Wazzup?

What a year I had, bought out my business partners, doubled my sales, moved my office, went to costa rica twice, rode powder all winter, drank beer in the sunshine all summer, travelled a whole lot and had an all around great time.

Now I find myself in Toronto visiting family and bored out of my skull. I can't wait to get out of here and I'm looking forward to a loud drive home with Lady Sovereign and Avenged Sevenfold.

Back in St. Donat, about 50cm of snow fell and I couldn't resist going snowboarding last weekend. To say it was superb would be an understatement especially given that it was the middle of December. So I'm stoked about heading back up north and hunkering down with all of the yardies for a few days of booze, snow and general outdoor stupidity.

On a sad note, one of my employees mom just passed away so I've got a funeral to go to this week. That really sucks over the holidays, poor fellow.

What else? Stephen Harper is an incoherent babbling sour grape with an anti-anything reactionary platform but it seems to me like he'll be our next prime minister. I can't see how he'll ever be able to run a minority government because there isn't anybody on the other side who will prop up his party, sigh, another government destined to fall - what a waste of time.

That's it for the year, see y'all next year and if you want to come snowboarding this week give me a call at the usual numbers.

Random thoughts

The Apprentice

I watched the Apprentice yesterday night and I thought I was going to be sick. There's this fellow who won who seemed to have great integrity and solid values, everybody respected him and he was a great leader. In the last minute of the show when he was given the opportunity to let the runner up win as well and win a non-competing/life changing carreer, he shut her out.

I still feel sick thinking about it. It seemed revolting seeing gangs of people in Atlanta looting and murdering in the wake of a disaster but to see an honest looking man execute a move with zero integrity made me feel disgusting, I was fooled by this guy and I realized how gullible we all are.

I wish them both well but I think that that fellow won the contest but lost the game.

XBox 360
By fluke, I got an email at 8:45 from Futureshop saying that they had 10 available today, across the street from my office. There's a massive blizzard in progress so getting there from anywhere else at rush hour is nearly impossible. So I walked across the street and bought one retail. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

Music
Here's my favorite tracks/albums of the year:

Rise Against - Siren Song Of The Counter Culture
Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch, International Dateline
Boysnightout - Train Wreck
Richie Hawtin - DE9: Transitions
Alexisonfire - Alexisonfire

What I want for Christmas

Here's my list (besides world peace)

1) Celestron Skyscout: handheld eyeball computer that has GPS and X/Y/Z tilt sensors and a database of stars. Your personal planetarium.


2) GE lightbulb socket self charging smoke detectors - so simple yet brilliant, flick the light switch twice to test & reset.

3) iubi 100GB personal media player - 175 grams and 100GB, embedded linux - brilliant!


Here are my favorite new gadgets that I am using this year:

1) General Instruments DCT5100 high def PVR (videotron)
2) Konfabulator weather and stock ticker widgets
3) Dell 2300MP projector
4) Gateway widescreen convertible tablet PC
5) Rio Carbon 5GB
6) Sure E2C Sound Isolation Studio Quality Earbuds

Bill Gates as Robin Hood

It never ceases to amaze me every time that I read Slashdot how many people hate Microsoft and Bill Gates so much for all the wrong reasons. At this point it's so ridiculous that it seems like a Monty Python skit. Even in my job I see it from time to time regarding audio and video codecs. So many intelligent people from big corporations have been taken in by the mass anti-MS hysteria. How silly, for the record the Windows Media Codec is nearly a SMPTE standard and will be directly licensable from MPEGLA (same as MEPG4/MPEG2). IF you look a little harder, you'll find the source code for the decoder and if you want to license it from Microsoft, you can get it here. We definitely can't say the same about Apple, Real or Sony.

As for Linux, I love it but it's still a pain in the ass and at the end of the day Companies don't save anything unless they have tens of thousands of servers like Google, Akamai or Netapp.

Sure Microsoft steals ideas, crushes and strangles competitors and is ruthless in the market. Who isn't? The other guys (Apple, Redhat, Sony, Dell etc.) all used the exact same tactics but just weren't very good at it. The exception was IBM who were great at it but like Microsoft, got their knuckles rapped by the anti-trust commissions in the 80's. Both IBM and Microsoft got defanged by this process, IBM got eaten alive by Microsoft and Microsoft will likely get eaten alive by Google if they don't move fast. They know that too well in Redmond.

