Finished Moving

Phew, after a week of packing, moving, unpacking, my company has finally settled into our swank new digs at Alexis Nihon Tower. Feels great to be in some nice clean corporate offices for a change.

My boat went in the water yesterday, unfortunately I ran out of gas in the middle of the lake so I didn't get to enjoy it too much. Captain Chuck rescued us before a thunderstorm set in. There's always next weekend right? Seeing that the water is a nut clenching 55 degrees, I think I can wait a week.

And finally here's a cell phone thong for all you perverts who came here from the google crackhouse or goth girl image search:

Fried

This morning, I unlocked my office and then punched in my alarm code as I would any other morning. Any other morning however, I would have punched it into the alarm keypad and not the microwave oven.

That's how exhausted I am from an in-progress corporate move. We're moving to a great new super corporate office in a nice clean glass tower. I am happy to say, we're going to be paying less per square foot than our current corporate office with 80's style plum colored walls and matching dirty carpets.

Anywez, huge moving weekend in store and a couple of months of settling in coming up. I am almost ready to just sell of random boxes of stuff as surprise packs on ebay instead of unpacking.

On a different note, this guy is a moron.

I'm Back!

Whoah, what an awesome trip. Mimi and I flew first class for a change courtesy of Aeroplan so that was a great start to what usually is a rough first day - 8 hours to Costa Rica including stop over in Toronto. We headed out to Tamarindo, took about 4 hours this time by the Taiwan bridge so it wasn't so bad. The surf was 6' and glassy when we got there but we wanted to chill out so we didn't get geared up right away. The Best Western wasn't a great deal and wasn't especially bad or good. The cool thing about it was that there was an animal rehab center in the upper garden that had a whole bunch of parrots, tucans and a few monkeys. The howler monkeys were tame and one of them ran up to me, stuck his hand out and grabbed my hand. He sat there for a while and smiled, drooled and held my hand. It was a little weird but cool at the same time. We moved to the Diria which is probably the best hotel in Tamarindo, right on the beach. The surfing was great for the five next days. The waves were between 3-6' and pretty consistant. Playa Grande was going off 9'+ and Playa Negra was 10'-20' (whoah!). Of course being crap surfers, we stuck to Playa Tamarindo. This trip, we met tons and tons of cool people and hung out with them wherever we went. Whether it was surfing, drinking or eating, there was always a few buddies around. We made great friends with some dudes from Florida and a guy named Cameron from Whistler. The surf blew out by Fiday which was fine because we were off to Nosara for a couple of days.

Nosara is less developed but in some respects more up scale than Tamarindo. The beach is at least 3-10 miles long and has very few people around. The beach breaks in two places, 200 meters out and 100 feet out. The monsters break outside and the mellow waves break inside. Unfortunately, the surf was total crap while we were there so we couldn't get a ride in. The people were super friendly and chilled, we met a bunch of older retired Florida fellows who were on the lifetime program. There are lots of Americans who own villas there. Property isn't cheap though, an acre closest to the beach goes for over a million bucks US, without any house built on it.

On Sunday, it was off to the Arenal volcano. What a rough ride that was, the road from Nosara to Nicoya was what you'd expect a third world bombed out monsoon washed road to look like - complete with cows, chickens, dogs and vultures. Then, the drive around the lake leading to the volcano was endless, twisting, always wet and full of nasty cliff edge snake turns. After 6 hours, we finally made it to the Tabacon resort and sat our asses down in some hot springs with a bunch of tourists. After spending a couple of soulful days in Nosara, a fat tourist buffet spa was a real anti-climax. It was worth it though to see the volcano go off a tiny bit at night. It made the trip back to San Jose yesterday shorter and more scenic too, so that was an unexpected bonus.

For the record, San Jose airport is a great place to get drunk, every boutique has free booze samples and so do all of the duty free shops. Just do a couple of laps of the terminal and you'll be hammered gratis for a pleasant comatose flight home.

Great places to eat:
Tamarindo: Witches rock cafe, Stellas
Nosara: Cafe Tucan, Marlon Bills, Dolce Vita, Chez Olivier, Cafe Paris (French toast)

Great places to drink:
Tamarindo: Anywhere, Witches rock, Bablyon (thursday)
Nosara: Cafe Tucan, Marlon Bills

To stay:
Tamarindo: El Diria ($$$)
Nosara: Cafe Paris

Tamarindo Surf lessons: Find a tico named Dilbert at High Tide or surfing in front of the Diria, great guy, great longboard rider (2nd ranked in Costa Rica). Dilbert has dreads and is kind of balding on top.

On the last day of our trip (Sunday), we went to the Arenal volcano and did the whole tourist hot springs thing. The volcano was spewing a bit of lava at night but not much. Cool none the less. 

Unlike Tamarindo, Nosara seems to be developing into a more upscale kind of town, the main strip on Playa Guiones is pretty well laid out and clean. There's a Swiss fellow who owns a huge white mansion up the hill who developed a lot of this area. 

There are at least 8 different types of crabs near Nosara beach, here's one that lives in the jungle next to the beach 

Here's a little Nosara native. 

The beach in Nosara goes on forever and when we first got there, there were nothing but a million crabs, a dead turtle and a dozen vultures. Looked like the beach in the original Planet of the Apes. 

On the beach in Nosara, I found this dead tortuga over two feet long. There were a dozen vultures fighting over the carcass. 

If you ever visit Tamarindo, drop by the Witches Rock cafe for a fish taco or a corn quesadilla, cheap and delicious. 

