By TheCalgaryGuy - Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Evidently, the weather we had for Christmas is not normal, but having never experienced anything different I fail to believe what people tell me.
In any case, it was perfect.
On December 25th, Calgary was blessed with a cloudless day, the sun shinning as hard as it could. Around mid-day, it was +15 degrees outside. I kid you not! We took a walk around the neighborhood and we very nearly did it in t-shirts. If it wasn't that the motorcycle is parked in a corner of the garage, under its tarp and without a battery -- so that taking it out and putting it back in would require at least a couple of hours -- we would have taken it out for a ride. Over the weekend, we saw about half a dozen bikes on the roads and we really wanted to be one of them.
Needless to say that Calgary has no snow now. The forecast calls for another week of above-zero temperature. It's great!
Vero was a little disappointed that we had a snow-less Christmas, even with the incredible weather. So on the 26th we drove down to Lake Louise.
Lake Louise does have snow. Enough for the ski hill to be open; enough for the lake to be frozen and a skating rink to be open; enough to warrant us putting all our snow gear on to hike up to the lake Agnes teahouse.
So out here we have the choice: Christmas with or without snow? Stay in Calgary for warm, sunny and a snow-less experience; drive to the mountains to ski, skate and play around in the snow.
* * * * *The 26th was also a different experience for us. I had been meaning to get a new TV for my office (to replace the really old one that now has the side effect of emitting more sound out the back than the front), so I figured we could brave the craziness of Boxing Day and drop by Best Buy to get one. After checking their website I learned that they opened at 6AM on the 26th. "We can do that," I thought: let's get there at 6AM and beat the crowd. Who else but us gets up so early anyway?
We got up a little after 5AM and got ready to go out into that gentle night (man it's dark at that time) down to the Best Buy, a 15 minute drive. We got there at 6:10AM.
Driving in, I saw a couple of people outside the doors, but it didn't have the coherence of a line. So I thought they were just hanging out there, for some reason. The fact that we had to HUNT for a parking space worried me a little, though. Anyways, since it wasn't a mad lineup, and we did get up for it, we walked to the door.
The "security guard" at the door (who wasn't much of a security guy) was all bright and cheery and chatted up a storm with us folks outside. How can these people be happy at 6AM on Boxing Day? They live in Calgary, that's how.
We had to wait about five minutes before they let us in. Inside: complete mayhem. The place was PACKED with people running all over the place. Craziness.
We found a TV I liked, not too expensive, and grabbed the box. A 24" TV is pretty heavy, we learned... Off we go, dashing through the isles to reach the cash, only to see a lineup there. Actually, we saw the BEGINNING of a line; the end was nowhere in sight.
At the head of the line, a bright and cheery employee (yet another one... crazy, I tell ya!) was directing people to the cashes and to the end of the line. Seeing us with our huge box and no cart, he told us to leave the box there and aim for the floating balloon that indicates the end of the line... on the other side of the store! We rushed there -- and a good thing we did because within five minutes the line had grown almost double!
Surprisingly, the wait was pretty short. It took only 20 minutes to reach the cash, where the still bright and cheery employee recognized us, showed surprise at how quickly we got there and pointed us to an available cashier.
Out the door we go with our big-ass box. At the door, the same (and still bright and cheery) security guard suggested we leave the box there, go get the car and this other employee will help us to load it. Which we did, and which he did (happy to see us pull up in a hatch-back).
We were out of the parking lot before 7AM. In and out within 50 minutes, a good ten of which were spent looking at the TVs and picking one.
And everybody, short of a couple of grumpy customers, was happy and helpful. Crazy, I keep saying.
So here's "Matt's tip to shopping for electronics on Boxing Day": avoid it if you can, otherwise bring a friend to wait in line while you pick up your gear!
By TheCalgaryGuy - Friday, December 23, 2005
This will be my last entry before Christmas, so I wish all of you the merriest one, filled with great parties, friends and families and, mostly, relaxation!
May the presence of your loved ones outshine any gift you get.
