The things I tell you about.

Leaving IBM

2010-02-10T15:50:00.004-05:00

I'm thinking of bringing back this blog. I know that nobody read it in the past, but now that Google Buzz is out, I have followers! Now a few people will have to actively ignore me. Maybe I'll even start dumping this stuff on Facebook again.

So the news of the year is that I'm finally leaving IBM. When I joined Big Blue 6 years ago in Winnipeg I would never have guessed that I'd stay for this long, but it's been a pretty good ride I guess. Because of this job I got to live in Winnipeg, leave Winnipeg, live in Ottawa, and meet a bunch of other really cool developers. Still the time has come to try something else and when an opportunity to work for RIM presented itself, I decided to take the leap. Can't wait to start the new job.

Twitter sucks

2008-11-26T12:30:00.004-05:00

I resisted Twitter for a long time. I just didn't get it and I thought it would go away. It so far has proved me wrong since it hasn't gone away. A lot of people seem to like it too, so I finally broke down and tried it. After about a month, I still don't get it and I want out. Conveniently Twitter provides a link to delete your account on the settings page. Great! Bye-bye Twitter! I clicked the link, and got this.

Twitter sucks!

The jackets make the team

2008-11-17T23:40:00.003-05:00

I have a new curling team this year. Last year was fun, but everyone on that team was really going in a different direction with their curling lives so the team fell apart at the end of the season. This forced me to take matters into my own hands and put together a team of my own. Ian, Ken, and Holly are all great curlers, but more importantly they're all fun to have around.

We've been getting along great and winning despite some terrible ice and some questionable skipping by yours truly. By my calculations, our matching team jackets earn us 2 points per game (they're very initimidating), but the terrible ice at City View Curling Club costs us three points per game. We finished the first round of our season tonight with a record of 4 wins and 2 ties. That's good enough to make us the winners of the first round and we'll be moving up the the "A" division starting next week.

Three cheers for me (uh, I mean us). Hip-hip Hooray! Hip-hip...

Rainy Day.

2008-10-25T11:30:00.002-04:00

I'm looking for good ways to kill my time today. It's really raining and apparently isn't going to stop anytime soon. I had planned on making my way over to Gatineau Park to go for a walk and spend some time outside, but due to the weather, indoor activity would be preferable.
I've already signed up for Twitter today, and played with it a bit. I've resisted up until this point because I thought it would eventually go away once people got bored with it. It's been around long enough that I'm willing to concede that I may have missed out on something. We'll see how it goes. I think it's probably much better if you are using on an iPhone or Blackberry rather than a desktop.
I'm considering working on my web site. I started to make a site for myself in the summer, but got no where. I told myself it was more of a winter project, but the truth is I'm just lazy.
Should have scheduled practice with the curling team for today instead of tomorrow. Now I'm stuck watching a bug walk across my ceiling, just a few inches out of my reach.

Winnipeg 2008

2008-08-24T10:39:00.002-04:00

Lynn and I went to Winnipeg last week for her friend Jen's wedding. I've only been back twice since I moved away and the last trip was at Christmas 2006 so I was due for another visit. We got in late on Thursday night. On Friday we drove by Lynn's old house to see how the garden had been maintained (it hadn't) then we stopped at the Winnipeg IBM office to see the old debug team, who are now the Debug, Ant, PDE-UI and API Tools team. Apparently Winnipeg is similar to India in that all the crap that nobody else maintains gets dumped on them, however unlike India, resources aren't cheap so three guys have to do all the work themselves.
In the afternoon, Lynn and I went out for lunch with her parents then met Ian for dinner and played some pool. Lynn, Ian and I all won a few games, but the final game (for the "Champion of the World" title) came down to a tight match between Ian and I and sadly Ian won - this time.
Saturday was wedding day. Weddings always suck, but this one was in a church with no air conditioning and the reception featured a phenomenal number of line dances, including the chicken dance played twice in a row. I don't know why, don't ask me.
Have you ever noticed that people never look like they're having fun when they're doing one of those stupid line dances? They look focused for the first half of the song, probably because they don't know what's coming next, then they look bored for the second half.
On Sunday we sat around and I gave out a free Trivial Pursuit lessons. :-)

$3 Dollar Turnip

2008-06-22T20:58:00.003-04:00

Lynn and I went over to the Lansdowne Farmers Market this morning to have a look around and to go for a walk down along the canal. We already had strawberries at home and Lynn has put a moratorium on buying plants for the garden (anything we can get for free is ok), so there was no obvious reason to go at all. Still it's a fun thing to do, and since you're there, you've got to buy something... Today we met some crazy people selling rare turnips that were meant to be eaten like apples! No cooking required (and since we wanted to eat it right away, no cleaning either!). We took our single three dollar turnip, found a bench beside the canal and took turns biting pieces off of it. The tourist's on cruise boat that went buy didn't seem to notice the crazy people chowing down on raw turnip. We brought the leaves home and fed them to the bunnies. If you spend $3 on one stupid turnip, you want to be sure you use all of it at least.

