Pub Bill

Neither Sue nor I was in much of a mood to cook last night so we both agreed to go out for dinner. We headed to the Gorge Point Pub. I must say, that it was one of the best dining experiences I have had in a long time. Withing a couple minutes of sitting down a server came by and dropped off menus. We ordered drinks, they came quickly. The appy arrived, and no soonerhad we finished eating it, the plate was taken away. Our main meals showed up very soon after that.

Once we were finished eating, the dirty plates were taken away quite quickly. The server brought the bill very soon after. This was magic to us since one of our biggest peeves about a restaurant is having to wait forever to get the bill once we are finished eating. When teh server came with the bill I gave it a quick glance then handed over the credit card which was processed quickly.

In all it was a great experience, and the food was very good too.

Wiggly Photographer

After riding, I got home to a very anxious Yoshi. He was all wiggly and annoying because he wanted his turn to play. He needed to get out for a run in a big way, and I didn’t take him riding due to the heat wave we are experiencing. What am I to do. I was exhausted, but the dog needed a walk.

I took him for a walk.

We headed down to Macaulay Point Park and he ran around while I walked slowly. Very, very slowly.

We saw the Stennis which was parked (what is the correct term anyway?) just off the shore. Amazing site. I would love to be able to get a little closer and take some really cool pictures.

Continuing the walk Yoshi ran lots, and lots and lots. Funny dog. At one point I stopped to sit on a bench while he scampered about and chewed on sticks. Strange thing happened while I was sitting there. A crow high up in a tree was cawing at Yoshi for a minute or so, then, as I watched, it swooped down, buzzed within 5 feet of him, circled up, and buzzed him again. The crow then flew back to its tree and continued its noise making.

Me being the photographer that I am, hoped the crow would attempt it again. It did! Below is the shot I got. You can see the black shadow of the crow as it got quite close to the oblivious Yoshi.

The rest of the walk was pretty uneventful, and still slow. Very, very slow. I saw some butterflies that I wanted to take some pics of, but every time I moved towards them they flew off. As I was wrapping up the walk, a butterfly came along, and perched on a leaf long enough for me to fire off one shot. Cool!

There are a few more pics here.

Little Burning

This morning was a fine ride out at the dump. Shane, Darryll, Mike, myself, and a visiting Stuart all headed out for a spin. It was a little warm, but it was still great to be out there. We took our time heading up, and had lots of fun playing on logs and such.

Our route up was Skull, then Inventive, then up to C-Section. After the Switchbacks, we tracked along Twister, then up to Phase Two, then Dave’s Line. Right at the start of Hot Cherry Stuart had to take off. My back was starting to really bug me so I showed him the way back to the lot.

It was a great ride, and I couldn’t help but notice that I was feeling in pretty good shape. I climbed some hills that a year ago I wouldn’t have been able to climb. Not only that, but my legs weren’t burning. Something I am doing has certainly helped, and I am loving it.

Without further adieu, here are my pics.

Birthday Grass

Yesterday Sue and I went to some friends’ daughters first birthday party. What fun. Food glore, BEvERages for adults, juices for kids. There was sandiches and veggies. There was cake and ice cream. There was catching up with friends under a perfect blue sky, and there was playing with kids on the grass. Perfect day!

As always I had camera in hand. Pics are here.

Protest Complaints

Thursday night myself, Sue and Yoshi joined KaptainK and Digger for a protest organized by Citizen Canine. See the CRD is changing the rules drastically for some of the parks that Yoshi and Digger currently get to enjoy sans leash. The new rules will force dog owners to leash their dogs, or face the fines.

There are numerous reasons why we do not support this. CRD claims that dogs are destroying the vegetation, are harming and fouling the shoreline, are causing too many conflicts with humans, and that the humans are not cleaning up after their dogs.

The way I see it is that the CRD has not provided any concrete evidence that the dogs are in fact ruining vegetation. This is a park located next to a large city. It sees a lot of traffic on hot days. It sees lots of humans year round. I am not going to say that dogs are not the culprit, because they may be doing part of it. I do disagree with placing the blame soley on dogs (and that is how it feels to me).

As for dogs harming and fouling the shoreline, again, I can only offer what I have seen, and that is the humans who visit the park are much more destructive than the dogs. Again, my eyes. Neither side of this argument has provided concrete proof to support their case.

I understand that there will be dog vs. human conflicts. There will be conflicts even if dogs are on leash. As I see it, the CRD only receives complaints when there is a conflict. They do not hear the thousands of non conflitcts that occur each year. This leads to the CRD having a tainted view. Personal experience has shown that in the 2.5 years I have walked Yoshi there, I have had probably close to 100 non conflicts, with exactly 1 conflict. To me that is pretty good odds.

If CRD really wanted to encourage dog owners to clean up after their pets, perhaps they should strategically place garbage cans throughout the park. As it is currently there are only cans at the main beaches. I don’t think anyone would want to carry around a stinky bag when going on a 45 minute walk. If owners knew that a can was only a couple minutes away, I am sure more people would clean up.

The other disturbing fact is that the CRD is pushing through these rule changes despite the fact that the experts are advising against it. They didn’t try to fix the problem with education, instead they change the rules, and punish the good dog owners while doing nothing to deter the bad dog owners.

The other disturbing fact is that currently CRD does not have enough funds to enforce the current rules. It is unknown how they will be able to effectively enforce the new rules. It really does seem silly that one of the parks largest user groups is getting punished when no other is.

