Tempus fugit

» IBM walks the SOA walk | Service-Oriented Architecture | ZDNet.com

2006-05-04T12:08:00.000-05:00

A ZDNet.com Blog showing how IBM is transforming to an SOA environment

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Blogger problems - I've moved!

2006-04-04T13:47:00.000-05:00

Given the problems with the Atom API at Blogger over the last several days and the resultant inability to post via Performancing for FireFox as a result, I've move my blog to www.bigdadoo.com/blog. Yep, I'm pretty fickle when it comes to technology that's not working so I gave in to godaddy.com and got a domain name, then hosted a site on media temple courtesy of Method Media and switched to Wordpress all over the weekend. Just shows how important service levels can be.

Blogger Status

Some users are experiencing problems creating new posts via our Atom API. We are working to get this fixed. In the meantime, you can create new posts via the web interface.

Technorati Tags: blogger, service levels, SLA

The World is Flat - Video Lecture

2006-03-31T12:56:00.000-06:00

I've had this video bookmarked for a long time, and I finally got around to watching it, and its great stuff. Since I have not read the book yet, I think I'll add it to my Amazon WishList in case anybody is interested :-). Mr. Friedman tells a great story about checking in to a South West Airlines flight and learning about printing your boarding pass from home. His comment was one I was familiar with in that by printing your own boarding pass, you are becoming an employee of South West Airlines, but then he surprised me by saying if you value your time (I do!) that you are paying South West to be their employee! Think about that!

MIT World » : The World is Flat

Chances are good that Bhavya in Bangalore will read your next x-ray, or as Thomas Friedman learned first hand, “Grandma Betty in her bathrobe” will make your Jet Blue plane reservation from her Salt Lake City home. In “Globalization 3.0,” Friedman contends, people from far-flung places will become principal players in the marketplace.

Technorati Tags: Freidman, flat, collaboration

Shack Wacky

2006-03-31T11:50:00.000-06:00

On the esteemed CBC Information Radio with Terry McLeod this morning I heard a term that caught my attention. It's not anything I've ever heard before and not something I'd expect from the CBC, but then perhaps I'm just leading a sheltered life. Still, it had kind of a nice ring to it and the meaning seems to be fairly obvious, it's shack wacky. I'm assuming this is the latest version of the more widly accepted "cabin fever". The Urban Dictionary has it and perhaps it's going to move into more common use. It generally, seems to apply to mothers with small children at home, or those on a long sea voyage in a small cabin.

So, what can you do about being "shack wacky"? You could visit The Wacky Shack.

My current blogging tool

2006-03-28T21:13:00.000-06:00

After trying several blogging tools and programs, I think Performancing for Firefox will be the one for a while. Lots of great feature, free, and it posts to my IBM Internal blog as well. wBlogger was nice, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere and Rocket Post was just crashing all the time and more trouble that it was worth.

Performancing for Firefox 1.1.1 | Performancing.com

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox. Just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.

Technorati Tags: Perfomancing, blog editor

Find Music You'll Love - Pandora

2006-03-27T23:11:00.000-06:00

Thanks to this Monday Morning Memo from Wizard Academy, I've hooked up with Pandora and I'm lovin' it. What a great concept. I'm enjoying some of the great tunes coming up from my custom radio station seeded with ELO and The Moody Blues. Top that off with the hookup with Slim Devices' Squeezebox and you've got a killer combination.

Can you help me discover more music that I'll like?
Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs.We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you. Find Music You'll Love - Pandora

The Juggler

2006-03-26T17:46:00.000-06:00

Eric working on his routine.
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

After being insprired by the juggler Chris Bliss and the video of his amazing performance and then further astounded by the five ball performance of Jason, Eric is readying his seven ball perfomance for Vegas by practicing his skills in our kitchen.

Sorry Dez, if he's late picking you up, or you can't get him to do anything around the house any more, but an artist must hone his craft.

Microsoft Vista: Not People Ready

2006-03-24T17:01:00.000-06:00

Talk about getting slammed in the press. You'd think by now everyone would be very used to Microsoft missing a product ship date by a year ot two. Since I'm a bit of an IBM fan, I especially liked this part.

No one mentioned the fact that in 1997, Microsoft held a similar event in New York City to declare that IBM's "big iron" was dead, because Windows NT--remember Windows NT?--was going to "scale up" and replace the mainframe. I wonder if Ballmer ever feels like the guy in Groundhog Day, reliving the same press conference, over and over. I know I do.: "Microsoft Vista: Not 'People Ready' - Forbes.com"

Oven-roasted Alligator

2006-03-24T16:49:00.000-06:00

ovn-roasted alligatr
Originally uploaded by Esthr.

Wow, this is something else, almost enough to make you loose your appetite. But, I guess it’s not an endangered species, and if it’s up to my dinning habits, there will be no problem with the alligators. Explorers Club Annual Dinner

WAS Community Edition v1.0.0.1 Released

2006-03-15T13:34:00.000-06:00

WebSphere Application Server Community Edition V1.0.0.1just released. The release includes enhancements such as a browser-based administrative console, and eclipse plug-in enhancements.

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The Big Guy

2006-03-12T18:08:00.000-06:00

The Big Guy
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

Shirley found these guys on the way to our friends in Transcona, so today we drove over to get some pictures before they melted any more. The big question is, how did they get the head on and where do you buy a size 28 3/8 hat?

Hotdog Guys

2006-03-11T11:37:00.000-06:00

Hotdog Guys
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

On the weekend we went out to Birds Hill Provinical Park for a bit of an adventure. In addition to the typical walk around a trails, some of us had a little "fire" in mind. After scouting a few locations, we settled on a spot nestled in some trees and sheltered from the wind, which was beginning to pick up. With in a few minutes we managed to get a blaze going and began cooking up a storm. Well, maybe a little more simple than that, just a hot dog on a stick, but a great time with good friends.

Boats

2006-02-19T18:29:00.000-06:00

Boats
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

This picture just makes me want to get out on the water in any boat I can lay my hands on. Preferably, on Lake of the Woods, but what would it be like to cruise the costal waterways in a rugged fishing boat like this. These two were moored at Steveston, just out side of Vancouver on the Fraser River.

Vancouver Visit

2006-02-19T17:42:00.000-06:00

Here is "Medora Man" on the beach in Stanley Park in Vancouver, BC on a recent trip. The main purpose of the trip was company business, but I flew in early to visit my Aunt and do a little sight seeing. On several previous trips to Vancouver I'd kicked my self for not taking and extra day or two to enjoy my favorite Canadian city, especially when Winnipeg is cold and under the snow. So, I arrived Saturday and spent a great afternoon with my Aunt catching up on family events and all kinds of stuff. I was a very special time. On Sunday I planned to go to two tourist activities the Capilano suspension bridge and Steveston, a fishing village just outside of Vancouver on the banks of the Fraser River. I'd seen both before but Capillano had a new suspended walkway and there was some geocaching to be done in the Steveston area, plus a nice seafood lunch was appealing.

Capilano was OK, but a little too “touristy” not to mention the $23 admission fee and the $3 parking fee, but there were a few good pictures. After driving back across the Lions Gate Bridge and picking up a Starbuck’s coffee it’s a short cruise to Steveston. The historic shipyard, boat building, and cannery are very interesting. The river bank is set aside as a walkway and I spent the entire afternoon walking around in just a sweater which was quite enjoyable.

Icebike 8

2006-01-29T18:57:00.000-06:00

Best Bikist
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

Some how this years race snuck up on me and I didn't even know about it until last Wednesday when I was enjoying 80+ degree weather in Orlando, Florida. As it turned out I had some previous commitments on the day, so I was only able to drop down to the Forks and take some pictures of this year’s event. Woodcock Cycle was again the key sponsor and organizer and it sure looked like the event was a great success. With the warm weather this years course did not go on the river due to dangerous ice conditions. But, there was plenty of ice on the trail and as it turns out a little danger as well. This racer, whom I spoke to after the race, was sliding down one section of the course and got too close to the bike in front and made face to rear wheel contact resulting in a bit of a nasty cut. One of the surprises was the unicyclist who navigated the course in approximately one hour, a great time for this type of riding and course. Some riders had quite the attentive fan club cheering them on!