See the photo at the of my blog (http://iamkevb.blogspot.com/).

Ribfest 2008

2008-06-18T21:35:00.004-04:00

Lynn, Hanita, Felipe and I went to the Ribfest on Spark Street tonight. It was raining so we just picked up our food and brought it back to our place. We had to walk the whole street and carefully consider our options. We took into account, the number of trophies, the number of signs, the length of the line (long being good in this case since nobody waits for bad ribs) and in the end decided to go with last years winners. We were a little disappointed. Maybe rainy weather is not optimal rib weather, but the ribs were a little dry. We'll try another stand next time.

Update: Lynn and I were downtown today so we took a picture of the ribfest goings on (and ate some more meat). There was another guy there (who appeared to be carrying a load in pants) and was taking A LOT of pictures of some poor girl grilling ribs. He was probably from a local paper or website because he asked her for her name and stuff and he didn't look like he was trying to pick the meat lady.

Copyright for Canadians?

2008-06-13T07:32:00.003-04:00

Yesterday the Industry Minister Jim Prentice introduced bill C-61 proposing changes to Canada's copyright laws.

Bill C-61 was written without consulting the Canadian industry, library, education, artists groups, record labels, technology developers or citizens.

Though trying to introduce some new consumer protection, the bill also makes the breaking of any digital lock, and the violation of the terms in an end user license agreement illegal. This would result in a reduction of your rights as a consumer and the potential for large fines and many lawsuits.

Everyone please follow this link and fill out the form. It will email a letter to your MP, Jim Prentice, and Josee Verner to let them know that you don't approve of the bill C-61.

Copyright for Canadians

Update:
I got a response (sort of) from my MPs office. It's a typical form letter. It goes like this:

Dear Mr. Barnes,

On behalf of the Honourable John Baird, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge receipt of your email.

The views of Ottawa West-Nepean constituents are very important to Mr. Baird. As such, your email will be reviewed and you will receive a more detailed response in the near future.

Thank you for taking the time to write.

Sincerely,

Lindsay McCabe

Office of John Baird, P.C., M.P.
Ottawa West-Nepean

Cochiken smoke, don't breathe this.

2008-05-02T15:08:00.002-04:00

Will It Blend? | Presented By Blendtec

These guys will do anything to prove their blenders are good. They can anything from a rake handle to a can of spam. Apparently only Chuck Norris can't be blended in one of these things. Mr T hasn't been tested yet.

Spuckler

2008-03-21T16:06:00.002-04:00

I realized today that I never put up a picture of Spuckler. Since I got a new camera yesterday, today seems like a good day to do so. This is her.

Let it die?

2008-03-21T12:04:00.003-04:00

Does anyone keep poinsettias alive all year, or do you just let them die and get rid of them after Christmas. I usually try to keep all plants alive, but I feel like I'm subconsciously hoping this one just packs it in so we can get something less red and less Christmasy in our living room. As you can see I haven't been doing well at watering it. I feel a little guilty about that, especially since the rest of our house plants are relatively healthy. Is it more humane to kill dig it and throw it in the garbage or starve it until it's dead and has no chance of a come back?

Chips and Salsa are free, but giant cowboy hats ain't.

2008-03-19T16:12:00.005-04:00

My coworkers (Felipe, Bogdan, Carolyn, and Grant) took me out to Lone Star for lunch today because it was my birthday and they thought it would be funny to embarass me. Turns out it wasn't that funny or embarassing because I'm not that averse to looking stupid in public. I'm somewhat used to it actually. Anyway the giant Lone Star cowboy hat was pretty cool. They'll let you wear it (as long as you promise to keep your pants on) but they won't let you keep it. Without that hat there would apparently be many tears at the restaurant.

Too Much Snow

2008-03-11T19:08:00.004-04:00

Here's a picture of our house this morning. The snow is really piling up after adding another 51 cm to our yearly total on Friday and Saturday. We haven't set a new record yet, but there is still plenty of winter left!

Lets all move to California!

