Out of Bo'ness

Goodbye Old Friend

2008-06-10T23:25:00.006-04:00

Yes after 5 years long service, the trusty Canon Powershot A300 died.

Bought in a Montreal shopping mall in July 2003, travelled back with us to Scotland, then back to Montreal, then to Ottawa. With several vacations to New Jersey and Chicago, with a colourful life taking pictures around Scotland and the Carribean it's had a good life.

Died while in action on the Staten Island Ferry, en-route to downtown New York City.

The last image taken, image number 4863:

This is where things started going wrong for the old fella:

R.I.P.

Back Home

2008-06-10T07:49:00.003-04:00

Ach Weel, back hame......

We decided to drive a wee bit early from visiting wee brother in New Jersey, we did an overnight drive mainly to avoid traffic and busy border crossings but also mainly due to cooler tempratures.......

We had left the apartment (aka Flat) and our cat in charge of Jason, which from his blog entry he seemed to enjoy. Have a read here.

Also check out this animation totally rendered using open source software and the movie is also available to download for free - Big Buck Bunny (I recommend the 1080p version)

Top Gear is almost here as well......Oh I cannae wait.......I will be scanning the torrentsphere for that!!!!!

Top Gear Trailer

Expensive vacation.

2008-06-04T16:51:00.004-04:00

So far the weeks holiday time in New Jersey has been eventful so far.

Firstly the car started to act up on the drive down. We car started to loose power on hills (considering we were driving through the Pocono's, hard to avoid) and struggled to keep above 100KPH., so the drive was slower than normal. Also this was our first road while being guided by a GPS, things were going great until the GPS decided it was bored and took us to downtown Scranton, so we had to turn off the GPS nagging (it telling us to "Do a U-Turn") and get back onto the highway and figure our own way through,,,,wierd.

Anyway it turned out that the spark plugs, HT leads, air filter and fueld filter had to be replaced to get the car back to normal, $250 to fix those out.

Yesterday we travelled into New York and everything was great but another thing died on the way in, the camera!!!!!! So we had to find a replacement camera (This holiday is getting expensive)

We got another Canon mainly as I was always impressed with the last one, this time it's a A590IS and it's rather nice.

Job Hunting......It's a pain!

2008-05-09T13:36:00.001-04:00

After Dell decided to can us all I've been getting back into the job hunting BS again.

Went to downtown Ottawa twice this week so far to talk to agencies and get them to register myself on their databases and also visit a job fair, saw a lot of ex-Dell colleagues, hmmmmm....imagine that.

Anyway had the camera with me and I spotted this no parking sign while walking about.

Job Hunting again!!!!

2008-04-23T23:40:00.001-04:00

Went into work work for a site meeting and we all got the boot..........

News at 11: http://www.achannel.ca/ottawa/news_56282.aspx

More Snow?

2008-03-07T17:15:00.000-05:00

Friday March 7th

Looks we're in for another pasting of snow this weekend, already there is a winter storm warning for tonight and most of tomorrow. They are predicting 25-30cm of snow to be dumped on us.

Been listening to local radio and so far we're gaining close to the all time high of most snow accumulated in one winter, so far we've had about 350+ cm of snow. You would think everything should be getting better as the clocks go forward over this weekend, but no, "This is Canada" I keep having to tell myself.

We did have plans to escape our noisey neighbours this weekend and spend some time in Montreal but I guess the winter storm has put an end to that.

Anyway at least I have a proper weekend now as my schedule was changed rather suddenly through the week and now I have Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays off now. This will feel weird, I mean actually having days off just like the other normal working population of the world.

This just in......

2008-01-15T00:28:00.000-05:00

They have found water on Mars, here is the proof.......

Merry Xmas, Eh?

2007-12-23T19:20:00.000-05:00

'ow Much?????

2007-12-21T07:43:00.000-05:00

Interesting price tag: Fork handles script makes £48,500

The Sketch:

Incoming!!!!

2007-12-15T17:15:00.001-05:00

Feel for me?

2007-12-14T08:45:00.000-05:00

OK Guys

This is what I deal with on a daily basis

Thanks Angus......

Beavertails

2007-12-12T14:43:00.000-05:00

OK there a few things I've excperienced since moving to Canada, sugaring off and cold winters to name a few.

But when a few of my work colleagues decided to have a meet up in downtown Ottawa and someone mentioned "Let's have some Beavertails" made me think of something else. (I think my mind is always in the gutter).

My response to that was "I think we may have an HR issue here" which resulted in what all I can say was a Canadian backlash. Responses like "You've never had a Beavertail????" or "You're not from around here are you?".

So when we met up and quite by chance they piked a location close to a well-known Beavertail stand, I just had to accept the offer.

What is a Beavertail?

Apparently it's a deep fried pastry in the shape of a beaver's tail covered in a choice of sweet toppings, the usual one is sugar and maple (need I say more?) but I went for the chocolate and hazelnut.

Fried Dough Info

All I can say is it will quite interesting.

The Beavertail stand:

(Thanks to John for buying me my first Beavertail)

The white stuff has arrived.......

2007-11-21T09:07:00.001-05:00

Courtesy of the Canadian snow board........

Open box theory

2007-11-13T10:55:00.001-05:00

When you've got a cat an open box always must be inspected.....

All set up now

2007-11-13T10:52:00.001-05:00

The home office is finished now......

Let's get ready to burnout..............

2007-11-13T00:23:00.001-05:00

Want to compare burnouts from different countries?

We have Europe Vs Iraq......

A Wee Holiday.......

2007-11-06T23:08:00.001-05:00

Just back from Niagara Falls at the weekend.

A big change from going to a wee caravan in Arbroath or going doon ti the Crookies.

After listening to the rush of water all weekend I was kind of visiting the wee guy's room a bit mair often ye ken......

Like my picture?

All change (Again)

2007-11-03T01:08:00.001-04:00

OK things are changing at work (Again), but this time it's quite an unusual change for me.

For those who don't know my job, it has me talking to Americans and listening to them telling me how awful Vista is and not finding the "Any" key. And I do this for the super-huge company, Dell.

For the past year it has been fairly interesting and for the most part amusing. I think it's down to Americans not expecting a Scotsman answering the phone and so far I've been asked if I'm Irish, Australian, Indian and even German, but very rarely Scottish, go figure.

I can get to work by means of a 5 minutes car ride, a 10 minute cycle ride or a 30 minute walk and the bus passes right past the apartment block, ok.

Now.......

At Dell they have a special group of people where they can work from home and guess what? I applied and got, so now my commute to work is about 30 seconds. (2 minutes if I stop at the kitchen and pour me a coffee)

Why?

Well.....

The hours I work are pretty awful and I do like the job I figure why not sit at home and get paid.
Winter is coming and even though I really close to work, going out in -25c weather doesn't appeal to me.
I was given money to spend on a home office setup and they pay for my Internet access.
They also given me a rather spanking laptop with docking station and nice monitor. (Better than the ones at work)
I only need to come into work once every 3 weeks.

The office setup so far........

Frankenapple

2007-09-28T09:34:00.001-04:00

I know it's been a while since I've added something here.

But I just had to post a picture of this apple I tried to eat at work.

Just as well I didn't bite through this, er, er, thing?

Gross eh?

I'm still about

2007-09-05T08:20:00.000-04:00

Yup that's true, I'm still about........

Nothing much has been going on since my last entry.

But I will add something soon.

Freakin' Priceless

2007-06-06T23:33:00.001-04:00

You goota see this sucka!!!!

Darth Vader being cool

No Internet for you!!!!!

2007-05-08T23:37:00.000-04:00

Last week I got denied Internet access from my lurvly Internet Providers, don't want to name them, let's just call them Dodgers.

It all happened last week when I came home to my Modem doing a lovely disco show, "Dodgers must be down again" I thought. What else can I think they haven't had a good record so far with me. So I left it overnight to see if they sort themselves out, next morning still the same.

The wife called them later that morning and was told our bucket-o-bolts PC was apparently attacking their precious network so they blocked my Internet connection. Also she was told that they left a voicemail telling us that, nice idea but............WE HAVE VOIP!!!!!!!

If you cut us off we don't have a phone service numpties!!!!!!

Also I have far better use of my time, rather than letting my PC loose on your network, I just not that starved of attention.

Anyway I spend 30 mins at lunch, at work talking to their "Security advisor" and all he could tell me was that my system had something called the "Arbor" virus. Now for the rest of my lunch I was trying to find some info on this.......nothing. What I was also told that I need to scan my PC for viruses and spyware, again another good idea but.........HOW CAN I GET THE LATEST VIRUS UPDATE IF YOU HAVE CUT ME OFF!!!!!!!

So I had to find updates at work in between calls. When I did my scan and guess what? Nothing! I asked the "Security Guy" earlier if I didn't find anything and his response was "reinstall Windows".....Lovely.

So I did just to make sure and now I'm all back up and running complete with firewall, so let's see if they cut me off again, this time they will cut me off for a week if they see something suspicious. If that happens it won't be active again, goodbye Dodgers.

Rant, Rant, Rant.........

Fits like a glove

2007-03-27T23:37:00.000-04:00

Was at the Ottawa Autoshow last weekend with a few guys from work, just had to try some cars out for size:

Not quite me, is it?

Nope.......

We have a winner!!!!!(Yes I know it's blurry)

Happy Guinness Day!!!!

2007-03-13T23:38:00.000-04:00

Had to do my bit for St. Patrick's Day................................

Winter not over yet

2007-03-04T23:52:00.000-05:00

I was beginning to believe that winter here in Ottawa was almost over.........WRONG!!!!

Thursday afternoon there was a bunch of emails floating about work that there was a winter storm warning for our area, highs winds and 15-20 cms of snow coming our way. I thought "So what it's Canada, they expect this kind of stuff every winter", and they do. But in this email was a hotline for our site, just in case. So I went home thinking nothing more of it, had a look out our window every now and again to see if anything came of this.......not a lot really.

Woke up the next morning and before I switched the coffee machine on I called the number......"Dell Ottawa is closed today"......YES!!!!!

Now I'm only a 5 minute drive from and I can almost see my work from my window, but if they want to close, go ahead.

So it was a unplanned 3 day weekend ahead of us, here are the various stages of snowfall that was dumped on us during Friday.......

We got bored being stuck in the apartment all day, so we decided to have a wander out in the snow, we needed to get milk anyway.......

May have to dig the car out.

Those snow banks are getting bigger.

Glad I'm not driving in this.

We're almost there to get the milk.

The quest for milk was successful