Information about the Winnipeg Icebike race, history and results can be viewed on their site.

Next year, be there, I will!

Meet the Developers

2006-01-26T13:18:00.000-06:00

Meet the Developers
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

Just the General Closing session left to go now. This session is where attendees can ask the really interesting and sometimes difficult questions of the assembled Lotus Development team. Lots of great questions and some folks are getting commitments to hve their issues addressed immediatly and of course other, bigger issues will take some time. The phrase "Coming in a future release, which doesn't yet have a date." comes to mind. People are generally really pleased with the new announcements and the R7 releases and happy with the commitment from IBM to the Lotus brand. The Developers are a great team and they really want to resolve and address everyone's issues.

Winding Down

2006-01-26T12:57:00.000-06:00

Winding Down
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

It's the last day of Lotusphere 2006 and things are winding down. There is a bit of a bigger break between lunch and the last couple of group sessions, and with the nice weather people are taking a little extra time to relax and soak up some sun. But, almost everybody is still connected with a cell, laptop, blackberry or something. We just can't seem to totally disconnect and relax.

Shamu Rocks America

2006-01-26T08:41:00.000-06:00

Shamu Rocks America
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

Last nights Lotusphere 2006 party saw 6,000 attendees make their way to Sea World for an night of food, drinks and shows. This is quite a logistics exercise in moving all the attendees from various hotels, to the park and back, requiring a large fleet of buses. For the final show with Shamu, I opted for a seat in the "splash zone" which is the first 14 rows! Fortunatly, most of the soaking took place to either side of center, but I did get a little wet at one point.

After getting back to the hotel, I got engaged in a tv movie and stayed up way too late and I'm dragging a little bit this morning. Well, the first session was excellent, and there is Starbucks awaiting in the foyer.

Lotusphere: RT Collaboration Roadmap

2006-01-24T13:33:00.000-06:00

Presence Everywhere
In the browser, website, mobile device, application. Sametime on the Blackberry. Goal: Federated Model, multiple protocols,

Enhanced User Experience
Integrated collaboration - awareness in email & calendar, collaboration in context.

Voice/Telephone/Video/IM Interoperability
Click-to-call using existing telephony system or VOIP or whatever. ST 7.5 Click-to-talk. Reduction of voicemail. Presence ? Text chat ? Voice call ? Web conference make this flow and transition easy.

Activity:Social Network:Organizational Collaboration
Activity centric computing, social networking, expertise location. SkillTap, FreeJam, Question Search, Instant Pools, Alerts. This is stuff that grew up internally with the IBM Community Tools over the last couple of years. Talked about SkillTap and about saving the response to the question, rateing the response and rating the user who provided the response, like eBay buyer/seller rating.

Architecture changes on the Roadmap

Themes: ST 7.5, RTC Gateway, WCS, ST Future, Converging Architectures.
There is only one RT Collaboration strategy. ST is part of Workplace, ST and Workplace will converge in a managable and seemless way. Some dates on the next steps in the delivery of products on the roadmap.

Theme 1: Web Conferencing connectivity - major improvements in connecting and managing the session, automatic re-connect. JVM 1.1 was limiting, going to more current JVM (1.4?).

Theme 2: Competitive client experience - modernize, unified IM client, managed eclipse-based, plugin architecture, voice chat, rich text, emoticons,

Theme 3: IM Federation - connect to remote IM communities to Sametime & other vendors via SIP Gateway

Theme 4: Integrated Voice - signal over ST, five way calling - one user is hub, Voice only to St7.5 client now (others in future)

RTC Gateway Themes

Theme 1: Federation of IM Domains - connect your community to other external companies communities.

Theme 2: Co-existence of multiple IM servers - Sametime community connected to Workplace community replication of presence between communities.

Theme 3: Management of extranet traffic - privacy enforcement, content filtering, access control. Gateway level controls.

Theme 4: Open Programming Model - Ability to plug in new/evolving protocols.

Gateway diagram

There is a hint at an Ms-SIP protocol translator for future connection to MSN?

Workplace: WCS 3.0 will have the ST 7.5 client capabilities and SIP will scale. Web conference in WMC client as opposed to browser. Workplace will use the same technology that is currently being released in ST 7.5, same gateway, same client etc.Instant meeting (ala ST) in WCS. Open programming model to use RTC capabilities.

ST Future
2007 - Emphasis on RTC as a Platform, open it up and allow the creative creation of new solutions. java-less ajax-style web clients. Move to javascript only, requires extensions to Websphere. Make it protocol agnostic (conceptual architecture diagram)

Converging architectures
Build as general purpose extensions to WAS to support SIP. WAS 6.1 will have SIP technology
SIP Stack with RFC 3261 and others. Full stack @ WAS. Stateless SIP Proxy developed as an extension to the Websphere Proxy. (picture)
SIP Container preprocessor - extension of web container to handle SIP
Handles clustering just like WAS to give redundancy & capacity to SIP/IM as well as WAS

Lotusphere - Wiki, Blogs & RSS will change your business

2006-01-24T11:17:00.000-06:00

So, I’m sitting in a session all about the buzz technology and what IBM is doing in this space, so what better time to do a little bloggin’.

The session provided a brief and quick overview of the three technologies, blogs, wikis & feeds.

Blogs

On the CIO radar and being adopted bottom up, like the way IM hit the company, which shows their importance but also has issues with security and management. The goal is to make them “Fit for Business”

Security, content management (blog content re-use), community (integration with groups and directory), policy (big brother), all without messing up the capabilities and usefulness.

Movement from ego centric ( opinion/thoughts of blog owner) to business use and value.

Example: Ford “blog”, controled point of view, marketing, multiple authors

IBM internal blogs: high adoption rate, team collaboration “lite”,

Alpha blog tool in Workplace on alphWorks

Wikis

Internally used, some work in portal and quickplace, not too far along

Editting is a “little ugly” (my opinion)

Need good versioning to roll-back messed up content since everyone is an editor

Adopting faster than blogs internally, managing editors

Feeds

Various use of feed: summaries, file sharing (e.g. flickr feed), calendar, and the biggie podcasts

Feed types: RSS, Atom OPML, RDF

Subscribing to a feed via: Buttons, auto-discovery

Read feeds in an agregator (one way), Plugins (Sage in Firefox), plus......

RSS 2.0 format frozen and Atom is the successor (IETF standard) and addresses RSS shortcomings.

Nothing new, feed have been around for 8 years!

Feeds @ IBM

IBM goal: an orange button everywhere to subscribe. Feed XML as input to other applications. Atom Publication Protocol support, content publishing to Websphere Portal

Teamspace/Quickplace to produce feeds.

WCM content to be feed sources

Portal document Manager - syndicate folders & files

Workplace Forms, Domino.Doc, Quickplace (there are demos!) Domino (database to produce feed), Activity centric computing feeds.

Demos

WCS doing a blog.

Release this year, searchable (via portal search), multiple skins, RSS & Atom support, permalinks, (OK, so far basic stuff), creating content via the rich text editor, post to “external blog” as an option (Blog Central (IBM Internal), Blogger, TypePad and QUICKPLACE!).

Portal

Feed support from Portal Document Manager (document store of Portal). feeds by each level of folder hierarchy, link and download enclosure tag, looking at podcast integrated into PDM and using PDM for the feed - this would give discussion forum attached to a podcast.

Feed Readers / Agregator

Discussion on Sage as Firefox extension.

In IBM public sites, most support areas have feeds (i.e. Quickplace etc.)

Customer Example about Feeds

Lab services guy talks about a real life customer experience. Content Feed Service to take content from other CM systems to Portal via IBM WCM.

