Author: gfox (old content)

Paged Puzzles

Travelling yesterday was an adventure. The plan for Elliot and I was to fly to Vancouver, have a layover for a couple hours, then fly on to Winnipeg. Another layover in Winnipeg, then on to Ottawa.

This was not to be.

We got to the Victoria airport way too early, so we waited. Elliot was so excited to get on a plane that waiting was very hard. The flight to Vancouver was short and easy. In Vancouver we got some lunch there and started our wait for the 1:15 flight. Around 12:30 we went to the bathroom and while we were in there, I heard my name being paged. For some reason I though we were going to get an upgrade. Sadly no.

I learned that the flight we were going to fly on to Winnipeg was delayed meaning we would have missed our connection to Ottawa. Instead they were moving us to a later flight direct from Vancouver to Ottawa. The bad part was that our new flight left at 5:30. We arrived in Vancouver at 10:30am and weren’t leaving until 5:30pm. Yikes.

Poor Elliot just wanted to get on a plane. We did whatever we could to keep his mind off the plane. We played tag, ate snacks, read books, played puzzles. Elliot even played with some other kids. Still, he really wanted to get on a plane.

Finally they called the flight and we boarded. Woohoo. Wait, we still had a 4 hour+ flight. *sigh*

The flight went well though. Elliot watched a lot of TV, I watched a movie and a couple TV shows. Oh, and I also had a couple drinks too 😉

Once we landed, we gathered our things, and Elliot cheerfully followed me down to the baggage area. Sue and her sister met us there, and Elliot was very happy to see them, and in great spirits considering how long of a day we had. We gathered our bags and headed back to the house. I ate a snack, helped get Elliot into bed, then went to bed myself at 2 am Ottawa time (11 Victoria time).

I didn’t mention that I was awake at 4:30 am. Long day, but we are here now and enjoying ourselves immensely.

Missing Resources

This past month I went over on my data plan for my cell phone. It cost me an extra $20 + tax. I was caught off guard by this overage since Telus is supposed to send me a text message when I am around 75% of my data usage, then again and 90%, and last month I did not receive those messages.

I called Telus today to ask about the missing messages, and to find out if I can get more details about my data usage.

The Telus rep said “Telus does not guarantee that you will receive those text messages”. The reasoning was due to network congestion, and or routing issues. Hello? Telus is in the business of sending text messages. If it doesn’t send for some reason (say network congestion), send it a little later. They are a telephone company and should easily be able to guarantee sending of a simple text message. Ludicrous.

The rep also mentioned that their website tells me how much data I have used. The big problem there is that they have rolled out a new version of their site and it is ridiculously slow, and sometimes doesn’t load, or doesn’t respond. Nice. I can also call them to find out where I am with my usage. Maybe I should call them every day to check. Nothing like wasting precious/expensive resources to get their attention.

Incidentally, all their website says about the text messages is:

Some plans are not eligible to receive TELUS Data Usage Notifications. Enabling TELUS Data Usage Notifications may not work for your plan.

Then I asked about getting more details on my data usage. I was hoping that if I could find out the urls that were being loaded most often, then I can figure out what apps I was overusing and scale back accordingly. The rep said that all the details are on their site, yet when I checked yesterday, the most detail I could get was a date and time, a size, and how much it cost.

time 		item 		amount 	details 
4:32:51 PM 	190 Kilobytes 	$0.00 	AirCard

The rep said they don’t have the ability to track this information. Yeah, right. This means there is no way I can double check with any certainty that their billing system is accurate. I have to trust them on this, and when they can’t reliably send a simple text message, why should I trust them on something more complex like tracking data usage?

Weather Workouts

Today was another great ride. I was cold all day, so getting on my bike and heading out in the slightly rainy weather was not making me happy. Still, I forced myself out, and once I got out of Esquimalt, the rain stopped.

I rode for about 45 minutes before meeting up with a friend of mine. Together we rode for another 1.5 hours. In total I was out for approximately 2:15. I felt pretty good the whole time and am looking forward to some hill workouts when we get back to town. The distance was around 47.2 km.

I say around since I can’t embed the map like I have been. Google Maps have changed their API’s, so the My Tracks app no longer works the way I want it to. Time to investigate something new.

The other issue I had is that after my swim on Tuesday, I forgot my best (and favorite) water bottle in the change room. This leaves me with a shortage of bottles to take riding. I only had one with me today, and I would have preferred to take two.

Reasons Acoustic

I am looking forward to this album.
I have a bunch of concert bootlegs and I love Soundgarden’s live music. I’ve also seen them live in Vancouver, which is one of the reasons I am can’t wait for this album (look at track 6).

1. Spoonman
2. Searching With My Good Eye Closed
3. Let Me Drown
Tracks 1-3: Recorded live at Crosby Hall, Del Mar Fairgrounds, Del Mar, CA – November 30, 1996
4. Head Down
Recorded live at Mercer Arena, Seattle, WA – December 18, 1996
5. Outshined
Recorded live at Crosby Hall, Del Mar Fairgrounds, Del Mar, CA – November 30, 1996
6. Rusty Cage
Recorded live at Pacific National Exhibition Forum, Vancouver, BC, Canada – December 7, 1996
7. Burden In My Hand
Recorded live at Salem Armory, Salem, OR – December 8, 1996
8. Helter Skelter
9. Boot Camp
Tracks 8 and 9: Recorded live at Crosby Hall, Del Mar Fairgrounds, Del Mar, CA – November 30, 1996
10. Nothing To Say
Recorded live at Mercer Arena, Seattle, WA – December 18, 1996
11. Slaves And Bulldozers
12. Dusty
13. Fell On Black Days
Tracks 11-13: Recorded live at Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, Oakland, CA – December 5, 1996
14. Search And Destroy
Recorded live at Mercer Arena, Seattle, WA – December 18, 1996