Here's the biggest stinker, as much as you can hate this vicious corporate competitor, Bill Gates has done more for world health and poverty than almost any man alive. Let's see Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Donald Trump and the other billionaires do the same.

Religion

I've met a few priests in my life who were genuinely great people and I've seen a lot of good that some religious organizations do in communities and all over the world. At the same time, it makes me sad to hear things like about how this pregnant teacher was fired at a Catholic school because she wasn't married. I'm pretty sure if Jesus was around, he wouldn't be too impressed either. Given how many stupidities in recent history have been executed on religious grounds, I find it amazing that there isn't a larger backlash.

UB40 once said:

We will no longer hear your command We will sieze the control from your hand We will fan the flame Of our anger and pain And you`ll feel the shame For what you do in gods name

Some More Conspiracies

This Cringley guy at PBS is onto the same thing that I am, he's claiming that Google's figured out how to pack 5000 CPUs and petabytes of storage into an industrial container that can be dropped into and plugged into Internet core peering points of which there are only around 300 in the world.

This is entirely feasible - nobody quite figured out what Google did with all that unused fiber that they scooped up a few years ago.

So the conspiracy goes that Googlites pack up these "datacenter in a box" containers, drop them into all 300 peering spots and wire them up using a private network and then essentially they have their own private shadow Internet connected everywhere and facing the general public at the peering points.

Kinda like Walmart does with cheap products but better .

Cringley theorizes about it here.

Scary Decade

So in the last decade, everybody was busy bashing Microsoft and Microsoft was busy squishing the competition. Now MS has been defanged, the competition is moving fast and furious on all fronts.

This is really no different than what happened with IBM in the 80s after they tried to recover from anti-trust litigation and Microsoft clipped their grass.

So what's next?

Well today Cisco acquired Scientific Atlanta. Why is that so important? Well Cisco used to be only in the datacenter and eventually they pretty much powered the majority of the Internet and have now leaped forward into your living room. Yep, that PVR or set top box is probably SA/Cisco. And the the DSLam behind your next generation box it will likely be Cisco.

So what's next?

Cisco needs to buy Grass Valley and/or Omneon for broadcast equipment and make it into datacenter equipment and then they'll own the whole chain.

Google needs to license TV programming and deliver it to Cisco enabled fabrics through ISPs, bypassing the cable companies.

Cisco, Google and Apple need to merge functionality to redefine everything as we know it.

Mom and Pop ISPs need to buy a couple of wireless WiMax towers and pump ubiquitous connections for cheap everywhere all the time. If not, Google will do this for them and Cisco will help them.

So maybe Nortel, Alcatel, Microsoft, Motorola and Yahoo will get a piece of the pie but mark my words, the pie is going to be radically different from the stale one I'm chewing on now.

The showstopper is going to be (as usual) the content owners (record companies, MPAA) who are going to get owned one more time.

Five Questions

This syndicated radio fellow by the name of Dennis Prager in the LA Times, wrote an interesting article asking 5 questions that he asks Muslims to answer. Although I don't necessarily agree with everything in his article, it is pretty interesting. He seems to be an articulate and reasonable fellow so it doesn't have the pinnings of a shock tactic.

Here are the five questions:

(1) Why are you so quiet?
(2) Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian?
(3) Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?
(4) Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?
(5) Why do countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions?

The elaborations are found in his article here.

I am sure that most Muslims have five questions for Christian countries as well going back to the crusades and similar vile behaviour originating from the vatican but regardless, I would like to hear the opinion of Muslims on the above questions.

I've heard these types of questions asked before and usually the answer is just that Christians/Jews etc did worse things. This tactic really doesn't answer any questions, just deflects the blame for taking questionable actions.

Gotta love bubba

Here's a picture of the family of Judge Samuel Alito, US supreme court nominee.

Notice Billy is trying to unhook the daughters brastrap.

Konfabulator

I started using Konfabulator again after finding some super useful desktop widgets. Konfabulater is a cross platform tool for creating small visual applications that have really smooth visual effects like fades, smooth wipes etc. Above are some widgets that live permanently on my desktop. Highly recommended http://www.konfabulator.com/.