2008-03-04T15:31:00.003-05:00

Tim and Gina were supposed to visit last weekend; the first weekend in March. Normally this time of year is pretty safe for driving, but not this year. Gina made it half way across Toronto in the time it should have taken her to get half way to Ottawa, then turned around and went home. That was a good decision. They can visit us in the summer when (I hope) there is no chance of snow.
We're supposed to get another 25-30 cm tonight! Our snow banks are melting a little bit during the day, but they're still 8 feet tall in front of our house and we're getting close to setting records for snowfall here in Ottawa.
Lets all move to California.

Searching for a team

2008-02-22T00:09:00.001-05:00

Anyone looking for a team to curl in a bonspiel or two before the end of the season?

Skating at Winterlude

2008-02-20T19:26:00.003-05:00

We beat the rain on Saturday and got in some skating. We turned around at the 3.4 kms mark and there were no (bad) falls. Next time Lynn and I are going to have to start at the other end of the canal instead of skating the same part over and over. Maybe we'll do that with Tim and Gina next weekend if the canal is still open.
This weekend we have no guests so we'll be getting reaquainted with our couch and possibly getting a couple tasks (buy a new freezer) done.

The Ice Sculptures at the Lac-Leamy Casino suck!

2008-02-17T07:35:00.001-05:00

Lynn and I took Jeff and Michelle to see the Casino du Lac-Leamy
Crystal Garden last night. Lynn had done the Winterlude research and
the ice sculptures were voted the thing to see so we headed off across
the border to the casino. Turns out that the Casino du Lac-Leamy
Crystal Garden isn't at the Casino du Lac-Leamy. After everyone had a
chance to use the facilities (and I had lost $5 to a mean spirited
slot machine) I asked the guy at the information desk. He gave me a
confused look that sort of morphed into a look of shock as he must
have thought to himself, "I'm going to screw with these fucking
anglos." He sent us of to Dow's lake, the farthest end of the Rideau
Canal Skateway, and no where near Confederation Park where the Crystal
Garden is. After we drove to Dow's Lake and found that we were in the
wrong place again, we went to Pub Italia where we succeeded at eating
lots of food and drinking lots of beer.

New bunny

2008-02-13T15:55:00.001-05:00

We have two live bunnies again. Just after christmas we adopted Spuckler (nee Maggie) from rabbit rescue. She's pretty cute when she's running around the basement, but that might be the cuteness ends. She doesn't like Savvy (aka The Black Bastard), she's a little bit of chewer, she will do anything to get under the couch, she's not afraid of hardwood floors, she bangs and scratches at our bedroom door at night and like all rabbits, she produces a stunning amount of poo.

Our next rabbit is going to be a dog.

(One day I might post some pictures)

Living up to it's title

2008-02-13T12:35:00.002-05:00

My crappy blog is living up to its title. I checked in today and realized I hadn't posted anything since August. That's 5 months! I don't think it really matters because no one reads my blog anyway, however 5 months is still a long time. It's time to start trying a little harder.

This month is busy one for us. People just love to visit Ottawa in February. Something about a frozen canal attracts them. Last weekend it was my mother and grandmother (who came to attend some kind of cult meeting and didn't go skating). This weekend it's my cousin Jeff and his girl friend Michelle (skating). Then we have a week off before Tim and Gina (more skaters) come for the weekend, potentially dragging Cam and Lisa along with them.

What will Lynn and I do next weekend without any visitors? Don't know yet. Maybe we'll go skating.

Loose Rhymes With Noose.

2007-08-14T20:29:00.000-04:00

For years I've been watching bug reports come in at work where people have used the word loose, when they really mean lose. The most common example of this is a bug when someone complains about some widget in their application "loosing focus" when they don't expect it to.
Consider this a public service announcement.

Loose means free or released from fastening or attachment, or free from anything that binds or restrains. It's pronounce loose.. ie loose screw or loose tooth. You never loose your focus, it could never have been tight to begin with.

Lose means to suffer the deprivation of, or to fail to keep, preserve, or maintain. You lose your focus, your balance and your keys. You might lose a noose, or lose a loose tooth, or lose a loose screw.

Losers take note, the extra 'o' make a big difference.

What a week!