15. Ty Cobb
Recorded live at Crosby Hall, Del Mar Fairgrounds, Del Mar, CA – November 30, 1996

16. Black Hole Sun
Recorded live at Mercer Arena, Seattle, WA – December 17, 1996
17. Jesus Christ Pose
Recorded live at Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, Oakland, CA – December 5, 1996

I’m also really looking forward to when Chris Cornell visits Victoria in late April for a solo acoustic show. That will be pretty amazing I think. The tickets I got are pretty awesome too. About tenth row, centre stage.

Groove Swim

Great swim tonight. I ate a good dinner, then helped get the kids ready for bed. As I walked down to the pool I was hoping the swim would feel good.

In the water, right from the first stroke I felt strong. I swam my first 200m without stopping. The only issue here was that I had to change lanes a couple times. The lady in the slower lane was really, really slow, and the guys in the fast lane were really, really fast. Once the lady left I stayed in the slower lane and got in the groove.

I then did another 200m sprint followed by a quick break. I ended with a 200m sprint, a very short break, then another 100m swim. I know I could have kept going, but I had a few things to do this evening, and I was still pretty proud of how I felt throughout the swim.

I really do need some new swim trunks though. The ones I have waistband elastic is shot, and the shorts are too big. I have to be careful how hard I push off the wall since I have felt them slip a little.

I skipped the hot tub tonight and had a nice shower instead.

Skittish Element

I had been wanting to take Heart out mountain biking since we got her. It has been a long time since I took my a dog of mine riding, and I missed it a lot. Heart is still fairly new to us, and I although her confidence is getting better, she is still a little skittish at times.

My fears were unfounded it turned out. I went for a short spin at the dump this morning, and Heart was a star. She is a great trail dog with some pretty good instincts. She always likes to stick close to Sue and I. I was hoping this would be the same while riding, and it was.

What surprised me though was that she liked to take the lead on the trail. She was happily running in front of me for most of today’s ride. Once free in the bush she carried herself well, and looked very confident. I loved seeing her like that.

We took some easy trails and I made a short loop. During our breaks Heart would roam around a little checking things out, looking down gullies, sniffing the air. She really seemed in her element.

We came to a stream crossing at one point and while I rested she wandered around checking things out, even walking through the stream a little. Heart even took log piles in stride, and easily trotted across a couple bridges without any hesitation.

One descent we were on, I could see her beelining from the side right for where I was headed. At the last second she slowed enough that we didn’t collide.

The only negative thing that happened was on Skull Trail. This back and forth downhill trail is pretty fast, and Heart was keeping up just fine. Until she stopped to sniff something. When I stopped and looked back to find her, she was nowhere to be seen, and I couldn’t hear her collar jingling either. I called for her and I saw her take off up the hill away from me. I yelled her name a few more times and she turned around and raced down the hill to me.

Back at the truck, she quickly climbed into the back seat and curled up for the ride home. Mission accomplished.

For the rest of the day Heart has been pretty quiet. Tonight she is flaked out on her bed and really isn’t moving all that much. A tired pooch is a happy pooch.

Basement Burn

I was supposed to hit the roads today for a training ride , but we were at a friends child’s birthday party that ran late, and I had a little too much chocolate cake. Add in that it was super cold today, and I didn’t much feel like riding.

When we got home, I contemplated what to do and decided on the trainer. I
have my trainer set up in the basement and it was pretty chilly down there. I actually skipped the fan today and that treated me right. In all I “rode” for am hour. There was a 5 minute warmup, a 50 minute ride, then a 5 minute cooldown spin. I downed a whole water bottle along the way too.

I I pushed hard today, and felt pretty good about my workout. trialso ed doing some standing spins that burned and felt horrible. I guess I need to do those more often. 🙂

I would like to learn how to effectively use my trainer though. I figure there are some workouts I could be doing that would be more effective than sitting and spinning for an hour.

Longer Water

Today was another training day. After dropping the car off at Campus Honda, I set out on a ride. I was trying to make it a little longer and was hoping to make it to 2.5 hours in length. As I started out I was feeling a little cold, but my legs felt strong. Before I left home I had planned to ride Oldfield Road out to Keating, then back along West Saanich Road.

This route actually took a lot less time than I thought, so I had to extend my loop a little through downtown, then along the water. In the end, it wasn’t as long as I had hoped, but I felt strong the entire ride, and could have kept going.


View Tour de Vic training, Jan 27, 2011 in a larger map

Some stats on the ride:

Total Distance: 48.61 km (30.2 mi)
Total Time: 2:11:54
Moving Time: 2:04:53
Average Speed: 22.11 km/h (13.7 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 23.35 km/h (14.5 mi/h)
Max Speed: 56.70 km/h (35.2 mi/h)
Min Elevation: -15 m (-48 ft)
Max Elevation: 111 m (365 ft)
Elevation Gain: 637 m (2090 ft)
Max Grade: 14 %
Min Grade: -15 %
Recorded: Thu Jan 27 09:57:34 PST 2011
Activity type: cycling

I need to find some nice hills to train on I think. Hill repeats would be a good thing.