Opposing Signal

Today while driving home I witnessed some pure brilliant driving skills. Yup, it was at a 4 way stop. I don’t know about the readers here, but I consider 4 way stops pretty easy to figure out.

One of the nice things that I like to see at a 4 way stop, is that if it makes sense, the opposing lanes can both go at the same time, as long as neither of them are turning left.

Well today a guy in a BMW in front of me gets to the stop line. After the cross traffic goes he starts out into the intersection, but rather slowly. There are no turn signals, and he looks to be going straight through.

The oncoming driver then decides he is going to go. Just as the oncoming driver starts, the BMW guy slams on his brakes and comes to a complete stop in the middle of the intersection, and mouths off to the oncoming driver (he also threw in a couple choice hand gestures). The oncoming driver has a few choice words as well.

The way I see it, the BMW guy definitely should have used a turn signal to let everyone know what he was doing. Also, the other driver should have waited a little longer before starting to really ensure he knew what the BMW guy was doing. Both of them fail the 4 way stop test!

Taco Notch

I headed over to La Fiesta for lunch today. For the record, the 2 soft taco combo is pretty close to enough for 2 people. Add a third taco and you would be there. Yum! It is close to work, and usually pretty quick on the service. Their food is top notch, and for the price, you get huge portiona. Today was the first time I had tried them for lunch, and faced a hefty wait. Never seen that for dinner though.

Starting Pump

Damn truck. It is starting to show its age a little. There are a few rattles, squeaks, clunks, and odd noises every now and then. But it has always been reliable.

Today I dropped it off for routine maintenance, which I knew was going to be an expensive one. I got the call right at lunch. The water pump needs to be replaced. :jawdrop:

Crap. That sucks. Big time. This more than doubles the already large bill I was expecting.

Susceptible Services

OK, this guy has an interesting experiment going on (and yesterday he succeeded). He has a gmail account, and he wants to test the spam filters. He has asked everyone to sign up his email account for spam, to any mailing lists, and to advertise it on many webpages in an effort to collect as much spam as he can, and to see if he can fill it with spam, and how long that will take.

From his May 25th posting:

I’m beginning to think that a vulnerability to email floodings is going to be Google’s biggest weakness when it comes to email. 999 messages could do a lot of damage to someone’s email account, especially if they all contained attachments (the messages I received did not). What is Google doing to protect its Gmail users from mail bombs? I’m not sure, and they’re not likely to tell us due to security concerns. It may block some such attacks behind the scenes and we are not even aware of it. However, I would argue that this is one area where Gmail must have 100% accuracy if it is going to remain a viable service.

Now, I like his experiment, and I am sure many people are interested in the results, but you know what? Everyone is susceptible to mail bombs. Hotmail, yahoo, canada.com, etc are all susceptible to them. My domain is too. How should software determine what is a mailbomb, and what is not? 10 emails in an hour? 100? All the email with the same sujbect? I think it would be difficult to build a spam filter to detect a mailbomb. Build a filter, and the senders will get smarter. Some people have already proven that it is possible to defeat Bayesian filters, and they were supposed to be the spam saviour.

I think Gmail is only mildly interesting, and I don’t necessarily want an email address with them. Why do I want my 1 GB of email on someone else’s servers? The answer is I don’t. I don’t trust any of these “free” services with anything that I consider mission critical. That is what my personal computer is for.

The trickle down effect is interesting too. I have heard rumblings that some of the free email services will be upping their mailbox limits. All this because GMail exists (but isn’t even publicly available yet).

Diagonal Blocking

This lady takes the cake for aggresive driving.

Sue and I were heading out to the Tsawassen ferry Sunday afternoon. A red light stopped a group of cars, and I was in the left lane. In the right lane there was a mini van, then a chick in a black Honda Civic Sedan.

The light goes green, traffic starts off, we get up to speed. The mini van is a little ahead of me, but I am gaining on it. By this point we are all doing at least 90 km/h, if not more.

Chicky, who is apparently in a big hurry, decides I am not passing fast enough, floors her little 4 cylinder, and does a diagonal pass from the right lane to the left lane between my truck and the mini van. There must have only been a few feet on either end of her vehicle.

I was not impressed, so I honked at her. Sometimes I wish I had installed a large air horn to scare the crap out of people. I could see the chick just shrug as if she didn’t understand why I was laying on the horn.

A little while later there is anothe red light. She is in the left lane with another sedan in the right lane, and just after the light, the right lane ended. When the light goes green, she guns it. The sedan also takes off, and matches her for the most part, but then when she was barely in front on of the sedan, she moves right and cuts him off. Sedan-dude, not liking her so close switches to the left lane. Chicky sees this and starts to move left, but only goes halfway so she ends up straddling the line, and blocking the sedan!

It doesn’t end there though. There is yet another red light. The highway is 4 lanes by this point, so, Chicky does the turn right, cross the sidestreet, jump back on the highway.

As we are all approaching the ferry terminal, I see here once again cut someone off. Then we go to pay to get on the ferry. She pulls up to an empty kiosk. I pull up behind someone (not her), they pull through, I pay by credit card, then take off. She is still paying !!?!? Crazy chick.

Doesn’t end there though.

Once the ferry docks in Victoria, she has totally changed. While driving down the highway, she is doing less than the speed limit, and when stopped at lights she appears to be putting on makeup so that when the light goes green, she doesn’t move, and she holds up traffic.

I just don’t get the crazy antics on the Vancouver side. They certainly didn’t help her. Crazy chick, your licence has just been Revoked!

muddylaces

Spreading mud since 1975.

Author: gfox (old content)