Consuming feeds, (currently manual, will be automated) to take feeds from any source to pull content into portal

Can also create taxonomy, security settings, and categorization in WCM

WCM RSS Connector

A little plug that the presentation was given using the open source productivity editors and the document was in the ODF standard.

Lotusphere Opening Session

2006-01-24T11:16:00.000-06:00

Great opening session with a strong emphasis on the Lotus Notes/Domino product having a long and strong future and that IBm is committed to the technology and that it’s an integral part of the overarching SOA strategy.

Outa' Here

2006-01-21T07:49:00.000-06:00

Man, I’m so glad to be outa’ here! Las Vegas is just too much and I’m so looking forward to a couple of days with friends in a more “normal” city. The hotel had been quite quiet all week, at least up on our 23rd floor location. But, last night some party neighbors checked in next door. Their room seemed to be party central with loud music, people hollering in the hall and doors slamming most of the evening. This is Vegas, why don’t they go somewhere (else!). My flight is at 7am and the departure schedule says I should catch the 4am or 4:30am bus to the airport. These people were in and out of the party room all night and when I left two of them were carrying on a conversation in the hallway and I had to step over them. In the casino, one guy is yelling and screeming at somebody on his cell phone, security is trying to politly evict a young lady who’s had to much to drink, and of course the gambling has barely slowed down at all an this is 4am! The party at the Jet night club is still going strong with a dozen security guys out front and the young and the beautiful rocking it out. The bass beat is strong and I realize that’s what I was hearing in my room 23 floors away.

The conference organizers at the bus are great. The greet me with a cheery hello, take my bag and put it on the bus and point me back to the coffee and breakfast table curbside and tell me the bus will roll on out to the airport when I’ve got my coffee, how very nice and civilized especially at this hour.

This is the check-in line for my US Airways flight to Phoenix connecting on to Orlando. What you can't quite see is there is more line behind the pillar and almost out the door. And this line isn't all that bad! You should see the one at Delta! Some 14,000 IBMers are making their way home this morning and causing a little bit of a backlog in with all the normal Vegas traffic. After a tip from a guy passing by and checking with the onsite conference helpers I determine that I can use the SkyCap check-in which has a line of only 5 people. In under 5 minutes I’ve got my boarding pass and through a very short line at security. Last year, because I was flying international back to Canada, I had to wait in that line for over two hours, only to be pulled out at the last minute to catch the flight. Now I’m sipping another coffee at the Burger King and enjoying the free wireless courtesy of the airport. All other airports should follow McCarren’s lead and make the access free as a service to travelers.

Well, there is a 4 hour layover in Phoenix, and I’ve never been in their airport, so we’ll see what that’s like. I’m so glad to be getting out this town.

SWU - End of the Week

2006-01-20T21:15:00.000-06:00

Last session of the week and I’m tired. So many people, so many packed days. All in all the conference has been great and I’ve learned a little bit more about several new areas. These new insights will be useful for the year ahead. Insights into products, strategies and directions for the company. I’ll be on my own tonight as my roomie has gone home, so I’m thinking about a quiet evening. Tomorrow will be the exodus to the airport with 10,000+ others to travel over to Orlando for Lotusphere. I’m beginning to wonder about the wisdom of two back to back conferences. It seemed to make sense when I arranged for all this. The nice break will be to see Paul & Rachael, old friends who are now located just a two hour drive from Orlando. So, after a weekend off, it’s back into conference mode - too much good food, lots of sitting and thinking. The other good thing is it will be even warmer. Here in Las Vegas a long sleeve shirt have been good for most outside activities and in Orlando it should be in the 70s. Going back to snow in Winnipeg will be a shock.

TechFest

2006-01-20T21:13:00.000-06:00

TechFest Logo Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

My first TechFest at SWU! Just me and 1,200+ friends all hooking up our laptops on a network to a zSeries mainframe for some hands on enablement. [Picture] We explored Websphere Portal, HATS, MQ, RSA and other software on a single 18 CPU zSeries running multiple LPARS. [Picture of specs] One LPAR is zOS and the other three are Redhat Linux. as you use the same software on each of the partitions you can’t tell the difference between the middleware running on zOS and Linux, which is very impressive. The mainframe is truly impressive, gone are the days of manditory raised floor and huge space requirements. This thing is sitting on a carpeted floor in the conference room. No special environment is required, just a big power cable going in. As the TechFest progresses with all the participants using the single mainframe server, they are monitoring performance of each of the LPARS to see what kind of load is hitting the system. Each if the partitiions are using under 3% of the CPU resources available, quite impressive.

Opening Session - Part II

2006-01-17T00:11:00.000-06:00

Opening session was very good. The usual exec presentations from Mike & Steve, a dance presentation from Alume (sp), a song on the “Power to Win” theme with the SWU house band (the MGM has a kickin’ sound system),a musical performance by Mobius 8 , and a motivational presentation from Jamie Clarke, a mountaineer from Calgary, Alberta Canada (a nice touch for a Canadian in the heart of the US). Jamie’s presentation was very good, taking shots at the execs, repeatedly commenting on the $50K(!) awards given to four of the top performers in 2005, while excusing everything on being doped up on pain killers for a broken leg. In between all the fun and jokes to told us about his involvement in three attempts on Everest. He explained what he learned from what some would call the two failed attempts and how the third successful summit attempt effected his life. The story of the second attempt was quite poignant when his team mate, only 160 yards, 40 minutes from the summit had to make the decision that he could not safely continue on and then, on the way down, almost gave up and came close to perishing on the side of the mountain. Only the love of his family via a mutli-hour $32K satellite phone call, kept him going and moving down until the rescue team could reach him.

Lunch was great even though is was a crowded long hike to the dining tents. Salad, salmon, vegetable salads, pasta, and lots of dessert (I had the chocolate pecan pie). Maybe all the walking is a good idea! Next is the Americas Geography session followed by the Americas Architects meeting and dinner back at the Venetian. The day is already feeling long and the $3 Starbucks coffle is going to have to help me along. Sitting still for a long time in a dimly lit room can be dangerous, especially after that lunch.

Opening Session

2006-01-17T00:10:00.000-06:00

Up at 5:50 and out of the Mirage by 6:20 for the hike to the MGM for the Opening General Session. Man, it’s always farther that I think, it’s a 30 minute walk, but good to be outside for a while and get some fresh air while the city is still pretty quiet. This year breakfast for Monday is also at the MGM. But getting to the MGM is only the beginning. It must be another 2 miles to the conference center where the food is and then back a long way to the MGM Grand Arena for the session. This year they have coffee & juice outside the arena and are not making you jam up and enter thru one set of doors. This really was really bad last year.

There is a motivational speaker that they have not yet identified yet, but they’ve mentioned the phrase “power to win” a couple of times and I’m thinking I’ve heard this somewhere before. They are drawing for some door prizes, but so far, no luck. Winning an iPod would be nice.

My section, which is close to the entrance, is filling up, but a lot of the arena is still vacant. It will be interesting to see how much the 30% attendance cutback effects the conference.

SOA Battle Days

2006-01-16T00:51:00.000-06:00

One hundered and forty four of the elect will get to experience the SOA (Services Oriented Architecture) Battle Day as a pre-SWU event. I’ve arrived a little early and it’s looking pretty impressive. 144 laptops with multiple Vmware images so it won’t just be theoretical lectures, but a mix of information and hands-on learning. Should be lots of fun comparing our tooling and strategy againnst the Microsoft evil empire.

Well the day was every I expected. The session was great and they covered a lot of ground. In fact, there eas more lab that you could do in a day. But, I can download the vmWare images to do the labs later. well worth coming down a couple of days early.