Back on Tuesday the 27th.
By TheCalgaryGuy - Thursday, December 22, 2005
When we bought our house, we used the services of Glen Weikle of Royal Lepage. He's a great guy, a really good agent, and I recommend him to anyone looking for property in the Calgary region.
When we started looking for houses, in September of last year, we came across Glen. We told him what we were looking for and he spent the next three months helping us to find this house. He then helped us find a mortgage broker and a lawyer and generally make the whole process easier for a couple who knew nothing of the subtleties of house buying in Calgary.
Yesterday, Glen gave me a call. He was in the neighborhood and wanted to drop by. I hadn't seen him since December of last year when we made the last offer on the house. Since then, we redecorated a whole lot so I was happy to show him the new look!
What I did not expect, however, was to get a Christmas gift! As if Glen and Jeanie knew me so well, they got us a really cool set of 4 BBQ tools and 4 skewers. The really manly stuff, too: huge pieces, wood handles, pretty heavy... I can't wait to try them out! (Which will be as soon as we buy some meat since we're living in balmy +10 degrees of late!)
That was the last thing I expected. A really nice thing indeed.
By TheCalgaryGuy - Wednesday, December 21, 2005
The Wasatch Brew Pub is a microbrewery in Utah that decided to appeal to the slightly less religious people around. If you didn't know it, Utah is known to host many a Mormon. Though I don't know much about that religion, I know they are on the bandwagon against schools teaching the theory of evolution to kids.
Wasatch took it that one hilarious step further. Check out their Beers page. First on the list is the Wasatch Evolution Amber Ale, clearly a direct hit against that whole school thing. Third down is the Polygamy Porter with the catchy slogan Why Have Just One!.
Unfortunately, you'll have to go down to Utah to get some as they don't ship them anywhere.
But it makes a man want to start drinking beer!
By TheCalgaryGuy - Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Yesterday, we saw the Barenaked Ladies in concert. This is the third time I see them on stage (once in Montreal and early this year at the tsunami relief concert) and they proved, yet again, why I'm right to call them "my favorite band". The show was, simply put, AWESOME!
I started off a little disappointed because, using the button-mashing technique I've used before to buy tickets (which consists in clicking on the "get tickets" button on the Ticketmaster site until it stops saying "not on sale yet"), I wasn't able to get anything closer than the tenth row. I tried the tenth row at the Montreal concert and, as 5'2" Marianne can attest, the view isn't all that good. Today, I learned that they reserve the first rows to the fan club (what rock have I been hiding under to not realize there's a fan club and they get the good tickets?!?) so I'll be signing up right after I write this entry.
Armed with our first balcony seats, which are actually pretty good, we made our way to a packed Jubilee. I just HAD to stop by the merchandise table because Yanik (father of Edgar) told me they were selling USB memory sticks with BNL material on it. Of course, I got one: it's BNL and geekiness all wrapped up in a slick silver package!
With that in my pocket, up we went to the first balcony. I found it odd that a security guard was causing traffic in the small isle... until I saw why he was there: Tyler Stewart was standing there, signing anything you put in his hand in one swift motion. How cool is that? Really cool, it is. I told him so and he said "thank you". Then I moved on so the mob behind me could move forward.
That was very classy of him. Makes the tickets a whole lot better!
And so the show started (with an opening act of Kurt Swinghammer). It was a holiday concert, so we got a bunch of those songs (unfortunately, no Elf's Lament), but what surprised me was that they played a very large variety of songs from every album -- from Be My Yoko Ono to Upside Down, through many hit songs like One Week and the necessary If I Had $100000. And through it all, the jokes and banter that define BNL as a must see show.
The show opened with a group of kids from a local choir (sorry kids, I forget your name!) singing some Christmas songs, then BNL got on and sang a couple more with them. Really well done. Toward the end, they poked fun at Kevin's squeeze box and poof! enters kids from the local accordion association (whose name I forget too) to play $100000.
Next thing you know, over two hours have gone by and they are coming back for a second encore.