On a different note, I got a Videotron hidef PVR for 500 bucks at FS last week and damn is it ever cool - 6 bucks a month for a couple of new HD channels, 160GB HD, and super easy to use. I'm not sure if the novelty is going to wear off but I'm loving it. Highly recommended as well. Apparently you can still use your old set top box and play back recorded movies on both boxes, haven't tried yet. Too bad you can't get the movies to go.

What the hell am I doing up on Sunday at 8AM? I'm at work procrastinating.....

What I'm listening to these days

I've been listening to Richie Hawtin DE9 Transitions over the past couple of weeks and oddly enough, it requires a commitment. Why? Its a 2 disk set, a DVD and a CD. The CD is a stereo mix and has 74 minutes of minute transformations of sounds every 4 bars so you have to listen to it like an opera. The DVD is 96 minutes and 5.1 audio so not just intricate but also rather astounding.

It's not for anybody with a short attention span but if you have a 5.1 home theater and a dark living room and 96 minutes to kill, you'll probably dig it. That is if you like minimal repetetive techno.

If you like Garth Brooks and still wear your Hootie and the Blowfish T-Shirt in public, don't bother.


What else am I listening to, in no particular order:

The Cure - High & the whole pornography album
Story of the Year - In the wake of determination album
Boys night out - Train wreck
Soft Cell - Remixes (don't laugh)
Atreyu - Everything
Ultravox - Everything
Avenged Sevenfold - Second Heartbeat

Anybody noticed that Avenged Sevenfold - bat city and unholy confessions are getting major airplay on the ultra commercial music video channels? Sure they're a bunch of dumb kids with tattoos but so were just about every good band at one time. Great band live, if you don't mind goth metal kids.

I love this guy

This guy named Shuji Nakamara came up with some crazy chemical/electrical process years ago that made LEDs shine blue. This wasn't such a big deal but today every single cool gadget has a cool blue LED and every single jumbotron in Times Square has millions of them.

It started off as some obscure invention with press releases in obscure technology magazines.

Today this same guy is making hydrogen from water. I don't have to tell you what that means given his track record.

Gorgeous Interior

I'm not entirely thrilled with the new Subaru tribeca but damn is the interior ever gorgeous. Nicer even than Bentley/Aston Marton.

Use your mouse to scroll 360 degrees

How cool is this?

8GB Sony walkman, courtesy of Engadget

I really want one of these

Sony-Ericsson W800 Walkman phone

December 2nd

Aeon Flux a cometh again..

Oh the irony: Peter Chung originally made the animated series a parody of action films:

"The idea of 'Liquid Television' was that it would be a satire or parody of things you see on television," he says. "The title, 'Liquid Television,' is kind of like the idea of a TV in a blender. 'Aeon Flux' was originally my parody of heroic action movies — and now there's a Hollywood action movie based on something that originally started out as a parody of Hollywood action movies."

The Vista war

I find it amusing to no end that all of the Apple fanboys are calling Windows Vista a ripoff of OSX when OSX is a rip off of Be, Suse Linux, KDE and Solaris. Don't the fanboys remember that the Mac itself was a cheap knockoff of the legendary Xerox Parc UI's that came before it?

Personally I don't give a crap who ripped who off. I just like the freedom of choice that commodity hardware (x86) gives me.

On another tangent, I installed a bunch of 7 day programmable thermostats at my country place and damn are they ever convenient. I don't have to get there and freeze for a couple of hours while the place warms up anymore. Highly recommended. A word of caution though - they are 240V and high amperage so don't screw around with them if you don't know what you're doing. You can most definately die if you mess up. You can get a 7 day timer (2 wire) for about 40 bucks at Canadian Tire and a 4 wire version at Reno Depot for $40.

I've got an X10 automation kit but unfortunately the X10 thermostat controllers are either too expensive or total crap so I can't use them yet.

MP3 players piss me off

You know why? None of them have standardized on a remote display format, remote controls or even a way to get files in and out. So I've got to have 4 different jukebox applications for my devices and each one has a different way of making playlists. What else? none of them work well with car or home stereos WTF????

So you might be saying "ha ha, you should have bought an ipod like all the other faeries", well surprise surprise, the remote controls suck and are proprietary, the car and home stereo integration is pathetic and on top of that I can't stand coldplay, U2 or Madonna.

You'd think that Sony, Creative, Alpine, Clarion with their tens of billions of dollors of revenue could throw together a unified spec.