Zion National Park

2006-01-16T00:29:00.000-06:00

Today we drove from Las Vegas at 7am to Zion National Park. we arrived at about 10:30am, and checked out the visitor center to get aquainted with the area and pick up some books and maps. We spent the rest of the day hiking several trails and driving the scenic route and taking 113 pictures. Oh the freedom of digital photography. The best hike was the last at Zion Canyon Overlook. You drive up a zig-zag road and through a 1.1 mile tunnel to the trail head. The trail runs around the top edge of the canyon with spectacular views way down into the canyon and at the trail end, a spectacular view into the Zion canyon area. Drove back to Las Vegas and arrived at about 9pm.

Free Time

2006-01-13T23:57:00.000-06:00

I had some free time this afternoon to look around the Vegas strip, so I took the camera out to shoot some of the sights around the Mirage. I ended up walking way farther that I planned and was wishing I had one of these! Tomorrow is an all day session on SOA and my “roomie” will arrive later in the evening. On Sunday, we’ll be off to Zion National Park for a day of hiking. I hope to get some great shots on the hike and I’ll post those pictures Sunday night.

Lines

2006-01-13T16:06:00.000-06:00

Line ups.

Some times they are OK, sometimes they are pain and sometimes they are frustrating when you’re running behind schedule. I had lots of time to check in at the airport and clear customs this morning. The two gate agents were working a long line 90 minutes before departure. After about 20 minutes they were joined by a coworker, and things moved along nicely. Note to self - the gate only opens 90 minutes before departure, so don’t bother showing up any earlier. The interesting thing was the

sailboat Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

line at Tim Hortons was almost as long as the check-in line.

The flight to Denver was uneventful and locating the connecting flight was no problem. The terminal seemed familiar from last years trip. However, they have just changed the departure gate for the third time, so I’m of to A42 and Las Vegas is the next stop.

In between

2006-01-13T16:05:00.000-06:00

Have you experienced the “in between” state when you wake up? You know, the fleeting moments when you’re sort of conscious but not fully awake. Warm and comfy in bed, all relaxed and your mind seems totally empty, you don’t have a care in the world. It seems like there are a few seconds when you wake up that your brain is not fully engaged, or your memory is switched off. The things from yesterday have not registered yet, the concerns for today and the future just are not there. It’s so peaceful. I enjoyed a few moments of this today. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just turn that experience on and off?

Pre-Trip Surprise

2006-01-13T16:04:00.000-06:00

Last night I was getting ready, packing my bags, for my mutlti-conference road trip to Las Vegas for SWU and Orlando for Lotusphere when the phone rings. It’s late and I wonder who’s calling. While the phone is rarely for me, this call is, and it’s Scott. He’s reporting that he and Mandi have been in a car accident. Everybody is OK, but our car is not looking so good . In fact, it’s most likely a write-off. Eric and Dez are on the scene as “first-responders” and are helping out and keeping everybody warm while the details are exchanged. It seems like another vehicle slid through the stop light and showed up in front of Scott going south through a green light. We’ll this creates a little excitement and some tension around the house. But the good news is there were no major injuries, just some scrapes, brusies and soreness.

E-Mail Is So Five Minutes Ago

2006-01-07T09:28:00.000-06:00

I'd tend to agree with Gartner on this one, wiki's are on the move in the corporate world. Within IBM, anyone can create and manage a wiki but, I think the tooling will need to advance significantly (and 4 years is plenty of time for that) and the older generation who are not avid technology adopters will need to die off. The current generation just expects this stuff to be there, so there is no adoption issue for them.

E-Mail Is So Five Minutes Ago: "Gartner Group predicts that wikis will become mainstream collaboration tools in at least 50% of companies by 2009"

Starbucks as a Health Care provider.

2006-01-06T17:36:00.000-06:00

I new there was a reason for spending so much money at Starbucks!

Caffeine Prevents Liver Disease

DC Jeff writes "The Washington Post reports that drinking two cups of coffee or tea daily may reduce the risk of liver disease. From the article: 'The study of nearly 10,000 people showed that those who drank more than two cups of coffee or tea per day developed chronic liver disease at half the rate of those who drank less than one cup each day.'"

A Gift

2005-12-24T14:41:00.000-06:00

sailboat Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

Today, I was reading The Sprit of Sailing while sipping on a Starbuck's coffee in the living room. This is a very excellent book that Scott & Mandi gave me for Christmas. It combines two favorites of mine, sailing and photography. The pictures are very powerful and moving. In this one I can just feel the boat surging through the waves and gaining speed. Makes me look forward to doing more sailing this summer. I really enjoyed this book and cherish it very much. Michael Kahn combines the inspirational sailing photography and with equally inspiring quotes from many famous writers. My first favorite is on page 60 where he quotes Mark Twain.

"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream Discover."

It may be a little early for New Years resolutions, but this describes the way I hope to live my life in the coming years. Taking more chances, trying new things, and living life to the fullest. I hope you will too. My second favorite quote in the books is by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

"I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving; to reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, not lie at anchor."

What a powerful thought, that it's not so much where we are right now, but that our path is set correctly and that we're moving forward on that path regardless if it's easy (with the wind) or more difficult (against it). Never stay at anchor, it's hard to get anywhere that way.

A little humour

2005-12-17T12:36:00.000-06:00

On Thursday I was working out on the Bowflex and especially focusing on building up my shoulder to recover from the shoulder separtion incident while listening to the Daily Source Code with the PodFather, Adam Curry when he played "Taking a Dump at Work". I'm well into some difficult reps and concentrating hard but I have to stop because I'm laughing so hard. So, if you don't mind a little "toilet humour", give it a listen.

14:18 PODSAFE - Taking a Dump at Work - Stuckey Murray (PSMN page)

DSC 299 - Shownotes

technorati tags: adam curry, daily source code, podcasting

Deep Note

2005-11-25T18:32:00.000-06:00

After browsing on Digg for a few minutes I noticed the then #2 digg item on THX which of course lead reviewing the history of THX trailers to hear that classic sound.

The Story of "Deep Note"For more than two decades, THX cinema and DVD trailers have been wowing audiences with state-of-the-art visuals and the famous "Deep Note" sound effect. Before launching the company in 1983, THX executives decided to leverage their wealth of creative talent and resources at Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Ranch to develop a promotional trailer. However, the company was looking for something that would be more than just another corporate logo flashing on the screen.

THX Trailers

Oh yeah, for a good laugh, view the Simpson's THX

technorati tags: THX, deep note, trailers, digg

Rock On!

2005-11-23T16:20:00.000-06:00

With the shoulder injury from the MDH trip I never did say much about the rest of the ride. Here we are on Saturday morning and the boys are looking for a little something to do during a rest break. Well in this case it's more like rock off, as in off the hill and down into the valey.

Good thing we were not in a national park, there could be charges for doing this kind of stuff.

Flock is a free, open source web browser

2005-11-22T14:07:00.000-06:00

this is what happens when you check out some blogs, trip off to a wiki, catch part of a web casr witout the audio, and then end up downloading some pre-release software.

What's the idea behind Flock?

We believe that it should be easy for everyone to contribute to and participate on the web. To that end, we've started with integrating tools that make it easier to blog, publish your photos and share and discover things that are interesting to you.

technorati tags: flock

Winter Arrives in Winnipeg

2005-11-15T09:45:00.000-06:00

It started around 5pm yesterday, and this is what we woke up to this morning. A co-worker who was flying in from Toronto was diverted to Saskatoon and my son who has been out in his 4x4 this morning reported that several buses are stuck and blocking traffic. A good day to work from the home office as I listen to the dull roar of the neighbor's snow blower. I'm hoping my "snow blower" (Scott) will look after our driveway, as he's home today. His construction job with J&D Penner seems to have come to an abrupt end with the change in weather.