I can name only three things that weren't AWESOME:
- The crowd didn't sound like it was really into the songs like that first show in Montreal. Maybe it was being on the balcony that made it so I couldn't hear everyone singing, at least I hope it was. I'm pretty sure they couldn't hear me, but I sang every word along with them!
- A couple of ladies around us had very loud laughs, so we missed a couple of lines after jokes. Oddly enough, asking them to repeat that last line did nothing. Maybe I should have asked one of those ladies to scream the demand...
- After the show, I can't hug them and squeeze them and pat them and pet them and rub them and caress them and name them George and bring them home with us. Though I'm thinking they might object to the rubbing.
In the end, we drove back home really happy to have been there, with the car radio off so as to not chase the sounds of the concert from our minds (to some country songs Vero likes so much).
If, by some luck the Gods grant me, the band or anyone connected to them happens to read this, THANKS FOR THE GREAT SHOW AND COME BACK ANYTIME!!! (I don't know why I'm screaming that part, as if they could hear it better...) I'm thinking Calgary isn't the prime audience for a show like this, but I promise that anytime BNL shows up here they will sell at least two tickets. Every. Single. Time. And if the venue causes problems, I got plenty of room in my basement!
If you, gentle reader, have never seen their show, remedy that ASAP. You will not regret it!
And to Marianne who is moving here next month: gna gna gna, you should've moved earlier, you missed a great show, IN YOUR FACE! :)
By TheCalgaryGuy - Friday, December 16, 2005
On a cold and sunny day yesterday, we rented Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God (yet another crappy website).
This is the "sequel" to the first Dungeon and Dragons movie. I say "sequel", in quotes, because that's what the folks at Wizards of the Coast call it, but it has nothing to do with the first one. Which is good.
I saw the box on the night I rented Dukes of Hazzard but I left it there thinking that Vero would want to see it too. When we browsed the store yesterday, I pointed to the single copy of the movie they have, she checked it out and agreed.
She actually enjoyed it. I see the "geekiness" growing in her every day!
It was, surprisingly, not bad. Not great, but for a lower budget movie that requires a lot of CGI, they did pretty good.
The whole thing is rushed -- they do fit an epic quest in a 1h45 movie -- but the writers did pretty good at making believable characters. It seems a lot of the creative team knew about DnD (but not from playing it) and they used the complete DnD literature to provide the background and mechanics of what is happening. It was nice to see, in the "making of" feature, the cast and crew flipping through the pages of the player manual between takes.
They dropped the ball on a couple of things, unfortunately, most notably in having a diversity of races and classes. The main character, it seems, doesn't have a class (at least, nothing we could figure out); they made one of the evil sidekick a half-orc, but I only know that because they explain it in the special features. They did a pretty good job on a couple of things, too, like in what the rogue does and how he does it. Quite neat.
To the DnD fan out there, I will stop here (so as to not give too much away) and recommend you go and rent this movie. To everybody else, you need not worry that you are missing out on a great movie by not renting it.
Yes, I saw the movie for the first time yesterday. Vero had another one of those "I'm doing something after work so I'll be home late" where, taking advantage of it, I rent a movie she doesn't want to see.
There was nothing else in the store that I hadn't seen...
I got the unrated version of The Dukes of Hazzard (at the time of this writing, this site SUCKS).
From what I can tell, "unrated" means they added three or four scenes with half-naked women. Like when Bo and Luke go to find Katie at the Atlanta university, they look for her by barging into three bedrooms, each of which containing a number of good looking young women wearing nothing but bikini bottoms and doing, what I can only guess to be, normal sorority girl stuff -- like playfully boxing with each other.
That left me sitting there, stunned, thinking: "WTF?!?"
So one of two things: either I completely missed what university is like (and I really should go), or they decided that the target audience for this movie is 14 year old boys. Which, as I realized yesterday, I no longer am.