Here's what I need from a device:

- Standard file system way of getting audio/playlists in and out (like my rio)
- Standard remote control interface with bluetooth
- Standard minimum remote display interface (show me songs and playlists)
- Standard charging plug
- Standard USB interface

Here's what I need from a car or home stereo

- Show me my device library not a freaking CD jukebox
- Let me find something fast through my 20000 songs
- Let me create a playlist on the fly
- Just freaking work without a headache and rewiring everything

Is that so freaking hard? Man, those goliath dinosaurs move slow...... now excuse me while I listen to coldplay on my lavender ipod mini

Hotmail Kahuna

Well the new hotmail beta ("kahuna") has been outed here. Looks a lot like outlook but has some cool features like weather reports nicely embedded into your calendar.

Sprint

Opportunity never really knocks for me, usually it shows up as a tiny crack in a door that somebody slipped a note through. When that happens I've got to go balls out crazy and slip an elephant through the crack while I have the opportunity to do so. Now is one of those rare times that big opportunities have slipped me notes through a couple of little cracks so I've been hella busy organizing myself for a scorched earch assault. It doesn't help that I spent all of September on the road and I just had 2 new employees start recently.

On a different note, I love these new Sony gadgets. These guys really get it:



My favorite gadget is a Rio Carbon which looks a lot like this thing above but unfortunately isn't available anymore since Rio shut down.

What else? I got a Dell 2300MP projector and damn is it ever cool. I don't think I'll ever buy a television again after seeing high def movies projected 15 feet across in my living room, super bright in broad daylight. All for 1500 bucks.

Hmmm lets see - replaced my radiator, sent my boat south for the winter and got my old bayliner back - cleaned and winterized it. Anybody want a fun/cheap wakeboard boat?

Check this dood out.

I think he's on to something. Texaco probably has had him snuffed out already.

So who were the five people shot dead anyways?

Nobody seems to know for sure if they were contractors or looters but one thing for sure, the story very quietly changed while nobody was looking.

Here's what Spero News has to say and here's what Nicholas Stix has to say.

Katrina Disinformation

I seems like there is a lot of bogus information on the wire these days about what's up in Louisiana. For a couple of hours I saw an AP piece about how the 7 looters that were shot and killed were actually construction contractors, somehow that story got magically erased. How about those stories about rape and murder of kids? Why is it that the Guardian says it's bunk?

Despite all that crap, I just can't believe that the US gov't let hundreds of thousands of people rot without food or water for four freaking days. It doesn't take a logistical genius to figure out how to move that stuff out there when you've had four full days of warning . That's an eight day response to total carnage, pathetic. Would the same thing happen if it was NYC, DC or Chicago? Probably not, jump to your own conclusions why that is.

Whoever is in charge of FEMA should be criminally charged because this is probably the most catastrophic and avoidable failure of it's kind that I have ever seen in my lifetime.

If it was up to me, there'd be loaded planes, boats and choppers on the ground ready to go well before the storms hit. Didn't anybody learn anything from the last hundred years of major disasters?

How I spent my labor day weekend part 1. Lets see, I did a little motocross and crashed a whole bunch until my radiator broke and then I spent 2 days boating and surfing my brains out. Couldn't have asked for more. 

There's some crazy static on that there trampoline. 

This was pretty much what I did all weekend 

Ballast in back. 

Ballast in front 

What happens when you take nine people, a thousand pounds of ballast, and a couple of monkeys hanging off a tower and stick them in a Nautique? 

You end up with a wake four feet high 

Monster ass wake 

Monday ballast 

Chucky D, the Budweiser poster boy. 

Here's my deep water video camera rig. It's still a little leaky but nearly ready for her maiden voyage. I'm calling it the diving duck. 

Pressure Cooker

It's quite unbelievable to see how bad things are in the southern states. Besides the total mayhem that the storm brought about, there seems to be anarchy settling in with mass lootings, arson and all out chaos. There are stories floating around the wire about police looting and helping looters, hospitals being bunkered because of looter riots and people shooting at rescue helicopters. WTF?? In Montreal, about six years ago (maybe 7), the city got shut down by a week long ice storm that covered us in 8 inches of ice. Power was out everywhere and everything was shut down. Instead of looting, we had a massive outreach of compassion where everybody seemed to help everybody else out. I had electricity through it all and had half a dozen people living in my tiny apartment and then we moved into my office when the power went out. So why is it that things are so different down south? I would guess that the biggest reason is that poverty is so pervasive there that losing everything doesn't mean all that much if you don't have much to start with. The one time that I did spend in the bayou, I saw things that were impossible here. There were people living in shanty towns set up in ditches and underpasses. There were families frying food out of the back of their cars with kids playing barefoot in the muck. It's too cold for that here and for the most part, the homeless people here are mostly kids, alcoholics and out patients, not functioning families.