Burning Bush

2005-11-12T18:27:00.000-06:00

Did I day burning bush? I meant burning brush; this stuff is definitely getting consumed. On a rare November trip to the lake where the weather was great with temperatures at +10 and no snow, we observed the annual brush burning event. A neighbor organized the burning pile through the year and several local cottagers contributing to the pile. This year we both participated in contributing to the pile and observing the burn. We’ve heard rumors that there is a big road party in conjunction with this activity but we were heading back into the city before there was any sign of a party but they had another couple of hours of active burning ahead. The wind was light but not from the best direction, I hope they kept everything under control. In years past we’d just see the charred remains in the spring and were none the wiser. Now we know how it happens.

Happy Birthday Princess

2005-10-22T18:27:00.000-05:00

On October 21, 2005, Eric turned 23 and something magical happened, he became a Princess (according to Scott). We had a great time around a Saturday brunch celebrating Eric's birthday with Dez, Scott, Mandi & Shirley. However, apparently I need to work on my waffel making skills. First there was the over filling, then the sticking and then they were too crisp. Everyone ate them anyway and survived.

Happy Birthday son, we love you very much and are so very proud of you. You are a blessing in our life and the lives of many.

Back in the Sadle -Day 14

2005-10-16T21:05:00.000-05:00

Today, I was back on the bike for the usual spin out to Assiniboine Park and back for a distance of 35km. This would be fairly normal, if it we're not for the crash on the Maah Daah Hey Trail on October 2, a mere 14 days ago, which resulted in a 3rd degree AC shoulder separation.

This first ride after the crash was far less that stellar and no where near as fast as my normal ride. I was favoring and protecting the left arm and watching out for every bump and crack in the road and of course there was no curb jumping or anything exciting at all. Just a nice first safe ride. The crash on the MDH was on Sunday about 40 minutes into the days ride. I was crusing down an nice straight downhill section that seemed quite ordinary until there was a large dropout in the track and I had too much weight forward which caused a crazy shock bottoming jar, tossing me out of the track. This would not normally be too bad as I could have typically re-gained control, slowed up a bit and dropped back into the track. But, before this could happen there was this large rock in the way, that I just couldn't seem to steer around. Well as best as I can figure, the bike hit the rock and I flew over the bars one way an the bike departed in a separate direction. There was no bouncing, no rolling, just a sudden stop from about 25/kmh on my left shoulder.

For the first few minutes, I just layed there and did some pretty serious praying. After a while, I was able to sit up and the arm hurt quite a bit. I was sure that the forks on the bike would be trashed or the front wheel would be taco'd, but to my surprise the bike seemed fine, certainly alot better that I was. The rest of the guys were up ahead so I got back on the bike and rode down the rest of the hill and over to Scott & Eric. By this time I was feeling a little dizzy and decided to start back to the hotel. I'm about 8km from the hotel and as I start moving I realize this will be a very long walk. After walking up the hill past the scene of the crash, I decide to ride the rest of the way as it's almost all down hill from here. Slowly and carefully I pick my way down the trail, onto the road and back to the the hotel. After a shower it's into the car for the 9hr drive home. The next day is at the doctor's to get the verdict. Oh well, stuff happens and this now marks my most serious bodily injury to date. It was worth it for a couple of days riding with the guys. I'm looking forward to MDH VI.

Thanksgiving Thoughts

2005-10-13T07:10:00.000-05:00

This is the chair where worries melt away as you look out over the bay in front of our cottage. It's Thanksgiving weekend and we're closing up the cottage at the end of another great summer season. I'm so very thankful for a wonderful family, Shirley, my loving wife, two great sons Eric & Scott, and Dez & Mandi. It's been a fun weekend having everyone together.

Note to Self

2005-09-21T15:33:00.000-05:00

I was out walking at lunch today and found myself at Photo Central. And as you can imagine when you find yourself in a store that specializes one of your favorite hobbies, photography, you can't help but look around and getting interested in some new gear. The first was a camera bag by Lowepro that was also a backpack, very nice. Then there was the tripod bag, which would be great for trucking around the Manfroto. Or how about a new monopod? Light, portable and flexible a great accessory. Then there was the Canon hand strap, a whopping $50, which also required that you use the battery pack. And of course I been looking at the flashes, 430EX & 580EX , which are both quite nice. There was also an announcement for some photography courses and it would be good to improve the technique. Any way, just in case anyone is interested, Christmas is coming.

On the Road - Day 2

2005-09-14T00:35:00.000-05:00

We left Billings Montana at 8am this morning and decided on the scenic route as opposed to the Interstate. The scenic route takes us right through Yellowstone National Park, a first for Shirley and I. It was a sunny morning and the mountains and country side were quite beautiful. The road tracks along the Yellowstone River and then the Snake river and there are many guys out in the rivers fly fishing, something I'd like to try in a big way. several years ago I bought a very nice fly fishing rod in Banff and have never really used it yet and never caught a fish either. Anyway, the drive is very nice and views are spectacular. Around lunch time, we're at Old Faithful and according to the predictions we'll have 40 minutes to catch lunch in the cafeteria before the eruption. The cafeteria is quite busy but service and the food is good and we're back outside with 10 minutes to spare. The forecast is pretty accurate and Old Faithful does it's stuff for the crowd. Surprisingly nobody cheers and it's very nice but somehow not as spectacular as I thought it might be, but then perhaps I'm just jaded. After all it's been erupting for longer that I've been alive with great regularity, and that is something of a wonder all by itself.

The scenic route has added several hours on to the trip and now were really booking it to make up time but the 2-way highway, curves and mountain, and little towns ever couple of miles are making some of us wish we were on the Interstate. But, I'm having a good time and the whole day is dedicated to the trip and getting into Salt Lake will just put us inside a hotel anyway and I'm glad we've spent the time enjoying God's creation.

We just drove through Paris, perhaps we made a wrong turn at Alburque, Doc! Shortly, we'll hook back up to I-15 for the run into Salt Lake City and then we'll play with the GPS to take us to the hotels. The next few days will be the USANA convention and we'll start with the Head Office production tour where they make the bust nutritional supplements in the world.

On the road

2005-09-13T08:17:00.001-05:00

Here we are on the road trip to Salt Lake City. Thanks to my Lotus Notes client I'm writing this from the back seat of the van at 3pm and it will get posted later tonight when we arrive a the hotel. We left town at about 7:30am with Keith & Barb and we're on our way to the USANA International Convention. This will be our first and we're looking forward to what we'll learn and experience. We're on I-94 heading west on the same route I'll take in two weeks to go "Biking with the Boys" on our fifth annual bike trip to the Maah Daah Hey trail near Medora, ND. The big difference this time is that the sun is up. On the biking trip we'll be driving through the night to arrive for a pre-dawn start on the day for a hard day of biking.

We should arrive in Billings at about 8pm and get a good sleep for the second day's drive which will be a little shorter, only 9 hours as opposed to todays 12 1/2 hour haul. There has been quite a bit of construction on the road, but he delays have been minimal. On several stretches there have
been state troupers enforcing the construction zone speed limit, so we're being careful now for sure.

A Big One

2005-09-13T08:17:00.000-05:00

I seem to have slacked off on posing anything over the last little while which is surprising since one of the big sign posts for time flying just flew by, Eric got married. That's right, August 21, 2005 Eric & Desirae were married. The day was fabulous, and more exciting that I ever imagined. We're thrilled to have Dez as part of our family and so happy and proud to see them both start out in their new life together.

All of us parents have heard the line that typically goes like "they will be grown up and gone before you know it", and of course we try to ignore it or think it won't happen to us or something equally lame, but guess what? Time Flies. So here we are, adjusting to having one less in the house and wondering when we'll see him next, trying not to call too often and thinking of almost any reason to make the call anyway. A new stage of life for them and a new stage of life for us. The best is yet to come.

iPod and Microsoft

2005-08-14T07:24:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking of caving in and buying an MP3 player and of course an iPod would be high on the list. This as got to hurt Apple, not just in the wallet, but I'd think their pride would be damages a little too.