For long portions of the movie I really wondered if I really was the target audience -- I mean, I'm a guy who likes movies with pretty girls and fast cars, but last I checked I had more than two brain cells that aren't driven entirely by hormones.
The best part of the movie, therefore, ended up being the stunt driving. They got the reining drifting champion to drive the car around, and it shows through a lot of really good looking slides. "Drifting", if you don't know, is this thing whereby a driver enters a turn by sliding the back of the car and goes through that turn with the car at an angle, the back wheels sliding the whole time. And this guy can really do it: in one of the special feature you can see him drive the car TWICE around this circle, through traffic no less, in a slide the entire time. Quite impressive.
Like the director said in an interview in the special features, the movie is mostly about the car. The car isn't that great, but the driving is pretty cool and the drifting is very, very well done.
And the girls? They do have a lot of pretty young things in the movie, but after the couple of scenes you quickly realize they have no actual personality (other than to arouse 14 year old boys) and it's pretty much a turn-off. And Jessica Simpson shows that, no matter how much practice you have, it is basically impossible to move without wobbling in six inch heels.
So it was a night of stunned consternation and nice slides. But not a movie I recommend... if you're not a 14 year old boy.
By TheCalgaryGuy - Thursday, December 15, 2005
So I send you to have a short laugh with some French-chalenged American kids.
By TheCalgaryGuy - Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Last weekend we went to the mall and has a brief contact with what could possibly be the CUTEST THING EVER.
As we walked into the mall, a young family (mom, dad and daughter) were walking out. I got to the door first, so I opened it for them (like any good Calgarian would). In truth, I was opening the door for my lady, but they were there so I figured I would hit two stones with one dead bird. Or the other way around. Whatever.
Mom and dad thanked me, like any good Calgarian would, and tried to guide their daughter out the open door. She couldn't have been more than five years old, walking around kinda oddly because she was completely concentrated on (what I can only assume were) her new shoes. And I agree with her: not only were they white and pristine but they had lights that would come on every time she stepped down.
So she takes a couple of steps outside, lost in the magic that was her new shoes. Then she abruptly stops, turns around, raises her head to look me square in the eyes and says in a very articulate and clear voice: "thank you". With the cutest little happy inflection that only young girls can pull off.
TO. DIE. FOR.
So she's now in the top of the cutest-thing-ever list. I imagine she'll stay there until I get a kid of my own...
By TheCalgaryGuy - Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Last night I bought myself a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT (a.k.a. a big-ass digital camera). This, my friends, is one serious piece of technology. Very impressive. This review is much more comprehensive than I could ever be...
Of course, I took a bunch of pictures to try it out!
Here is a picture of our house, as of this morning, in the highest resolution this baby can do. This is 8 megapixels, so 3456x2304 resolution. This file was tranfered to jpeg from the original RAW format after tweaking with the white balance a little. Canon provides the software to do that, of course. Honestly, the software isn't half bad.
The coolest piece of software included (in my personal opinion) is the picture merging utility. You give it a bunch of pictures, tell it you took the pictures from 
the same spot by simply turning the camera around and it "stitches" them together into one panoramic view. Super easy, works very well. I'm rather impressed with that one. To view the image correctly, since my site forces a picture size, click on the small picture here (it will display the picture in larger format) then click on the larger format picture to view the original picture (with the correct aspect-ratio).
The next step is to figure out how well these pictures will actually print. I found a place in Calgary, called Vistek, that will print them to, apparently, 20x30 inches with no noticeable loss of quality. I'm not entirely convinced, though very hopeful, and we'll be doing some test runs to see how it comes out. I'll let y'all know.
By TheCalgaryGuy - Monday, December 12, 2005
This weekend we made a quick stop by Grotto Canyon, a spot near Canmore where you get to hike along a small river at the bottom of a gorge. The canyon is said to have many native pictographs, though we still haven't seen any of them.
This was the second time we hiked through Grotto Canyon -- a short couple of hours round trip with virtually no elevation gain. For the second time I completely failed to bring the camera. So still no pictures.
When you walk through the canyon in summer, you have to cross the river a couple of times, hopping from rock to rock. It's a lot of fun. When you walk through in winter, the river is frozen (almost completely) solid. Now that we did not expect! So you walk up to the end of the canyon (where we find multiple ice falls which climbers go up on!) walking, for the most part, directly on the river's ice. Quite the interesting experience. But do remember to pack your Yaktrax otherwise you'll just hurt yourself slipping all over the place!
So now Grotto Canyon has gone up on our list of things to hike around here: it's an easy hike that looks really nice in summer and that offers a unique experience in winter!
By TheCalgaryGuy - Saturday, December 10, 2005
During a Leapster commercial:
"They tried that on The Shopping Bags."
"And?"
"Little girls love it. Little boys would rather have a Playboy."
"A what?"
"A... no, a Gameboy."
"Not exactly the same, wouldn't you say?"
By TheCalgaryGuy - Friday, December 9, 2005
A band called Steadman, ex-Brits turned Americans, have been making music professionally for a little while and have had trouble with labels. Long story. The end result: they decided that, since they don't make money off selling CDs anyway, they are offering their music for free on their website. No restrictions, no small print, just free professionally recorded music.
They classify as "rock". Paul McCartney actually hand-wrote a message saying he "likes this band". And he's a knight! Are you gonna argue with a knight?
Check 'em out.
By TheCalgaryGuy - Thursday, December 8, 2005
You have to admit it, not all bathroom tissue is the same.
We now have two kinds in our house (as we had to refresh our stock last weekend) and it's just... well, not the same. They both get the job done, but one makes me feel better about it than the other.
We've all seen the new Charmin commercial where mama bear uses what can be best described as a car wash to... you know. Every time I see the commercial, I pause and wonder at the idiocy of today's marketing firms. Who the hell thought this image would be a good idea for a commercial, and who is the bigger idiot that agreed it was a good idea and fronted good money for it?
Still, I feel a bit of a connection with that "car wash" bear. Not that anything I do in life did or ever will feel like THAT, but I have to admit that not all bathroom tissue is made alike.
And so, whenever I have a choice in the matter, I go for the good stuff.
Which, evidently, was not the case last weekend.
By TheCalgaryGuy - Wednesday, December 7, 2005
I reach in the bag full of yummy, squishy, sugary goodness that are gummy bears. The very first to inch toward his delicious death, a green one, sticks to my finger and, instead of landing comfortably inside my mouth, jumps and falls the 37 inches down to the floor.
Cruel, cruel world.
Damn the sticky gummies!
By TheCalgaryGuy - Tuesday, December 6, 2005
This weekend we had the chance of hanging out with my in-laws who flew in for four days. This wasn't the first time, but it was the first time they actually saw the Rockies! Not very clearly and not for very long, mind you, but the mountains were right there, undeniable.
We saw them from the house for about an hour, early Sunday morning. The rest of the time: nothing. (Well, there was plenty of snowing and cloud cover and biting cold, but nothing as far as view went.) We spent Sunday in Canmore and Kananaskis Country (on the Troll Falls trail) and, luckily, the day was clear and sunny (though rather cold) and we had a wonderful view of what being in the Rockies is all about.
So (finally, after three tries!) Marc and Magda can go back home and say with confidence that they saw the Rockies!
And we remain here, again grateful for their visit, with fond memories of our wonderful week-end.
Oh, and to explain the title: since we won't be seeing them before Christmas, we celebrated it early on Saturday with a feast and some gifts. Christmas came early to our house and it was great! Thank you again!
By TheCalgaryGuy - Friday, December 2, 2005
If you haven't seen it, the heating system in our house is a gas furnace. We have the one furnace heating up the whole house. So we only have the one thermostat to control the temperature of the whole house.
I haven't been really happy with it, for two reasons: first, it is not precise at all, often needing us to "play" with it just to get to a comfortable temperature but more often than not going from just a little too cold to just a little too warm; second, the first reason coupled with a bad location means we never change the settings, even during the night. I had been meaning to get some sort of programmable thermostat so I could set it and forget it, knowing it would save us some energy by keeping the temperature lower during the night.
