A Day At The Zoo

Hadn't posted in a while and finally felt like it...

We spent the day yesterday at the Zoo with K1 and K2 (yes for those of you who don't know K2 is now present in the world.)

What an interesting 'time warp'...The Winnipeg Zoo has been the same for decades - and it's showing - the animals are well kept (I presume) but the displays are boring, lacking interest for us (or one must assume for them.) A great many of them are just empty - and haven't been occupied for many years. A few have been re-purposed from older exhibits that were very promising when they were made (such as the live beaver ponds...) but now they are used for something else entirely and look sad and run-down.

The Polar bear pen is empty now, our old polar bear having passed away, the pen no longer meets international standards so it will remain empty...

The Great Panda Bear exhibit center has become badly run down but is now under some form of construction - not sure what that will be, the playground that used to have a water wheel the kids could turn, has nothing but sand.

K1 enjoys the running around, and the slide in the playground, but the rest of it - I think maybe it's time we took the zoo off our list of attractions - until they decide to do get serious about fixing it up.

Photo: Evan Young

February Catch Up

Alright - we're half way through February and the winter is going very well actually! Which is a nice change, for the past few years the end part of my winters has not been a positive time for me!

To catch up - S. is pregnant with our second child - Kiddo is now 3.5 years old and doing very very well! Daycare is fun and enjoyable (though our pickup and drop-off cycle leaves something to be desired - it's located badly 'out of position' for both S. and I.)

I've just finished a seven month contract and I'm about to pick up another two week engagement, unfortunately this is doing MS Access work. I would really prefer to continuing with more modern development in C# and VB.net and on larger Object Oriented projects - it's an area that I don't have much experience in and what I have learned in the last seven months has done much to move my career forward.

Aha well - we spent the day today at the Baby and Kid show - many many kids and moms - it was fun - if very tiring - Kiddo was being a 3.5 year old - running ahead, being interested in stuff, doing what kids should do. But that doesn't mean it wasn't tiring for mom and dad.

Photo Credit: Omega Man

New Year 2009

Another year gone...

Personal Development (Training/Certification)

Made no progress here - I guess I need to decide if this is really important.

Craft Room

Like many people we still have a 'deep dark secret' in a pile of collected junk that we need to sort through. If anything this has gotten worse...

Tasks

This has improved but need to get better at focusing real time onto tasks be they work, personal projects, Scouts or just having time to enjoy cooking dinner.

Painting the Living Room

This is probably one of our 'next tasks' only issue is that the living area has a vaulted ceiling over the stairs that is going to be very very difficult to paint.

Ideas for 2009

I'm going to try and limit 'Aimless Surfing'...I frequently sit on the couch and surf the net - whatever I find interesting, problem is it isn't productive time. At the same time the TV is on and that just creates mental noise (as one blog I read this year said) if I'm going to make time to accomplish tasks then I need to have less unfocused time when I'm not productive.

I continue to try and change the 'tone' of the items I buy - wood, stone, stoneware, metal in place of plastic and that has been somewhat successful.

Kiddo is now old enough that S. and I are going to try and take him out canoeing this summer - we'll see how that works out.

It's Fall Again

So fall's here and today I was finally feeling more like blogging again...

Kiddo is now a very active 3.25 year old and he's gaining more and more ability to interact with his world by himself. We're now into the 'me do it' stage of most things.

Work has been interesting - I'm on contract with a local Internet development company and it's my first time doing C# programming full time. After 4 1/2 months I can say that I'm not a fan of C# (too many brackets and ';' for my tastes). But the company I'm on contract with is interesting - they are making an honest effort to develop to standards and make a good product.

Problem for me is that this is a much 'large' scope of development than I have ever been involved with before - almost all of my experience has been with small projects, where I'm the single developer, QA and support all in one. I can keep the issues and variables in my head and I can usually identify, code and deliver a fix or change in a single day or perhaps two. On this project I'm developing over the course of weeks - with many more people involved in the process.

This identifies a problem that I didn't know that I had - I'm not a long term details person, it's not that I'm doing bad work (I think that after the better part of 10 years in the industry that shouldn't be an issue) but I am finding it difficult to keep track of everything that I need to constantly. I'll identify something that I need to remember, maybe even get it down on paper and then completely miss it. Or I'll remember it the first time but be in-consistent later on. I'm catching these myself thankfully but then I need to go back and fix them.

The issue now is that I need to identify weather of not this is ever going to be something for me. I would by far prefer to try it, realize that it isn't for me and then bow out rather than fail out after some grievous mistake.

Well, there you go - first blog of the fall, got to go, the front lawn needs mowing.

Photo Credit: 'fall road in orange' by intimaj

Birthday Blog

So this (in accordance with internationally recognized standard) the 'birthday blog'.

So I'm 40. This is generally assumed to be a 'turning point' in your life, a time to recollect and review.

I've actually had this post in draft for some time - with nothing in particular that made sense to write. The funny thing is that while I'm supposed to feel that this day is significant I'm really ambivalent about it - no particular regrets and no particular significant 'looking forward' I wonder if that's important in itself...?

Ok - I'm clueless, got nothing, I've been considering a new post for weeks but I'm not getting past the weather and other stuff around the house - and that's boring for both of us.

This picture sort of sums it up - staring off into the distance... and all you see is mist.

I'm out to camp with some Beavers and Cubs coming up so maybe that will give me some stories to tell.

Photo Credit: Alex Dodd

Net Neutrality

Amber Mac posted the following on her blog regarding Net Neutrality - the idea that what you download via your Internet connection should not be monitored or restricted based on the type of content that it is. This is typically done by ISP's to limit Bit Torrent content - on the presumption that much of that traffic is illegal content. Until now they haven't been far wrong, but the CBC in Canada has begun to distribute one of it's programs via bit-torrent - this is legitimate and legal but the ISP's are still interfering with it.

Amber's Post: