The Border Blues

It turns out I'm not the only member of my family that is having problems at the border.

My father travels for work (and pleasure) quite frequently. He and my Mom are planning a trip to Russia in a couple of months and as such they have had to turn in their passports to the Russian Consulate so they can get visas to enter.

Unfortunately, my dad had to travel to Denver this week - and with the passport requirements now he has had to resort to using his British passport (we're dual Canadian/British citizens) both to enter the States for work and return to Canada.... it should be interesting.

I suggested that he should have given his British passport to the Russians and travel there using it, so he can still travel back and forth to the States with his Canadian passport. He thought about it for a second and agreed that would have been the better way to go...but it's too late now.

Disney On Ice

Last Thursday (March 1st) was my daughter's fourth birthday and it just so happened that Disney On Ice came to town. So about 3 months ago we bought rink side seats for the performance. The theme of the event was 'Mickey & Minnie's Vacation' - where those two along with Donald and Daisy Duck and Goofy would come out between elaborate musical numbers from various Disney movies.

To say that Maya had an incredible time would be understating it. I think she would have sat there all day if they let her. The whole time she had a huge smile on her face and clapped enthusiastically whenever something exciting happened. We also took Elliot. he was stunned for the first half - I'm not sure he blinked at all the whole time. The second half he got a little fussy, but overall I think he handled it well.

It started with 'The Lion King'. This was my favourite part of the performance. They played three songs from the movie. The highlight was a performance with Simba (the male lion) and Nala (the lioness) doing all sorts of ice dance type moves which are really quite impressive when done a couple of feet in front of your eyes. One thing I found a little odd was when they had a huge choreographed routine with all the skaters dressed as monkeys. The skaters were wearing skin tight monkey suits (literally) which had skin coloured chests with nipples painted on them, so it caused me to take more than a few double takes.

After the Lion King, they transitioned to a 101 Dalmations routine. It was OK, but to get 101 of them each skater had either 2 or 4 'dummy' dogs attached to them via a harness. The 'fake' dogs looked a little weird when you were close up.

After the 101 Dalmations, the skaters started doing some routines to songs from the Little Mermaid. This was Maya's favourite part by far. She loves mermaids and the Little Mermaid is her favourite doll right now. She knows a lot of the words to the songs from a CD we have (and listen to far too often).

Then they had a short intermission, which was followed by routines from Peter Pan and Lilo and Stitch. I didn't see much of the second half because Elliot was overwhelmed at this point - he hadn't blinked in about an hour and was getting pretty fussy. So we went out to the lobby. We did see Captain Hook and a bunch of pirates out there - because they enter the ice from the lobby. Captain Hook was really nice and tried to make Elliot smile by playing peek-a-boo with him and tickling him with the hook. It was a nice personal touch that he definitely didn't have to do.

All in all the whole family had a wonderful time and it was money (and time) well spent.

Taxes

So I did my taxes yesterday - at least a first cut of them. Despite being a computer geek most of the time, I do my taxes with pencil and paper...and, sickly, enjoy doing them that way. Maybe I'm cheap, but why would I spend $30 or so on software that will fill in a few numbers, do some simple arithmetic and file my taxes for me when I can do most of that myself almost as easily?

Anyway, I couldn't finalize them because I haven't got my RSP receipt for January and February of this year yet - but I know what the amount is, so why not fill out the forms ahead of time, right.

It turns out that this year I had almost exactly the correct amount of taxes deducted. My refund comes to $33.08, which means the income tax withheld by my company was 99.91% accurate.

Computer Free Weekend

I just completed a computer free weekend for the first time in as long as I can remember. After coming home from work on Friday, I didn't turn on my computer (or any other computer) for the duration of the weekend.

This was partly because of a challenge from my wife saying that I was addicted and couldn't go 24 hours without checking my email, and partly to try to take a complete break from work this weekend, because I know this coming week is going to be busy and I want to be fresh and re-invigorated.

Where are the updates?