Music

2005-08-04T14:46:00.000-05:00

I stopped in at our local Christian Book store, Hulls to do a little browsing on my lunch hour. While cruising the CD section I noticed a new touch screen system that allows you to browse their selections and hear about 1 minute of every track on a CD. This is a very nice system that was developed by a local Winnipeger and friend in BC. I had a couple of CDs in hand that I was doing to buy on spec, so I looked them up and played a few tracks. I liked what I heard, so that confirmed my selection. But the system was so nice to use I browsed several other selections and DVD videos as well. Good stuff guys.

[Listening to: Lovely Day - Various Artists - Lounge Worship: A Time To Chill Out (4:12)]

Cottage Maintenance & Service Excellence

2005-08-02T19:38:00.000-05:00

Aquarobic Air Pump
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

The Aquarobic System is what powers our septic system at the lake. Somehow, when it was installed over 22 years ago, I became the custodian of the system. This involves some shutting down and opening up maintenance that some might find objectionable, but it doesn't seem to bother me especially after learning to deal with diapers. For many years the system ran with very little attention. Then there was a period where the belt between the electric motor and the compressor seemed to fail on a regular basis, followed by failures of the electric motor itself. A more careful alignment of the motor and compressor pulleys seems to have solved the rapid belt deterioration and the return to putting the whole unit inside for the winter seems to make the electric motor last longer.

Breakdown is inevitable as the unit runs 7X24 May long weekend to Thanksgiving every year. But, over the last couple of years a new problem has arisen. The system is comprised of the air compressor, a holding tank, a settling tank and the actual septic field. Cottage waste water arrives in the holding tank where it is aerorated to speed the breakdown process. An air lift send a small amount of effluent over into the settling tanks where of course it "settles" and the more or less clear liquid rises up through a filter and out into the field. On a twice daily schedule the air flow from the compressor is diverted from the holding tank into the settling tank which causes a pump back action, forcing the contents of the settling tank back into the holding tank for a "re-mix".

Here is where the problems begin. The diverter valve started to malfunction and was not closing either of it's paths completely. This resulted in high water levels in both tanks as each tank was umping into the other at the same time. Not a good situation. After testing some stuff and poking around with he diverter mechanism, I determined it needed to be replaced. However, the company that sold the Aquarobic System is long gone and a source of parts is not available. After some searching on the web determined that I need a Honeywell 4044 diverter valve. I stop by the local Honeywell distributor only to find their doors locked and nobody to assist me during business hours on a week day. Bad on you! But, there is a nearby valve place so I explain my problem to them but they can't help me, but I do get referred to Central Controls.

This really the highlight of the story and the reason for the post. The guys at Central Controls were really great. Vince and Jim went out of there way to help me solve my valve problem. Vince called a valve manufacturer and came up with two great solutions and emailed me a quote in short order. The solutions were good, but a bit of overkill for my application. Since Vince went on vacation, Jim picked up my case and located a Winnipeg dealer who could supply an exact replacement for the Honeywell 4044 and even ensured that they had it in stock and sent me over to pick it up directly without any markup. This is what all customer service should be like. Well done guys, and thanks.

A great afternoon on the lake.

2005-07-08T21:24:00.000-05:00

Tranquil Channel
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

We took the boat out for a cruise on the lake this afternoon. It's a great day, very calm and hot which made for great boating. We headed south west and planned on looping by Queen Island and up thru Crow Rock Pass and back home. But, the GPSr showed a geocache in the neighborhood so we made a little side trip. It was just 28km round trip off our planned route, but it was such a nice day we headed off further south. Well there is noting like 4 hours on the open water under a hot sun to for on your tan or fry you to a crisp. One of us survived, but Shirley is looking a bit like a lobster tonight!

Going to Toronto

2005-07-07T17:22:00.000-05:00

Going to Toronto
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

See that little spec at the head of the white line? It's a plane. And more that likely it's heading to Toronto. Poor them. This picture is from my boat on beautiful Lake of the Woods. It's sunny 25-27, breezy and a great day.

Several times on business trips to and from Toronto I've been able to look out the window and spot the point of land where our cottage is located from about 30,000 on a clear day. You see, right over Lake of the Woods is where the Air Canada Toronto to Winnipeg flight starts it's descent into Winnipeg. When I'm at the lake and look up and see the contrails of jets going east and west overhead I can't help but think of the people in that amazing flying machine going to and from the big TO. Hopefully, they are traveling for happy and good reasons and not just another business gig. I'm so much happier looking up from the dock and viewing the plane that when I'm on the plane looking down on the dock.

Today, we were heading into Kenora (see the pictures) to return some movies and I couldn't help but think of the people on the plane. Friend's are moving back to Toronto, but they are driving, and that's another story.

MS Kenora - Vacation Day 6

2005-07-04T09:58:00.000-05:00

IMG_0609
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

We were driving by Safety Bay on the way into Kenora from Keewatin when I spotted the MS Kenora. The scene just seemed to be set for a nice shot, so I pulled over to the side of the road to capture this picture.

Today we were in to church in the morning and did a little shopping as well as stopping at HoJo's a new coffee shop in downtown Kenora with free wireless internet access, a plus for me! This may become a regular stop on our trips to town.

The weather has been quite rainy, and despite the picture most days have been cloudy with rain. Today it has flipped several times from cloudy to clear and back again.

Tomorrow, if it's raining, we're taking a road trip to Dryden to do a little geocaching for a day out of the cottage.

Canada Day

2005-07-03T13:40:00.000-05:00

Fireworks #7
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

It's Canada Day and Day 4 of our vacation. Scott & Mandi joined us at the lake arriving late last night. We sent the day just enjoying the first full day of sunshine by loafing on the dock and soaking up the rays.

After dinner we all headed into Kenora to watch the fireworks. This year they launched them from Conney Island which made them seem quite far away. I guess we're all getting a little jaded because nobody seemed to think that they were as good as previous years, but still a fun time and a fitting end to a very nice day. We live in such a great country and unfortunately we all tend to take it some what forgranted. We have so much to be thankful for.

Vacation - Day 2

2005-06-30T09:03:00.000-05:00

Fireplace at the Lake
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

Today was out first full day of vacation at our family cottage on Lake of the Woods. Day 1 was spent packing up and then spending a wonderful afternoon with friends who are moving back to Toronto. We wish that things had turned out differently and that we would have spend much more time together here in Winnipeg, but I have a feeling our friendship will survive the distance and we'll still connect from time to time.

As you may have guessed from the photo, it wasn't exactly a ripping hot day. The sky is overcast and the morning is spent with the usual cup of coffee and a great book which I've almost finished. After reading a couple of chapters, Shirley is up and we have breakfast. The tree that blew over last week is calling me, so I sharpen the chainsaw and get to work. The clearing that the loss of this tree made is just begging to be filled so we take a walk down the road in search of a replacement.

I know this time of year is not the greatest for transplanting small trees, but in the ditch along our road there are many spruce trees. Their life and height is severely limited because at least twice a year the road crew comes along with a brushing machine that clearcuts an 8' swath alongside the road. I figure the small trees will stand a better change being uprooted and replanted along side our driveway as opposed to having their heads cut of year after year.

It starts to rain mid-afternoon which means a book and a nap are in order. It's amazing how doing nothing on a rainy day can make you so tired. Perhaps it's the need to catch up on our sleep that is taking over. After a short nap and while Shirley is still catching some Z's, I get the computer out and post a few photos and even check the work email (what am I doing?). The connection at the lake is dial-up and I'm wishing that I'd arranged for the high(er) speed wireless hookup that is available in our area now. It's hard to go back to this slow of a connection. It's probably for the best as the lake should be all about un-plugging not staying connected, but we'll see.

Mini Lavalamp

2005-06-24T15:28:00.000-05:00

mini_lavalamp
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

It wasn't that long ago that Lava Lamps were ridiculed and now they seem to have become somewhat "cool" now but this is going a little too far.

