Swinging Muscles

On the weekend I learned an important lesson from my 2.5 year old son.

We were at a playground, and he was playing on some low to the ground monkey bars. He holding on the bars and was swinging back and forth. He said to me “Dad, do this”.

I got down on the ground, grabbed the monkey bars and tried to swing. The problem was that I was to big, so I had to hold my legs out in front of me while I was swinging.

I am not used to this, and in the process pulled my ab muscles. I was sore for several days afterward.

Turning Position

Just got home from this weeks ulti game. A few weeks ago I was on the verge of quitting. I wasn’t having much fun at the games and didn’t feel like a part of the team, but rather just felt like I was a warm body on the team.

The game two weeks ago was a bit of a turning point. I had a lot of fun, and ran lots. I spent less time handling, and more time out on the rest of the field. Since that game I have been trying to do that more, and I think it is helping me enjoy playing with this team.

This team also likes to play in a style that I don’t always enjoy. They like to employ the horizontal stack, which I can theoretically understand, but in practice I think it is harder to implement well. I like the vertical stack since I feel it opens up the field more.

They also like the long bomb, and quite often can make it work. I don’t like it since with most other teams I have played with, it frequently doesn’t work. It also doesn’t get the team playing as a whole.

In any event tonight I was playing a mid position as we were zoned most of the time. I felt like the timing of my cuts during the swing pass were getting better, but my position was still a little off. Once I get that down I will feel pretty confident in that position.

On defense I can’t say I played great and I can’t say I played poorly. Most of my checks never got the disc sent their way. On defense zone I played a long position which is generally pretty lax with lots of communication to the mids. I prefer to play a mid position though.

Next week is another game.

Disaster Domain

I had a bit of a disaster on this site recently. On Saturday I went about upgrading Drupal from version 5 to 6. I have always had no problem doing upgrades and fully expected this one to go fine as well.

I turned off all the extra modules, changed the site theme to the default, then pointed my domain to another Drupal directory I had with Drupal 6 in it. The actual upgrade was smooth, but I ran into a snag with the image module.

I then backed out of the upgrade. I pointed my domain back at the Drupal 5 install then did a DB restore. This is where it went bad.

The DB restore I chose said it was from 9 hays ago but I had read 9 hours ago. I waited for the restore to complete but I panicked when it seemed to take a while. I started another restore from the next oldest restore point, only to find my database completely empty. It was late at night on a weekend. I made a basic html page for my site and entered a support request.

The next day as I was preparing to head up island for Thanksgiving I checked my DB and saw that it had been restored. Loading my site I found that everything was there. Sure enough, Dreamhost support had come through and restored my DB.

Turns out the restore I had originally attempted was named incorrectly. I still don’t know why it didn’t work when I tried it.

The lesson I learned: back up the DB first! The dreamhost wiki has some information regarding this. I’ve instituted the nightly db backups for almost all my databases. With the script, I can run it just before an upgrade so I have a convenient way to revert.

Jeans Big

I am not the kind of person that likes clothes shopping. I do it out of necessity, and I am certainly not what you would call fashionable.

Shopping for jeans is the absolute worst. A Old Navy I tried on a 34×32 (for the first time in a long time I can fit a 34), but they were too big. The 33×32 were way too tight.

At Winners I tried on a 34×32, but they were too short. Another store I didn’t like the style of their jean selection. At the Bay I tried on a bunch of styles, but they all fit incorrectly.

I will just keep looking for something I like, and when I find it, I will buy two pairs!

Strange Vacuum

Here is the strange sight of the day.

I was driving to work, noticing that fall is in full effect. Leaves are on the ground every where.

As I passed one store I noticed a strange light on near the ground. Then I noticed the shop clerk vacuuming. He was vacuuming the leaves off the sidewalk using a very old vacuum (the kind with the headlight on it). Nice!

Perhaps that is easier than sweeping?

Discovered Passes

Ulti tonight was a ton of fun. I was the first person there, and quickly discovered that there were three guys and one woman. Noone else on our team showed. We managed to pick up two more guys and fielded a team of 6.

Our opponents were strong and plenty. They had several subs.

The game itself was pretty one sided. We had to zone them, and they got to go man with a floater. Still, we managed to score quickly and often. We were definitely the stronger team. We were able to complete our passes, break our checks, and make the catches we needed.

On the defense side we were effective. The 2 person cup was kept busy, the mids did their thing, and the lone long kept everyone moving. I was in the cup for a while, but then settled into a mid position. I was even fortunate to make a good defensive maneuver. I saw that a swing was about to happen, and managed to take a swipe at the disk and knock it down.

Heading to the game I was pretty tired. I didn’t sleep well last night and felt like I was running on fumes. Once the game started a switch was flipped. I was running strong and didn’t once think I was tired. I was doing well until I started to stitch up. I took it easy for a few points until that cleared.

I also made some good catches. There was one that I caught for a point that was fun. We caused a turn over and as we were setting up for the offensive, I saw someone checking me. Suddenly she turned away and I was left alone. There was noone between myself and the end zone. I took off, yelled that I was poached, and kept going. The disk was thrown perfectly. It traveled up the sideline, but just out of bounds. When it caught up to me I was able to reach out of bounds and haul it in.

Let’s see what happens next week.

Firehall Extinguisher

Boys and their toys. Today was the annual Esquimalt Firehall Open House. The were lots of activities for kids to check out, information for parents, and some food to eat too. Sprout loved to see the big fire trucks and his friend L was pretty keen on them too. There was a mini obstacle course for kids, and at the end they got to don a firemans jacket and put out mock flames with a real hose.


Sprout an mum sitting in the back.


Looks almost like a real firefighter.


Sprout and L sharing the seat.


Contemplating where he should drive to.

Sox even got to try out firefighting.  Here she is wielding a chemical fire extinguisher putting out a stubborn propane fire 🙂

Washing Quickly

Our washing machine broke down this past week. Now we need to work with our Halifax based landlord to get a replacement. PITA.

2 young children and 2 adults can produce a mountain of laundry quite quickly. Sox was able to take it to a laundromat today and got everything washed. Now we are in the process of running our dryer. The coordination needed to make time to get the washing was a pain. I can’t imagine living in a place where I needed to use a laundromat on a regular basis. The laundry room in my old apartment was bad enough.

Apples Picked

I harvested as many apples as I could from our tree today. It hadn’t produced anything in a few years, but we had it pruned last spring. I think that made a big difference.

Sprout has been pretty excited to eat the apples off the tree. I knew they were ripe when the squirrels started taking them from the tree and eating them. This picture shows what I picked today and doesn’t have the 25 or so Sox snagged this morning for applesauce, nor does it show the few here and there we picked for eating.

This yield could have been much bigger too, but there was a big wind storm yesterday that knocked a lot to the ground. That is the bad part of procrastination. As I was gathering, the ground was alive with slow, lethargic wasps eating the apples on the ground, and some of the ones in the tree.

LOTD – Olympic Photography

Only a few weeks late, but here are some Olympic links. These links are all photography related and I found them pretty amazing.

This page contains some pictures depicting preparations for the games.

I didn’t catch any of the opening ceremony, but these pictures certainly left an impression. The sheer scale of the ceremony is astounding.

Finally, for the photographer in me. Ever wondered what a quarter million dollars of photography equipment looks like? Check it out.