Some of you (Kimota) may be wondering where the updates are? Well I've been really swamped at home recently and haven't really been turning on the ol' web browser at night. Some of the things keeping me busy:

• Valentine's Day prep. Maya is incredibly excited about Valentine' s day this year. She's really into crafts and making hearts and cards for various people she knows. Her day car had a Valentine's day party yesterday (the day before, I know) which required baking and stuff.
  
• Elliot's sleeplessness. He's getting all mixed up with days and nights and he isn't sleeping much between 2 and 5 in the morning. These leads to less sleep for me and Kelly, which in turn leads to less inclination to blog (because I can't string too many coherent thoughts together)
• Chess. I've made it into the semi final round of a couple of tournaments online. This takes my nightly computer time up. I don't have the kind of brain that can look at a position once and then work through the possibilities in my head. I have to constantly look at the actual board and work things through. It takes me 15-30 minutes to decide on each move, after which I'm normally ready to go to bed.
• Solution to the last math post. Kimota94 got the solution right (5 blog points for him) by experimentation, but I'm going to post the solution using the Simplex method of solving Linear Programming problems. The problem is the solution is very verbose and Blogger is not ideal at formatting mathematical solutions (there needs to be a Matlab like version of blogger for all the math related blogs entries that probably aren't being written because of the barrier of formatting!!!)
• A little bit of laziness. I've got a couple of ideas in mind for upcoming posts, but each will take the dedication of at least an hour to write them and I just haven't been able to summon up the energy to take them on yet.

Patience, dear readers. I haven't given up on the blog.

A New Addition.

My brother, Paul, and his wife, Kim, welcomed their first born into the world today at 6:25.

They had a boy, weighing a whopping 10 lbs 8 oz, and named him Connor William Hindle.

Congratulations to them.

Environmentalism and Me

I'm the first to admit that I don't do everything I can to be environmentally friendly. To be honest convenience wins out (easily) over environmentalism with me. I know that the environment is the hot topic out there these days (kinda reminiscent of the whole Acid Rain scare when I was in high school - but when was the last time you heard that term?) but for me to 'get all green', there has to be convenient ways for me to make the socially responsible choice. Here are some examples of where I make good and bad environmental decisions:

Good: I've chosen to put 30% of my RRSP portfolio in a socially responsible fund. (Acuity's Clean Environment Equity Fund). This is so easy to do - I can't believe more people don't do it.

Bad: My family owns two cars, and I drive to work every day. With two small kids, it's just too inconvenient not to drive all over the place. Maybe if we lived in a climate that was a little more friendly year round it would be easier for me to get rid of a car...there's always global warming. Note: I don't own a van or an SUV...just sedans.

Good: I keep my house at relatively low temperatures (19C when occupied and not sleeping), have a high efficiency gas furnace, turn lights off when not in use, and I'm replacing the regular incandescent bulbs with the energy efficient fluorescent bulbs as they burn out.

Bad: My kids wear disposable diapers. Not all bad - as I'm not doing as much laundry as I would be with cloth diapers. But there's no other choice I'd consider - sorry, Mother Nature.

Good: I recycle and I'm pretty adamant about splitting out the recyclable stuff from the regular garbage. This is inconvenient to do, but once you're in a routine, it's not that bad. I'm not sure how much it actually helps though. I have a feeling it all ends up in the same place despite my best cleaning and separation efforts

Good: I only use organic fertilizer and no pesticides on my lawn. I switched last year primarily for health reasons - don't want my kids rolling around in chemicals. But it's better for the environment too. Plus the lawn care company I use offers an organic program at the same cost as the traditional program.

Bad: I don't feel bad about the environment and what I do to it. I don't advocate environmental choices and, at this point, I don't see myself preaching it as that important to my kids. I guess I feel that entrepreneurs out there will figure out a way of turning this crisis into a business opportunity, will make tonnes of cash, plus save the world with or without my extra efforts.