Sunset in Sunset Country

2005-06-21T20:05:00.000-05:00

Sunset
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

Last weekend was the first nice weekend at the lake this summer. We spent the day on the dock soaking up the sun and enjoying the ripping south wind that was bringing in the heat. After dinner, the wind died down so we headed out on a little cruise in the boat to watch the sun go down. A great end to a great day.

Backup

2005-06-19T23:11:00.000-05:00

Well, literally I'm back up and running with a new disk and most of my software and data recovered. There are still several key files that I'm trying to recover via software, but that's not going too well and as time passes, hope dims. Thanks to having a second disk on hand which I could sacrifice I was actually functional last weekend. The real replacement didn't arrive until Monday afternoon, and I've spent may hours locating, downloading, re-configuring and remembering passwords etc. Yeah, one of the files I lost was an encrypted database that had all my userids and passwords for almost everything on my computer, web sites etc.

On one of my very first job interviews over 30+ years ago the interviewer asked "What's the most important thing in IT?". Well, I made up some answer that I thought was pretty good, but it didn't line up with his. His answer was simple, "Backup". I'm beginning to think he was right.

Disk read error has occurred

2005-06-10T13:52:00.000-05:00

This is what greets me on the screen of my IBM T40 Thinkpad this morning at 8am. Initially, I'm not to worried, but after a couple of re-boot attempts, it begins to sink in - I've lost my disk.

This is the kind of thing that happens to other people, not me. The T40 has been rock solid for over 3 years, and now this. The very interesting thing was I'd been paying more attention to backing up my hard drive in the last week or so. I'd noticed a new "Rescue & Recovery" software utility on the IBM internal site and being a sucker for new software, I decided to upgrade to this tool. While installing this software, the previous version gets uninstalled and the hidden recovery partition also gets removed. The good side is that I now have 15gb more space, the soon to be bad news is I don't have a recovery image. After the new software is installed I give it a try and create a bootable recovery CD (good news), but the backup of my 50+gb of data won't fit anywhere so I don't take a backup (bad news). Also, the interface to the backup is pathetic and makes it very difficult to do a selective backup.

But, I'm still thinking that a backup is important so on Wednesday of this week I run the Tivoli Storage Manager tool that is standard on the IBM image and backup lots of stuff to who knows where out on the network (good news), and hopefully, the restore of the data will also turn out to be good news.

So, here we go 1-800-IBM-HELP to the rescue! I call and select the hardware option and get a very friendly and helpful young lady who informs me that there is just one disk like the one I need and it's in London, Ontario. (Hey, I was just there last week on business) and that hopefully it will be shipped to Winnipeg and arrive by Monday, or Tuesday. I'd hoped for local availability and to get some of this out of the way today, but what can you do? The disk will be totally blank and I'm requested to call back and request software support to get the new disk imaged with all the standard IBM stuff when it arrives. Well, several more phone calls later I've logged a software call and the local deskside support person will call me back.

Up to this point I've been working from home, so I head into the office because I know deskside support doesn't make house calls. Once in the office I learn that Ray now only works on-site half time and won't be in until after lunch. I'm so dependent on being online and having that Thinkpad work all the time and everywhere, and now there is not much to do except wait. While I'm waiting I take the opportunity to clean my desk and do some long overdue filing.

Ray calls! Yahoo, we can get this process under way. I've decided to sacrifice a second hard drive (which is not backed up at all, but generally the stuff is recreatable, probably after several days of downloading and messing around) that I have to the re-imaging process so that I can begin to get on with my life. Ray's not too hopeful about recovering anything from the damaged drive and says he'll have the reimage done by the end of the day.

Back to my desk and I finish the clean up. I've started making a list of what I'll have to install and also a list of things I should backup more regularly and stuff I should print out once in a while. All my contacts are in Lotus Notes & Outlook. That network backup better be good.

More later... it's 2:30 and there is a lot of work ahead.

Family at the Wall

2005-06-04T13:43:00.000-05:00

Family at the Wall
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

When I was younger, perhaps six or seven, my family lived in Toronto. and, like this family, my parents took my sister and I to Niagra Falls. One of my most vivid memories of this trip was the hight of the stone wall shown in this picture. I remember it being so very high and that my dad, had to lift me up to look over the edge and down into the gorge, Just like the young lad in this photo. I was both thrilled and scared at how far down it was from the edge of that wall to the bottom of the gorge.

Well, many years later, on a business trip to Toronto, I again went to Niagra Falls and was stunned at how low this wall actually is. It's only about two feet high!

It's all a mater of perspective, but it's still a long way down.

Geocaching in London

2005-05-31T23:38:00.000-05:00

London, Ontario that is. I recently got my Garmin GPSMAP 60C back from being repaired and I didn't realize how much I missed the little toy. So lately, it's been getting a lot of use geocaching in Winnipeg and now in London.

I'm out here on a little business trip and it was a nice evening and I had a Travel Bug to drop off, so I was off in search of GCMF2MT - Greatest Treasure of All Time which was the closest cache to my hotel. This morning before I left Winnipeg I downloaded map detail for the London to Toronto corridor, but for some reason the GPS doesn't have any map info for the city, just major highways. However, with the waypoint for the cache loaded, I just started walking cross country to try and locate the cache. For this one, it worked out well an I was able to find the cache without too much trouble. The next one would be a little different.

The next closest cache was GCNV25T - River Stroll Series - Foxway. The description put it on a walkway along side a river, just off the path. After walking several blocks, I come across a river, the Thames no less, and proceed down the river bank on the side closest to me as I approached the river. The GPS is indicating about 750m down the river. I go down a street for half a block and then there is an access path to the river bank where I find a nice mowed path right on the edge of the river. This must be the trail. As I get closer to the destination the heading starts to swing to the south and point across the river. You guessed it, I'm on the wrong side of the river! There is no bridge close by, so it's back the way I came and up the other side. This time the path is a nicely marked, asphalted trail and after a 1.5km "opps" I'm able to find the cache. Well, that's enough for one night and I take the trail back all the way downtown and back to the hotel.

One of the great things about geocaching is that it takes you places you might not normally go. While this is only my second time in London, I've seen a lot of the area that I might not noramlly have seen. Who knew that London has a "forks" area similar to Winnipeg's "forks".

Tempus Fugit

2005-05-28T11:23:00.000-05:00

(tem’pus fyOO’jit), [Latin]: Time Flies

I re-titled my blog today based on reading an article in Photolife magazine which was given to Scott as a birthday present. It seems much better that "Random Thoughts" and especially applicable at this time in my life where time really does seem to fly by. Seasons come and go at an ever increasing speed. I've heard it said that people of my age feel this way because there is a smaller and smaller percentage of life to live ahead of me. I can still remember growing up and spending summers at the lake, where summers seemed endless at least until that last week before school started. Now summers fly by in what seems like a few short weekends.

Speaking of time flying, Shirley and I had the privilege of celebrating a birthday with our good friend Chris last night. We had coffee and a great chocolate cake that Shirley made and just enjoyed each others company. Right now both of our families are preparing for summer weddings. Us with Eric & Dez and Chris and Elaine with their daughter Jennifer. With children leaving home it seems to even more emphasis the passage of time and the move to a different phase in our lives. Some of these changes are exciting and children leaving home is a natural process but I know I'll miss the daily contact, the playful jabs, and the good natured banter. I hope there will still be bike riding episodes to be enjoyed.

From the deck.

2005-05-27T23:58:00.000-05:00

From the deck.
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

The cottage is such a wonderful place. The view from the deck is always refreshing and new no matter how many times I sit and look out over the water. Even a rainy May long weekend has it's sunny moments. This weekend there were a lot of bugs, a huge number of bug in the bush and around the water front. We were out in the boat one afternoon and going by another island where it appeared there were columns of smoke rising up from one end. Upon closer inspection, it was millions of these bugs in a swarming formation. But, no mater what the conditions, or what our personal circumstances are we can always make the choice to enjoy our surroundings and to enjoy life. Being happy is a decission that I can make every day, and I choose to live a great life, full of joy and happiness. Life to the max!

