back to my place and I set everything up and then cleaned up my living room which was torn apart the night before to make room for the new television.
So that’s been my busy week, and the next week looks like it’ll just get busier! Such is life …
Heraldk
Long time no write
Aug 5th
Ack – it happened again. I do mean to keep this blog up to date – but its been so crazy this month that I haven’t been adding posts. Sorry for my *ahem* faithful readers (umm … if you exist).
What have I been up to? Diane and I made a trip to Vancouver a couple weeks ago for my friend Ryan’s wedding. That was pretty fun – I had never done the drive there on my own before. We stopped in Kamloops on the way there to visit Diane’s Aunt, Uncle, and Grandmother. They are some really nice people! We camped at Lac La Jeune campground, which was a really nice place to stay – I’d definitely go back.
As a sidenote, the bc provincial campgrounds have an awesome online registration system – you can book your site as soon as a couple days in advance through http://www.discovercamping.ca. They charge a fee to book the site, but the nice thing is you can simply pay in advance, and you don’t have to worry about having cash on site to pay for your campsite. Plus, you don’t have to worry when you’ll get there that all the sites will be full because you’ll already have a site booked!
We stopped at Rolley Lake the night before the wedding – a little campground about an hour out of Vancouver. Then on the day of the wedding we drove in, checked into our hotel room and changed so we were all fancy for the wedding. It was a small affair, but nice – and soon Ryan and Jazz were off to their bed and breakfast off the coast. Fancy!
We stopped at Lac La Jeune again on the way back. Its a really long drive from Edmonton to Vancouver so we felt it would be better to do the trip in a couple shorter legs. Probably a good idea!
What else has happened? My family went down to join the Getz family reunion. For those interested, that’s my Grandmother’s side of the family. I didn’t know that many people there, but it was good to meet some of the people who I’m related to. Diane actually came down for the trip, and it was kinda cool to introduce her as being attached to me 
.
Yesterday, Mike moved all his stuff into the condo. Its going to take some adjusting to get used to someone else being in the place – but that’s not a bad thing. Being by myself was kinda nice, but its also nice to have someone else to talk to – I can imagine it would get kinda lonely after awhile by myself. Plus, with all the furniture and stuff Mike brought with him, the place feels a lot homier (is that a word?) than it did.
So that’s exciting – life is just trucking along.
Until next time, Take care!
Heraldk
Priority Golf Tournament
Jun 5th
Saturday was Priority Printing’s 9th annual texas scramble golf tournament (Priority is the company my dad works for). Since my mom was not able to play (taking my sister to harp gigs), I took her spot in the tournament.
For those unfamiliar with the format, texas scramble tournaments are run in a style that is meant to make the game fun and exciting even for players who do not play regularly. Each player tees off like normal, but then the team decides to pick one of the balls as the one they like the best and everyone moves their ball that way and hits from there. A slight strategic twist happens when the tournament requires that each team takes three initial drives from each player. The format allows players who are not skilled at golf or who are inconsistent like me to have a competitive chance to win. Plus, its a lot more fun to be able to make par on a hole or even the occasional birdie because a player on your term makes a fortunate shot or two
Our team consisted of my dad and I along with two others that I had just met that day – Guy and Joane. My dad and I aren’t all the great, but Guy is a really good golfer which would definitely work to our advantage. The weather was looking like it might rain on us, but we started up anyways and had a lot of fun. There really was only one amazingly good shot I made … on one of the front nine holes, I made a full 9-iron stroke that not only landed on the green, but it was less than 6 inches from the hole. Amazing! We birdied that hole! Other than that, I was pretty rusty (since the last time I had golfed was last year sometime) so I struggled with my drives all day and was lucky to get my 3rd good drive on the 18th hole.
We finished with even par as our score which we were really happy with. Not only that, it was good enough to win the tournament! That was pretty cool. As a prize, I got a book on Wayne Gretzky that was signed by Al Hamilton (a former Edmonton Oiler who’s number 3 was retired in the last couple years).
It was a pretty cool day that’s for sure!
Heraldk
My New Computer
Jun 1st
It finally dawned on me to put up the specs for my brand spanking new computer system that I got this past weekend. I bought it at Memory Express – which is a store I was really impressed with. The store featured amazingly good prices, friendly staff, a nice clean wide open atmosphere … and had all the parts I wanted!
Here are the specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 motherboard
Micron Original 512 MB PC 3200 DDR ram
Seagate 200 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive
MSI NX 6600GT-TD128E video card
BenQ 16×16 DVD+/- RW DL PRO optical drive
Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu CPU cooler
Antec Sonata case with 380 watt power supply
Panasonic 1.44 floppy drive
The package cost me about $1200 canadian which is a pretty darn good price for a fairly powerful system like this one. Its not top of the line, but top of the line is not something I think I’ll ever buy … its just too expensive.
The nicest thing about this setup is its the quietest computer I have ever had. With my music on or when I’m playing a video game, the normal volume sound coming out of my speakers renders the fan noise of my computer undectectable! It is unbelievable, and something that I am so happy with for this new system. Hooray!
So that’s my new system. Oh, and it runs World of Warcraft oh so nicely!
Heraldk
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