The Pros and Cons of Travelling

I just got back from a whirlwind couple of days in Philadelphia meeting with one of our parent companies and two of the other software joint ventures. I always view travelling on business as a dichotomy of good and bad. I thought I'd outline some of the specific good and bad things from this trip:

Good

• face to face contact with partners results in better understanding of each others problems and concerns
• putting a face to a name you've heard before, or spoken with, or emailed back and forth adds a dimension to the relationship
  
• all food and drink will be reimbursed (especially good when travelling with my boss who picks up the expensive meals)
• finding a pretty good jazz club in Philly that had two great bands on consecutive nights (a tuesday and wednesday, no less)
• no screaming kids in the middle of the night in a hotel
  
• meeting the bouncer in the aforementioned club and realizing what a great guy he was - Philly truly is the city of brotherly love (also - see below)

Bad

• Leaving the family is stressful on both me and my wife
• A hotel that is under construction is not much fun - the power to the alarm clock went out both nights
• The TSA and the stupid 'enhanced searches' I always seem to receive
• Canadian Immigration screw-ups....it's still not resolved so I got hassled getting back in to my own country
• Mesaba Airlines operates the NWA airlink between London and Detroit - they have the worst planes I've ever been on. The seats are really uncomfortable
• Rushing to get a conneting flight when the first flight is late
• Sitting on the runway while your plane is de-iced
• Walking to the hotel and seeing a large homeless man masturbating while lying on the sidewalk - I said it was the city of Brotherly Love.

Totally Eighties

I was given "Trivial Pursuit: Totally '80s" for Christmas. Last night was the first night we played it. It was pretty easy, but lots of fun to play while watching the Saints and Eagles in the background. The categories are: Headlines, TV, Movies, Music, Sports&Leisure, and Wildcard.

Here is a sample card, and borrowing from Kimota94 - there are "blog points"^tm up for grabs:

HL: What firm set a record for profits on Wall Street in 1986 thanks to Michael Milken's shady dealings?

TV: What show featuring the exploits of everyday folks was hosted by luminaries like Byron Allen, Mark Russell, and Fred Willard?

MOV: What stand-up comic played an old rich dude after Rodney Dangerfield backed out of Caddyshack II?

MUS: What critically panned song from The Woman in Red was Stevie Wonder's best-selling single ever?

S&L: What was the first home video game to let players take a bead on wildlife with Nintendo's patented "light gun" controller?

WC: What European lake was systematically swept by sonar cruisers in 1987's Operation Deepscan?

Memory

I've got a good memory for the most part. However, I've had a few experiences where I absolutely knew with 100% certainty I was going to remember something. Not something exceptional, or life altering, but a trivial experience.

In these cases I'd experience something, and then find myself reflecting on it a few minutes later as if it had happened much longer ago. It's as if I had purposely transfered the experience from my short term memory to long term and then recalled it from that long term memory. That's the only way I can explain the feeling of something that I just experienced seeming like it happened weeks or months prior.

The first time I had this experience was when I lived in England. I was in the equivalent of grade two and my family was going to move to Canada over the summer break. My class was visiting the next class - where most of them would be when school restarted. We played 'I Spy' in the class, then we walked back to our classroom. During that walk we went through a courtyard where there were a number of student desks lining the wall. As I passed by one of the desks, I placed my fingers in the hole in the desk surface left for the 'inkwell' (did I mention this was an old school in England). When we got back to our class, I had a 'recollection' of putting my fingers in the inkwell. At that point, I knew that I'd always remember what we had just done.

I've had this happen a handful of times in my life. I can't yet control this ability to force an experience into my long term memory. But I probably try to do it at least once a month. It's frustrating to know I have this ability, but not know how to use it.

Merry Christmas..

and happy holiday thoughts to anyone that is (un)fortuante enough to be reading my ramblings on the day before Christmas.

Wot's...Uh The Deal?

Hardly had any time to post today...it's been crazy since waking up at 6:15.

There was a smell of rotten eggs in the basement this morning that I noticed at around 8:15 so we kind of freaked out and reported a gas leak. The whole family got up and out of the house by 8:30 in our PJs. Turns out all north east London smelled like gas, not just our house, so we ended up driving around for about an hour waiting for some news. Luckily it turned out to be a leak of the additive companies add to the odourless natural gas so you can detect leaks...how ironic.

Then I spent the rest of the day between putting up Christmas lights, raking leaves, and cleaning the outside. Lots of fresh air and now I'm whipped.

Time to go to bed....