2007-05-21T21:14:00.000-04:00

What a week!
Lynn came back from San Francisco and we were looking forward to a calm and relaxing week at home before travelling to Toronto for the long weekend. The calm didn't last long!
We spent Saturday car shopping to replace Lynn's Neon which had driven it's last kilometer a few weeks ago, then went to Winston's place to watch the hockey game and order in. It was a pretty tiring day, and I went to bed fairly early.
Lynn woke me up at 2:00 am and told me that Brandine wasn't well. I got up and sure enough Brandine looked to be in pain, and was not eating nor drinking. Brandine has not been the healthiest of bunnies so we were well versed in what to do. We got out the syringes and gave her some fluids to keep her hydrated through the night. We hoped that the fluids would perk her up, but she was no better in the morning so we had to take her to the emergency vet clinic on Sunday.
The vet at the clinic told us that her abdomen did not feel normal. He wanted to do an ultrasound to figure out what was going on, but at $1000 for a bunny ultrasound, we opted to take care of Brandine ourselves for the rest of the day and take her to our vet on Monday.
Our vet kept her for the day and took x-rays. Things didn't look good. Brandine had a lot of fluid in her abdomen, and test of that fluid made it look like Brandine had Lymphoma (cancer). We took her home with some new antibiotics and some prednazone, but it didn't help. Brandine was getting worse and we had no choice, but to put her down on Wednesday night.
Thursday night it was back to the car shopping. Lynn bought a blue Mazda3 Sport! We completed the final deal on Saturday, and she'll be picking up the new car on Wednesday. Just in time for a drive to Toronto on Thursday night.
We didn't go to Toronto this weekend. We decided to stay here and relax instead. We got all of our errands done and Saturday and were able to spend time relaxing and getting our yard work done for the rest of the weekend. Felt great to spend some time at home.
Only 4 days until we leave for Mexico!

The tulips are starting to come out.

2007-04-29T20:00:00.000-04:00

After waking up to a miserable rainy day, I ruled out the possibility
of a bike ride today. The rain stopped by early afternoon, but it was
still kind of cold and wet outside. Lynn and I decided to find a few
geocaches this afternoon instead and we headed downtown. The weather
really turned around and we ended up finding 8 caches all within
walking distance of Byward Market. That's a good afternoon's work! We
finished it off with a drink and nachos before coming home.

I'm not dead

2007-03-30T15:06:00.000-04:00

I've neglected my blog for a long time. Not much happens in the summer and I got the feeling that nobody cared about me anyway (or at least nobody cared about my blog). Anyway. I'm not dead. Thought you should know.

Rory Fitzpatrick for Liberal Leader

2006-12-01T09:26:00.000-05:00

Well maybe not, but he could make it to the NHL all-star game. He's played 16 games this season for the Canucks and he has 0 goals, 0 assists, and 18 penalty minutes. Doesn't really sound like a star, but since the NHL is letting us vote we may as well use our votes to make them look stupid.

More details here: http://vancouvercanucksoped.com/2006/11/30/it-fitzpatrick-like-a-glove/

Garden Gnomes.

2006-10-19T23:02:00.000-04:00

Anyone know where we can get ourselves some nice garden gnomes?

Another funny picture

2006-10-04T19:11:00.000-04:00

Brandine with lettuce on her head! I wish I could say that I trained her to sit there with lettuce on her head because then I'd have a pet that did a really stupid pet trick. The truth is I just have a really stupid pet.

I finally found my camera's USB cable!

2006-10-04T19:02:00.000-04:00

I knew where it was the whole time, but today I actually went and looked for it. Guess what? There it was! Now I can give you some funny pictures of Lynn and I in RCMP hats!

New phone installed

2006-09-28T21:18:00.000-04:00

Our home phone is working finally. We're getting our phone service
from Vonage. The whole thing is pretty cool and we have unlimited
long distance within North America! So far we only have one phone
working because we haven't isolated our house wiring from Bell's
network yet. That's a project for another (dryer) day.
If you want our new number, send me an email.

Windows Vista

2006-09-28T21:17:00.000-04:00

I've been working on porting some software to Windows Vista this
week. I'm not too impressed with it so far. It looks cool, but man is
it slow. Everything in animated, even if it shouldn't be. I've really
noticed this when dealing with radio buttons and check boxes. When
they become checked and unchecked, they sort of fade in and out. At
first this is very cool, however after you've seen it a few times you
just want the damn buttons to change faster. It also has the ability
to unpack zip files itself, but it's incredibly slow doing it. I
haven't been able to get used to the Windows Explorer interface, nor
find what I'm looking for the Control Panel and for some reason
"Run..." isn't in the start menu by default anymore.
I'm in the market for a new machine right now and so far Vista makes
me want a iMac more than ever!

The lawn has been cut.

2006-09-26T21:06:00.000-04:00

I cut the lawn at our new house for the first time tonight. We have
more lawn than I had thought and it was really long because it has
been raining a fair amount and our lawn mower has been out of
commission because we didn't have any gas for the thing. It took
about an hour and I really had to rush through the end because it was
pretty dark already.
I've met two of the neighbour now. Doug was out walking his dog while
I was collecting papers that wind had blown all over the yard last
week and tonight Judith stopped to say hi on her way to a parent
council meeting. The neighbourhood seems pretty active so I'm sure
we'll meet more people once we start doing more work outside.

