Care to guess what day it is?
Yep, my birthday. I am not really too interested in celebrating in a big way this year so Sue and I are heading out for dinner to our favorite restaurant. It should be really nice.
I did get a phone call a few minutes after 7am this morning. Sue’s dad and step mom called to wish me Happy Birthday.
Last night as I left the office I was greeted with a very warm, very pleasant evening sky. I jumped in my truck, rolled down all the windows and revelled in the temperature. Awesome! As I was driving home I decided to take Yoshi to the park for a walk. I knew he would be all over that action!
The walk to the park was nice, but Yoshi was chomping at the bit. He wouldn’t stop pulling the entire way there. Once he was off leash he ran around like a banshee, stopping to sniff and pee on trees, and clumps of grass. The life of a dog is so uncomplicated sometimes!
Later in the walk we came by a group of owners and their dogs. Yoshi sensed something was wrong, and for some weird reason took a large detour around the group while I walked right through it. Strange dog sometimes!
We got home about 40 minutes later, and ready to eat! Both of us were hungry. After Yoshi ate he came upstairs to be close to Sue and I. We discovered him sleeping using my shoes as a pillow. Silly dog!
Had a great ride yesterday. Shane, Darryll, Mark, Mike and myself hit the dump for a nice tour. My trainer work is definitely starting to pay off. I feel much stronger on the climbs, and my endurance is definitely improving. We were out on the trail for 3 hours (not all of that was riding), and I never ate a Cliff Bar. Of course that may be due to the fact that when I went to get one from my pack I discovered I didn’t have one with me 😮
The only mechanical on the ride was Mike’s bike. He was riding a hardtail he built for his girlfriend, and the drivetrain was skipping when he layed down the power. When this happened, his knees would drive up into the bars! Yeouch. I have done that before and I know it hurts. Good thing he had on armour.
While trailing Darryll down Snakes N Ladders I got the privilege of watching a wipeout unfold right in front of me. Thankfully I stopped before becoming part of the action. Darryll went off one of the log drops with more speed than normal, and his front tire washed out off the side of the trail! Woops. He went down pretty softly and didn’t hurt himself, and hadn’t damaged his bike. Good news.
On Y2J Shane did his usual leaping thing. I was finding my rear shock was bottoming out on some stuff it shouldn’t have. I will have to look into that.
By the end, Yoshi was just wiped out. He needed a good long run, and he certainly got it yesterday. When we got back to the truck, he needed a little help getting into the truck. I loaded my gear into the back, and when I went to get into the truck, his body was on his bed in the back seat, but his head was dangling into the footwell of the drivers side rear seat. He was knackered! Mission accomplished.
Of course I was pretty tired and hungry, so I stopped at Francelli’s for an Americano, and a giant oatmeal chocolate chip cookie!
Saturday was a lazy day! I geeked out most of the day and attempted to install Gentoo Linux on my new machine. It didn’t start well. I downloaded the CD image for installing, burned that to a disc, and installed a hard drive in the new box. Then I edited the BIOS so it booted from the CD ROM. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the system to boot from the CD. Hmm, weird. I pulled out the hard drive, I checked the CD ROM, and saw that the IDE cable had been pulled out. Doh! I hooked that back up, put the hard drive back in and attempted to reboot. It booted from the disc just fine but now it wouldn’t recognize the hard drive. More futzing around, and I noticed I had forgotten to plug back in the power cable to the hard drive! Woops 😉
With the hardware working, I set out to get Gentoo running. I got pretty far actually. I think I did pretty good. Until it came time to configure Grub, the boot loader. I messed something up here, and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t fix it. I gave up.
I changed my mind, and went with Suse instead. I had a few problems determining what my network card was before I could do the FTP install, but once I got that sorted out, the install went pretty smoothly. Now I have a Linux host running Suse. Major geekfest, but pretty interesting. Some day maybe I will try Gentoo again, once I understand more of how Linux works.
As I said to a couple friends today, I know just enough to be dangerous. I think Suse is going to be a good stepping stone for learning on.
I found this firetruck tucked away in a small lane during my stay at Point No Point Resort in Sooke BC. I love the above picture. The colors came across very well. I love the composition of the below picture (one of the trucks wheels), but the colors aren’t as true as I would like them.
Pretty lazy week. Work, ride trainer, spent time with Sue, play with the kitty. These are just some of the things I have done this week.
I bought an old machine from work a couple weeks ago. It had no hard drive, and was pretty cheap. I bought a hard drive for it yesterday, and my plan for the weekend is to install some variant of linux. Right now I am leaning towards Suse. Not sure why though. I do like the Gnome desktop. Whatever.
This week, while boring, will turn into a geekfest weekend. plus I have a ride planned for the weekend. Yay!
How will setting my browser homepage to MSN Home improve the MSN Messenger experience?
Wow, what a great weekend. Very revitalizing. This weekend seemed much longer than it really was. Thursday night I went to Nanaimo for dinner with my mom and sister. Friday morning I drove back to Victoria for work. This little excursion messed up my internal clock. When the work day was over on Friday, I didn’t know which way was up!
Friday night I stayed home and did a little bike maintenance. It is definitely time to get some new bushings for my Fox rear shock. The is a slight clunk when I lift on the saddle, and it is definitely coming from the connection of the shock to the frame. I also did a little work on my front fork. It was in dire need of a top up of fork fluid which I purchased from this shop.
Saturday morning was the photo club. I forgot to mention in my other post that I received a :fuck: parking ticket! I purchased parking time, placed the receipt face up on my dash, then closed up my truck. Turns out, the receipt had slid down my dash, beneath the tinting on my windshield. It was pretty windy that morning, and I wonder if a breeze blew it down the dash. Crap, this is the second time that has happened! $25 down the drain. Grrr!
Saturday afternoon was Todd and Jennifer’s wedding. Very nice ceremony at St Ann’s Academy, and an absolutely wonderful reception at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club.
Sunday. What can I say about Sunday. I didn’t really do much yesterday. I was a little hung over, and basically lazed around the house all day. I did take Yoshi to the park for a walk while it was warm and sunny, so that was good.
Monday morning I awoke and felt awesome. I am refreshed revitalized, and ready to tackle the week. Isn’t that what a weekend is for?
In a nutshell, that was my weekend.
My pics are up from today’s firehall shoot. Cassandra had set up the shoot for us, but when we arrived, we found out that Cassandra’s friend hadn’t told the other guys about us coming. To top that, they had drills the had to attend, so we only had about 15 minutes to shoot! I decided I was just going snap away at anything that struck my fancy. Since I would be shooting so much, I stuck with my digital camera. In the end it was very enjoyable, and I got to talk with a couple of the firemen.
Also, my pics from the night shoot in China Town are up too.