So early this week I bought a 7-day programmable touchscreen thermostat from Honeywell. This, my friends, is the Cadillac of thermostats. It's more expensive than the other ones, at about 150$, but since we only have the one (as opposed to having one per room) I thought it was worth the expense.
Vero agreed so I would shut up about it.
I installed it yesterday. This thing is worth every penny and then some. Wow.
First of all, it has a seven-day programming. That means you can have a different program for each day of the week. Plus, it has four settings per day (called "wake", "leave", "return" and "sleep"). For each of them, you can set a time and a temperature and the thing will adjust it for you. You can program every weekday the same and every weekend the same (like we did), or each day individually, or any grouping of day... in other words, it will match your schedule.
Then it goes one step further with their "intelligent" "adaptive" whatchamacallit, which is this thing where the computer (heck, we can't call this a "thermostat" anymore...) "learns" how your heating system behaves every day and uses that information to determine how much time it needs to adjust the temperature. For example, I want the house to be at 22 degrees at 5AM. Typically, that would require me to set the "wake" program at 22 for 4:30AM or something, so the house is warm by 5. But not with this thing! It learns how long it takes to warm up the house and adjust itself for the next day, so all I have to say is "22 degrees at 5AM" and it will kick in the heat at 4:32, 4:46 or 4:50 or whatever is right.
It also controls cooling, so if you have a furnace and an air conditioning unit, which we don't, you can set the "heat" and "cool" degrees and the computer will start the furnace or air conditioning depending on the temperature of the house.
Then you get into the smart programming stuff...
At any time, you can change the temperature of the house by hitting a button. Doing that, you tell it to "hold" the currently scheduled temperature -- the schedule says 22 degrees, you just asked for 25. It will hold the current schedule until a certain time, a time which you can set; by default, it holds until the next schedule. So if it's a little cold one night, you raise the temperature a bit and it will hold it until your "sleep" schedule, at which point it will resume the regular scheduling and the temperature will drop back down. No need to worry (or even remember) to re-adjust the temperature, it does it itself!
And for the sugar on top, it has a "vacation hold". That means "set the temperature at this level and hold it like that for X days", ignoring your schedules. So if you leave for a couple of days, no need to completely re-program the schedules (and set them back after)!
Plus, it's touchscreen, backlit and completely digital (precise to half a degree Celsius). What more could you want?
This thing makes me feel like somebody out there sat down and thought about how a thermostat could make my life easier. Shows there's analysts and programmers out there actually thinking!
Now, this is a pretty expensive piece of equipment. I wouldn't really recommend it for the East coast, where electric heating is controlled independently in every room. Way too expensive. Although if you have the money, go for it. But houses out there with one or two central control points, like ours, would really benefit from this thing (specially if you have a crappy little mercury-based thermostat). It might be psychological, but it absolutely feels like the temperature is more constant now. I'll see at the end of the month if it really reduces energy costs...
By TheCalgaryGuy - Thursday, December 1, 2005
One of my managers, a really good guy, asked me to do some technical thing real quick to help him out. Our chat conversation ended like this:
Manager: do u have the bandwidth?
Me: sure
Manager: ok, ty
Me: for you, but not for anybody else ;)
Manager: :D
Me: ... unless she's cute, that is
Manager: LOL... right... the request is coming from Pamela Anderson
Me: LOL
Manager: she's really into this stuff
It's been creeping up on me for the last week or so and now it hits me square in the jaw: today is December 1st.
Sainte vache.
(For the French impaired, "sainte vache" is a translation of "holy cow". Don't use it around French people, though, as it's not an actual expression. But it's my expression now, and I like it.)
Today makes eight months of writing this blog; nine months since we bought this house; 19 months since we moved to Calgary. Yet, it still feels like yesterday we lived in Vaudreuil. I guess it's true what they say: time flies when you're having fun!