Dark Waters

2005-05-16T22:41:00.000-05:00

Dark Waters
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

Opened the cottage on the May 15-16 weekend and while the weather was not the greatest, it was wonderful to be back at the cottage. It's always so peaceful and relaxing. There is always time to just sit and thing, to refresh the soul, to get back in touch with Who and what is important.

Arrived Friday night and after unloading put on the fireplace and Shirley prepared a nice snack. Turned in fairly early to get an early start on firing up the water system. Up on Saturday but not sure exactly when an I begin the familiar ritual of reassembling the water system which was carefully shut down last winter. First all the in-cottage connections, then under cottage connections and then the water line from the pump to the house. It's amazing how many little quirks, work arounds etc. develop in the system over the years.

All is going well, the line is in, the pump is primed and pressure is building in the system. OK, here we go, opening the valve to the line up to the cottage. Hey, what's this spray of water all over the place! After closing the valve I realize that that little slow drip I noticed last year really did mean something. This little part in the system has seen a better day. Inspite of having a huge inventory of plumbing parts, I don't have this one, so it's off to Kenora. Once in the car I notice it's only 8:15am and I must have been working for over an hour. On the way back from Kenora I treat my self at Timmy's to a coffee (no donut, I'm on the program :-( ).

Once the pump is running it's time to open the valve that lets the water into the cottage. This is where thing can get exciting. Everything seems OK for a few minutes, but then there is that sound of running water and all the taps are closed and things should be quiet. Yikes, it's the "pipe patch" in the lower bathroom ceiling, it's spring a leak. Run out side and shut the valve, fix the pipe, clean up the water all over the floor and try again. Success! The rest of the day is spent doing odd jobs and getting things back in place, plus a nap. Can't work too hard. Another great day at the lake.

Pansy in the Wild

2005-05-09T12:46:00.000-05:00

Pansy in the Wild
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

Mothers Day was a big success at our home this weekend. Eric & Dez provided a wonderful brunch and Scott joined us later for cards & gifts. Shirley quite enjoyed the day and is looking forward to experiencing the Riverstone Spa.

Bunny Suicides

2005-05-07T10:48:00.000-05:00

Couldn't resist, this is just too funny in a sick sort of way. Bunny Suicides

Wrong Side

2005-05-07T10:31:00.000-05:00

Nobody usually likes to be on the wrong side. I didn't want to be on the wrong side of the digital divide so after reviewing the list I realized I wasn't doing too bad. But, I'd never spent the time to look at Technorati or boingboing . In fact I'm still not all that sure what boingboing is all about. And, I'm not yet bored with flickr. I still think it's very cool, especially for free!

Park Bench

2005-04-30T19:02:00.000-05:00

Park Bench
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

Things are getting interesting now! I just set up a flickr account to make blogging with a photo a little easier. I guess I'll need to take a few more pictures to see how this will all turn out.

Phil, Shackleton, Churchill and The Ride

2005-04-24T20:44:00.000-05:00

Today, Phil Baker spoke at our church, and delivered a great message about Words. Small words and Big Words and the importance of having Big Words in our life like Joy, God & People. Phil Baker is the pastor of Riverview Church in Australia. Their web site seems to be under a major re-vamp so perhaps you should check back later. They've also been reviewed by ABC

Phil mentioned his blog so I checked it out for a bit this afternoon before taking a bike ride. My son Scott purchased a couple of Phil's CDs on building business leadership, Shackleton - a leadership legacy, and Winston Churchill - a study in greatness. Shirley bought a book, which I'll get to later.

So, before the ride I burned Phil's CDs onto a CD-RW disc in MP3 format and loaded up Scott's Guru Flight road bike into the van and headed of for a road ride. I went out Henderson and I was thinking about a spin out to Lockport and back, a popular road ride. Just before setting out I noticed that the temperature was dropping. It was about 10C and at the last minute I decided to throw on the jacket over to of two jerseys. Good choice! There was a very strong headwind from the north and it was cool. After slugging out the headwind for 15km, I wimped out and new that Lockport was just too far away for today's ride and turned around. The wind noise on the first 15km was so loud that it made it quite hard to hear the CD, hence I'm re-listening to it now. Good Stuff! It's quite interesting since I recently saw the IMAX production about Shackleton. It's quite a remarkable story.

The 15km back was uneventful and much easier riding. Going out was about 28km/h and coming back was 35+km/h. I'm a little zapped after yesterday's 32km ride and the Bowflex workouts, so It will be an early night tonight.

[Listening to: Track 04 - Phil Baker - Shackleton (2:54)]

7th time lucky?

2005-04-19T09:23:00.000-05:00

Whether it's luck or skill Lance certainly has a lot on the line as he prepares to go for the 7th straight win in the Tour de France. With announcing his retirement after this years Tour, he's planning on going out at the top of his game. I'll certainly be pulling for him to win as it would be an incredible achievement. Six wins are already incredible, but I think a loss on number seven would cause most people only to remember the loss and not the fantastic record that's already achieved. We tend to have such short memories and a focus for the negative. No matter what happens it will be one exciting Tour

Fun with iTunes and w:Bloggar

2005-04-19T00:06:00.000-05:00

After a little hunting I located WMPtunelog which allows an easy way to post your currently playing tune. Easy & fun.

[Listening to: Clocks - Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head (5:07)]

Prairie Mountain

2005-04-18T23:24:00.000-05:00

I went biking yesterday and had a great ride of about 32km. With the river levels up most of the local trails in the city are under water and here in Winnipeg it's pretty flat on the roads. However, with a 40+ kph: wind you can really get a workout when you're riding into it! This is something I refer to as a "Prairie Mountain". It may be flat, but a long hall into a stiff headwind can seem just as hard as climbing a mountain trail.

It was also a good day for flying a kite. Some people even tried flying a kite while riding a bike. Kiteboarding becomes Kitebiking!

Wish List

2005-04-16T11:26:00.000-05:00

I've been reading Seth Godin and that lead me to his Liar's Blog which I found quite interesting. Of course being a good marketer, he's promoting his books and I guess the promotion was effective because I've added a couple to my wish list. So if anyone is looking to bless me with a nice surprise or looking for a Fathers day gift...

Life is a Beach

2005-04-12T13:40:00.000-05:00

Scott took this picture last year on our dock at Lake of the Woods. It really captures the way I feel about the lake and lake life. Nothing is a problem at the lake, and I'm looking forward to getting back there soon. Actually, most days I'd rather be at the lake.

w.bloggar

2005-04-12T13:13:00.000-05:00

Just investigating the w.bloggar tool to see what sort of thinks it can do. Basically, because I'm a WYSIWYG kind of guy and reluctant to get down into the HTML code etc. This stuff needs to be easy to do. Life has enough challenges without remembering stuff you don't really need to know. You know, simple things like a spell checker are nice to have, especially for us 6 finger typers.

2005-04-02T11:32:00.000-06:00

Snow swirls

S2 Photography

2005-03-30T16:29:00.000-06:00

My son Scott has started a very nice Photo Blog at S2 Photography. His shot of The Provenche Bridge was what I used in a recent framing class at Lee Valley Tools. Turned out quite nice.

Medora Man

2005-03-27T13:33:00.000-06:00

Just experimenting with the Hello program to post pictures. The yellow guy is the "Medora Man" so named because I recovered him from a geocache in Medora ND. while on a mountain biking trip to the Maah Daah Hey trail.

What I'm Reading

2005-03-24T17:02:00.000-06:00

So, I've never had a Blog, but I somehow ended up atWhat I'm Reading and them decided to check out Blogger. so far, so good.

Grid for Good

2005-03-24T16:52:00.000-06:00

World Community Grid's mission is to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity. Our work is built on the belief that technological innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can change our world for the better. Our success depends on individuals - like you - collectively contributing their unused computer time to this not-for-profit endeavor.