We eventually moved from the Best Western to the Diria right on the beach, it was off season so the rates were steep but still worth it. Here's the view from the garden. That's Playa Grande way off in the distance that was going off over 9' !!! 

I woke up on my first day in Tamarindo and saw what looked like a chicken head staring at me, except it was big and blue. I thought for a while that it was a turkey and then finally it came out and saw this majestic blue peacock. He had a broken leg or something so he was in rehab at the Best Western animal rehab center in Tamarindo. 

This is the smartest bird I ever met. The dood was making fun of Mimi, saying Hola and laughing like her every time she laughed. 

The tucans were a lot smaller than I thought but still awesome to see in person. 

These guys were really gorgeous and huge but not very friendly. 

The larger howler monkey here ran up to me and held my hand and gave me a weird monkey smile with some drool. These guys have pretty sharp fangs but are pretty affectionate. 

See ya

I'm off to Costa Rica for a week to do some surfing, see you perverts in a week. Here are some predicitions:

- Kendra is going to win
- Jacko is going to walk
- The government is going to fall

Yeah, I know they're all pretty obvious. Now onwards to the land of monkey balls and warm water.

Dodgeball and Friendster

So Google just bought out Dodgeball and that makes me wonder what those retards at Friendster have been doing with the millions of bucks worth of VC funding that they got a long time ago. Dodgeball is like a friendster for cell phones, you and your friends sign up and when you go to a bar, club or resto, you send an email to dodgeball which tells you which friends in your first and second degree are in the hood. It also lets you be a modern day stalker by notifying you if and when your crushes are close by.

Why the hell didn't those tards at the 'ster do this? It's been years since they've been in beta and there isn't too much new. They just recently added blogs and photo albums - whooo hooo, welcome to 2002. It kills me that somebody with such a head start could screw up so bad. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time.

My guests

My web logs have shown me that for the most part, besides my friends, it's just perverts who end up browsing this site. Why perverts? Because these two pages have pretty high rankings in the google image search:

August crackhouse
The girls of goth

Try this: Go to google, click on the "images" tab and search for "crack house". Somewhere in the top ten you'll find some familiar asses.

Here's my top ten this week:

1) Wot - Captain sensible
2) Krafty - New Order
3) Jamestown - The Movielife
4) Army of me - Bjork
5) Puff she puff - Black Uhuru
6) The Raven - Stranglers
7) Mass Destruction - Faithless
9) Juanita - The Underworld
10) My Kingdom - Future Sound of London

The New Xbox 2

Looks just like this

Finally

A mac that I can really use.

One.org

Feeling bored? Do me a favor and spend a minute or two here.

A couple of things

I picked up a Rio Carbon MP3 player the other day for my upcoming surf vacation. All this time I was thinking, what do I need a player for, I have 24/7 Internet radio and a thumping sound system in my car? The answer my friend is that I now enjoy running errands and doing things that would otherwise start to try my patience like shopping with my girlfriend.

What do I like about it?

- Cheap ($230 Canadian)
- Cooler looking that an iPod
- Less gay than an iPod
- Supports Janus DRM for all you can eat subscriptions
- Plays back WM9 VBR files at high bitrates
- Looks like a USB hard disk, just drop files an .asx or m3u playlists in and it magically works

What do I hate about it?
- Earphones suck, but then so do the iPods. I ordered a set of Shure E2C's
- Doesn't work while charging

Here's what I want my next one to do:
- 100 gig of storage
- Sync by wifi or wireless USB
- wireless bluetooth headset for a bluetooth motorcycle helmet
- wireless bluetooth or USB remote for motorcycle handlebar control
- waterproof

I'm not holding my breath on this wish list though...

On a different note, as much as we all love pyrotechnics when we're hosed, this guys is a bigger idiot than I have ever been or ever will be.

Ben Milot

Quebec born motocross psychopath Ben Milot has a new video out called "Invasion" with Travis Pastrana and Clifford Adoptante. The premiere is this Thursday May 5th 9:30 at Radio Lounge, 3614 St. Laurent in Montreal. Oh yeah, it's FREE dood!

Forty Five Billion Dollar Scam

So while all of the Canadian Conservatives and separatists have their panties in a bunch about a one hundred million dollar scam, there are much bigger scams that we seem to forget:

- The Canadian government has collected $45 Billion in employment insurance premiums that went to other programs in the past decade, we got ripped off for a decade. This continues to this day. The EI program is a money making operation that probably accounts for the entire budget surplus. The same is true in Quebec with provincial motor vehicle insurance premiums.

- The federal gun registry ran 1-2 billion dollars over budget. What a colossal screw up and who will benefit? Big companies like EDS and CGI. How many lives will it ever save? Probably none, how about dumping a billion dollars into community centers for kids so they don't buy guns? Build a thousand skateboard parks for a million dollars each and see how much crime goes down as kids self confidence goes up.

- Jacques Parizeau had a short position on the Canadian dollar against the US dollar and used the entire population of Quebec's pension as collateral. What a dumb ass, who the hell gave him 'moral authority' to do that. Talk about an arrogant prick.

- The PQ very conveniently dropped charges against 31 people who admittedly conspired to reject 'No' votes in the 1995 Quebec referendum. 86,000 votes were rejected - the vast majority of them being 'No' votes. The winning margin was only 56,000 votes. Isn't that what you expect out of a third world banana republic dictatorship?

How we conveniently forget about these things. It doesn't surprise anybody that politicos siphoned of a couple of hundred million, it's just surprising when they get caught and you'd have to be a moron to think that all those who are indignated are simply those who haven't been caught or haven't had the opportunity to pillage (yet).