The Block market

Google randomly dumped me into a blog valuation stock market.

Apparently my blog is worth $1600 and rising and some blog multi-millionaire owns most of the shares in my blog. Of course the whole thing is a simulation but it is kind of weird to think that some random strangers are trading shares in the hypothetical valuation of this blog.

Check it out here.

So what is the deal with the weather reports these days. Every time I check, the weekend weather changes. As of today it is supposed to rain all weekend. 

There is still a lot of snow up north. None left in the city though. 

This is what a stripped CRF450 looks like. Of course I took the whole thing apart before I found out that you could loosen 2 screws and turn the carb sideways to get at the jets and float bowl. DUHH! Found a bit of bark and sand in the bowl, cleaned it up and the thing started on the second kick. Phew. Ready to ride as soon as the snow melts. 

Easter

A couple of minutes ago another massive earthquake registered off of Indonesia on the same fault line as in December. I hope that the results aren't the same.

On a different note, I just had the most awesome weekend in the sun drinking beer, tuning up the motocross and snowboarding with all of the locals. It was especially cool because a whole bunch of folks who have given up snowboarding were back out in the sunshine hitting the tabletops, sliders and generally having a wicked time. My buddy Marc used to be a pro until he took up skidoo'ing a couple of years ago - he got on the hill for the first time in three years and blew all of our socks off. Huge slow switch 360 methods were thrown down on every table. I stayed at the hill for a couple of hours after the lift closed just soaking in the sun and some suds. Wicked weekend.

Death and taxes

Mortality has been on my agenda these days with my friend Renee passing away last week and the current news coverage. I am kind of hoping that it goes away sometime soon.

If you have watched CNN or MSNBC these days, the coverage is dominated by the Terri Schiavo case and a lot of it is really biased towards the religious right. The worst offender would be Joe Scarborough with his 'Scarborough Country' show which seems to show endless interviews with religious fundamentalists who are calling the judges nazis and stalinists.

I just don't get it, if I was incapacitated even to half the degree that that girl is, I would not want some religious or medical fanatic keeping me alive just because they can. I don't want to be a dimwitted pet for my parents for the sake of gurgling out a few grunts for their amusement every now and then. For the record, if I am a vegetable or permanently incoherent, I absolutely want to die quickly and with dignity.

The thing that bugs me is that these religious people are using the right to life argument and at the same time they (we) are constantly interfering with any purported god by playing God and keeping people alive with machines and chemicals. If that is the will of their God then I don't want any part of it, they don't speak for my God. I'm mostly agnostic by the way.

Another thing that bugs me is that they are painting the husband to be a guy who just wants his wife killed so he can move on with his new girlfriend. I don't know about you but my girlfriend knows more about my mortality opinions and about me in general than my parents ever will.

And finally, George Bush has cut medical scientific research, eliminated brain trauma grants and has opposed stem cell research. This guy killed way more people just from these actions than all of the right wing religious fruitcakes will ever save with prayer and protests in all of eternity.

George and Jeb, fuck the both of you for making this thing into the circus that it is.

Stop and look around

It snowed over a hundred centimeters two weeks ago in St. Donat so the snowboarding has been spectacular. If that wasn't enough, the weather has been really moderate so it's been an especially great time to stay outdoors. I recently got over a major flu so spending a lot of time outside has been a sorely needed moral booster. Two weekends ago, we were snowboarding in a foot of packed powder which was really delicious and last weekend, we were out in full on sunny spring conditions with cloudless skies on both days. This past Saturday, we went to La Reserve which is a pretty extreme mountain, the closest thing that I could compare it to is Mt. Baker in Washington. The locals are generally really talented and the trails are tight and pretty steep. I rode with my girlfriend who is just learning so I didn't really get a chance to get into the tasty stuff but I still had fun. Sunday we spent at Mt. Garceau which faces the sun and rolls at a much more mellow place. I've been riding a limited edition Lib Tech Magne Traction board for the last two weeks which has a wavey edge like a huge steak knife. I really like the thing but it isn't as loose as my old Burton 151 so I haven't been in the air too much this year. I think that I've been snowboarding about 15 times this season which is about 14 times more than the past few years. I'm really chuffed about being back on the slopes and it's doing my psyche a lot of good.

I can't help but think about my friend Renee who died way too young and how little time we all have left to really soak it all in. Ferris Bueller said it best; "Live moves pretty fast, if you don't stop to look around, you could miss it". On that note, I am now getting amped to go back to Costa Rica in May for a spring surf break.

And finally, given that gas is costing me over a buck a liter right now - this story is pretty cool.

Until we meet again

My friend Renée was a really great DJ and used to party with us every time my buddies and I would go up to Whistler. The picture above is a kind of a joke, that was taken in Greece on vacation a long time ago where she was served an absurd amount of meat - she knows I like my steak so she gave me that picture. Renée was a resident DJ at Max Fish in Whistler and had a whole bunch of stuff going on in Vancouver. She moved to Montreal for a few years and had a pretty rough time because of the language barrier and the low pay for DJs here so a couple of years ago she moved back out west. Last I heard from her, she was really happy to be back home, travelling a lot and things were going well for her. Last week, she had a stroke and then over the weekend she passed away. I think that she had a recurring blood clot problem with her leg and the stroke was somehow related. We're really going to miss her.

Life is short, take advantage of it while you can.
 

Startups

Paul Graham has a great article about what it takes to startup a tech company. Read about it here.

Up for air

After almost two weeks of flem filled hell, it looks like my flu is finally receding. That was a truely miserable experience, I really hope it's over. I think that I've lost almost a pound a day living on tylenol, benilyn and coffee. My appartment looks like a crack den and I haven't really done any serious work for over a week so things are going to be hectic when I recover.

On a different note, this is amusing.

Top ten for March

The funny thing about my top ten list besides never having ten items, is that it seems to be getting more diverse. Dig in to this:

1) buzzcocks - what do i get
2) agustus pablo - lion of judah dub
3) psychedlic furs - ghost in you
4) black uhuru - heathen
5) aphex twin - on
6) UB40 - king
7) the ruts - babylons burning
8) fila brazillia/black uhuru - boof and baff and biff
9) mighty diamonds - jah bless the dredlocks
10) the cure - high
11) fisherspooner - the 15th

Wow, I really have to find some new releases because the newest thing on this list is like three years old and most of it is like 20+. The only new music that I have bought in the past year has been thundering metal/punk which seems to be one area that a lot of fresh stuff is coming out of. Everything else seems to be boring me these days.

Is there any hope?

You know even though it's already March and there are only a couple of weeks of winter left, it sure does feel like it's never going to end. I don't know what it is but the moderate cold (-6C) seems a lot worse than it really is. Maybe it's just because we haven't had a truely miserable winter to remind us what cold really is. In any case, I am going to try to enjoy the last couple of weeks none the less. I just have to make sure that I stay out of the hospital ;)

On a different note, my company fiscal year is ending this month so we're all in a mad rush to ship out all booked orders in the next 30 days. It's a really great problem to have but stressful just the same.

See y'all later and try be nice to somebody today for no reason.

Somebody shoot me

I think I have a weapons grade russian flu. I already spent two days on my couch and now am back on my feet but still fulla flem. Anywez, Martha gets out of prison tomorrow so things can only get better, right?