It's easy for us here to say how great we were to each other during our disasters as none of us grew up in a steel hut under an overpass. Here, we're too rich and fortunate for looting and arson, we only do that after hockey games.

CBGBs benefit concert webcast

Today (aug 31st), over here.

Vanished Cheese

These guys need my underwater camera. I think I'm going to try to find the guy when my camera is working.

The other great underwater project

Have I ever been busy or what? Where to begin? Last weekend I replaced the rudder on my boat and didn't do such a great job because the steering wheel is not centered any more (whoops). Needs a bit of adjustment this weekend. It rained most of the weekend so I worked on my underwater video camera science project.

This dude has a similar project except mine has a million candle light, a higher resolution camera and is designed to go down 150 feet. Hopefully it will be working by the end of the weekend. Right now it leaks a lot :)

Here's a video of javadog's camera in action.

Here's his device:

End of the Moog era

I am sad to say that Bob Moog has passed away.

This is funny

Courtesy of Ricky B:

Details, details

I am usually a stickler for details so when things are done half assed, they bother me until I finally break down and do them all over again until I am satisfied. This brings me to my rant about a six inch piece of wire. In itself, a piece of wire is worth about a hundreth of a cent but in a boat it could be worth quite a bit more. Actually, almost a hundred grand. Why exactly would a piece of wire be worth a hundred grand you might ask? Well, let me tell you, if that wire in question is the safety wire that holds the locking bolt on your rudder, it becomes a lot more valuable by a factor of about a million. So what does that have to do with me? It seems like the last time I broke my rudder and had it replaced last June, the mechanic neglected to install a safety wire. And what exactly happens when you don't put in the safety wire? Well, what happens is that the rudder falls out of the boat down to the deepest part of a lake. Of course rudders never fall out in shallow water. This in itself is a four hundred dollar mistake EXCEPT that when the rudder falls out, it leaves a two inch hole in the bottom of the boat. Let me tell you, with three bilge pumps, a hand pump and a lot of swearing, we managed to remove no measurable water and the boat took on about two feet of water in three minutes. By fluke my neighbor whizzed by on a jetski and I flagged him down and very politely asked for a tow to my beach. Another 3 minutes in the water and the boat would be submerged. All this because somebody neglected to put on a little piece of wire. The boat is fine, my neighbors impeller ate a rock on my beach and I'm a little traumatized but everything worked out OK.

Like any good fiasco, there is a moral to this story, actually two:

A) Be good to your neighbors
B) Watch out for details because they'll kill you

Health Care in Canada

I keep having these discussions with people about health care and how badly the government is dealing with it. Most people want more healthcare funding. Not me, here's what I want.

Tabacco: make it a prescription drug and anybody can get it as long as they opt out of public medicaire. Twenty plus percent of all deaths (45000/yr) in Canada are directly or indirectly due to smoking. The cost is 3 Billion directly in health care and over 11 Billion including indirect costs. Tax revenue is only 7.6 Billion making it a losing business for society.

Source: National Clearinghouse on Tabacco, CCRA

Obesity, substance abuse etc.: Same as above, tax revenue minus costs adds up to a negative balance sheet. I'd say throw some money into prevention and for those who don't care, they should be allowed to opt out of health insurance.

Long term health care: get the old folks into proper long term care and out of hospitals. Hospitals are supposed to be for asssembly line repairs, not parking lots.

All this above should add up to 5-10 Billion/yr in extra funds for society and should theoretically unclog the existing health care system. Maybe it's a hard line but it doesn't make sense to keep making the same mistakes over and over. That is after all the definition of insanity.

The moose is loose

So what the hell have I been up to, lets see.... I went to a wedding last weekend in a barn which actually was a lot cooler than it sounds. I saw either the space shuttle or the space station whizzing by in the clear country night sky. You may think I'm making this up but as it turns out, both were passing by southern Quebec at the time. Check out this site.

I have done so many things that I just can't remember anymore.