Connected again

2006-09-24T23:12:00.000-04:00

Lynn and I have been in our house now for 2 weeks and today the cable
guy finally came to visit! That means we have TV and internet now
(and I'm using both now).
While disconnected Lynn and travelled to Boston and Dallas for
meetings, Brandine had surgery and when the vet got in there, found
that her guts were all twisted up and she still had half an ovary,
and I worked a lot.
Matt and I went to the Sens-Leafs preseason game and the Leafs won. I
know preseason doesn't mean anything, but watching the Buds beat the
Sens is always fun!

Another weekend past

2006-08-28T20:05:00.000-04:00

Another weekend over. Lynn and I had a good time on Saturday visiting
the Bad Art exhibit at the Saw Gallery in Ottawa. All of the art was
bad, but what really made it funny was the titles that they had given
each of the pieces. My favourite was "Lucy in the Field with
Flowers," a bad painting of some old woman in a field of flowers
sitting on a lawn chair done in some pretty bright (trippy) colours.
They had displayed the painting by leaning it up against some garbage
cans.

The exhibit was pretty small so we had lots of time to browse a used
book store and find an all you can eat mussel deal in the market
before coming home. All of that would have made for a great day had
we not stopped for groceries on the way home. The line up at the
store was so long that our day ended up being only pretty good or
somewhat great.

Sunday was rainy so we decided to buy ourselves a new board game and
spend the day inside. We found a great game store downtown and bought
a game called Siena that looks very interesting, but it turned out to
be so complicated that we gave up before we had even started. Luckily
the rain had stopped while we were downtown, so we walked around Bank
St a little and found the Settlers of Catan card game at a comic book
shop where Lynn also got to buy a stuffed bunny with sharp teeth to
spice up her desk at the office. The Catan card game is fun so far,
but we've only played it once so we're still learning how it works.
We'll probably play this a fair amount.

It's really hard finding good 2 player board games. We have a bunch
of Carcassonne games and expansion packs, but we've been pretty
disappointed with a lot of the other games that we have. Abalone is
good, we like the Trivial Pursuits. Othello is a great game too, I
just got tired of winning. We have one called Caribbean that is
supposed to be a 2 player game, but we've only played it a couple
times because it's just not fun with only 2 people. Now we have Siena
and it's many, many pages of instructions.

The vet called tonight. Brandine's surgery is going to be postponed
for another week because the vet that is most familiar with rabbits
is on vacation right now. Brandine is glad to hold onto her belly fur
for another week.

Ottawa so far

2006-08-25T13:16:00.000-04:00

It's been 5 weeks since I arrived in Ottawa. It took three weeks to
find and buy a house. I'm so glad that's over, it was turning into a
real marathon. We got lucky and found a really great place though.
Our furniture in a truck somewhere between Winnipeg and here, but it
should arrive on September 9. Good timing because we take possession
of the house on the 7th and we're moving out of our crappy apartment
on the 8th.

With the house out of the way, Lynn and I have had time to see some
of the city. We've walked around downtown, seen the light show at the
parliament buildings, checked out The Glebe, and walked Westboro.
Last weekend we watched the changing of the guard (only 1 guy passed
out and he wasn't wearing a bear skin hat!), and did a haunted tour
where they walked around to a bunch of places and told us ghost
stories. The coolest thing Lynn and I did was the Lumiere festival. I
wasn't expecting much from it, but it was a really nice night and we
ended up having a lot of fun. The night was capped off by a really
long fireworks display across the river.

It's been great seeing some old friends from my days in Montreal.
Matt, Cindy, Lynn and I all went out to Kemptville for a barbecue at
Tim and Tammy's on Monday. Matt, Tim and I got to relive our former
glories at the women's expense. I hope we entertained them at least.
Tammy broke the news that there are pictures on the web of Tim in his
scout's uniform. I haven't found any yet, but Matt and I have started
talking about a stakeout in Kemptville to take some grainy pictures
of our own.

No plans for this weekend yet. Maybe a movie with Matt or dinner with
Winston. He recommended a couple sushi places that he likes so Lynn
and I are hot to give them a try. Fire me an email or txt if you have
any ideas.

How does this work?

2006-08-25T12:27:00.000-04:00

Blogging via email seems like a good idea. Too bad images are not supported, it seems that since I can send html encoded email it should be possible (easy?) to parse that into a blog entry. I won't harp on this since I have no control of what blogger.com does, and no interest in writing my own blogging software nor running my own server to host my shitty blog, just so I can post images without using a web interface.

I hate web interfaces. Lets see how this blog works out.