This past month is my re-entry into science projects. I have been working on a few custom microcontroller software/hardware projects for car/boat entertainment and am shopping for a small CNC machine to make prototype parts. The last few times that I started projects like that, I ended up dumping tens of thousands of dollars into these seemingly useless projects. However, these experiments also breed new business ventures and they are fun at the same time. There's nothing better than being so stoked about your business that not only are you excited about going to the office in the morning but you don't want to leave at night. Having a CNC machine, a logic analyzer and a microcontroller dev kit is making me that excited.

In case you think I'm getting dull, here's the thong of the day.

Oh yeah, Avenged Sevenfold have a new album out and (gasp) Sinead O'Conner has an album coming out covering reggae classics. Let's hope she doesn't desecrate the standards. Somehow, I don't have a good feeling about this.

The burbs

Every time I drive by the suburbs I can't help thinking about how much I don't want to live there. There probably are some places there that most people can afford as a first house but at the same time they seem like tarpits where dreams and ambitions go to die. I really hope that never happens to me.

Baloon Bazooka

I want one of these. My birthday is coming up, hint hint ;) Check out the video.

What I did on my summer vacation.

I drank a little beer. I changed a cylinder head gasket. I went to some parties. I helped somebody else with a bent propeller. I installed some video cameras. I installed an Omnifi MP3 player in my boat. I played some croquet and finally, I did some loafing around.

 

A littly froggy on my stairs 

Back inna groove

While I was on vacation somebody died or was murdered near my place. The first story that I heard was that this woman was run off the road by her ex husband and then repeatedly driven into until the car was squashed. This story progressively mellowed out to an "accidental" hit and run where the lady ran off the road and then was plowed into by a second car that was behind her and U-turned to help. Who knows what really happened but at 4:00AM, we all know what state they were in.

Mont Garceau in summer complete with a water bomber. 

I have this friend JS who always seems to have a dozen kittens around. Here is is with no exception. 

Waterbombers!! Thousands of fires and lots of waterbombers. Thats what you get when it's so hot and dry for so long. Nightly lightning storms don't help. 

Hot hot heat

What's up with this weather? I haven't seen a hot streak like this ever in Montreal. I guess it makes up for all of the cold wet years we had recently.

I went for a morning wakeboard ride on Saturday and ended up staying out for 12 hours. Needless to say, I got pretty hosed and sunstroked. Oh yeah, got busted by the lake cops in the AM for not having numbers and having no spotter. Thats a first, smoothed it out to just a warning.

I turned on my sprinklers on sat. because my lawn was dying. Ended up draining my well. I though my pump burnt out so I took apart my pump and reservoir, valves, EVERYTHING on Sunday at 6:00AM after being woken up by a squirrel at 5:30. Oh yeah, the squirrel was in my living room, spent half an hour chasing it out. Five hours later, I figured out that the well refilled and there was air in the supply line, reversed the pump and pumped water into the well, turned the pump around and it worked. Phew, just in time for a baby shower where I was in a vegetative state for half a day.

Gotta love the Asian arts

I don't know what country (Japan I think) this is from but check out this sausage sculpture site complete with instructional videos, courtesy of the Nippon Ham company.

Chuck Carothers

My post about Chuck Carothers unbelievable body varial seems to have been indexed by a couple of video search engines so I'm getting lots of traffic from that page.

If you came to this site from that page, let me know what you were searching for and why Chuck Carothers is so hot nearly a year after his varial.

Don't be shy, you can post anonymously.

Unbelievable

This 34 year old woman was piloting a boat and somehow got knocked into the water. Everybody below deck was asleep and had no idea until they ran aground. So they call the Coast Guard and a search begins. The original boat starts heading back home nine hours later and randomly runs into the lady in the middle of the ocean 15km from where everybody is looking for her. It just so happens that they decided to sail in and not motor so they heard her yelling in the water. The lady is doing fine. What a story.

It's quite unbelievable how most people give up much easier challenges than floating in the middle of the Pacific ocean wearing shorts and a sweatshirt for 9 hours. I think we can all learn something from this fiesty broad.

Nice picture of the Decarie expressway flood last week. 

3 propellers, 1 shaft, 1 strut, gelcoat x 3, 1 bumper, 2 end caps, and 4 buoys, not bad for 3 years work. 

Me and Chuckie D - hitting the dirt. For the record, I didn't touch his package.