Journal of a Sysadmin

Happenstance

Great weekend with a bunch of surprises.

Friday night I went by myself to Dicken’s Pub to listen to the bands playing Sled Island. It was a good venue but the second band caught my attention.

As I’m watching them set up I notice that one of the guys, a guitar player with black Converse Sneakers, a black shirt and those oh so stylish black jeans which are saggy in the ass and tight everywhere else (Sorry Pat, but I really think those are *not* classy looks just like my nephew would at 26ish… So, I pull out the phone and google it.

Sure enough, The Get Down is playing and it’s my nephews band from Edmonton. When the set was over I walked to the side of the stage and got his attention. Complete double take and he almost fell off the stage to give me a hug. We hung out that night for a while and even though I went by myself there were another 3 people that I knew that I ran into and stood around to talk with and my buddy Mark showed up after his date to listen to the last couple of bands.

All of the bands were great and the last band, Monotonix, was completely off the wall. Off the wall enough that Dicken’s Pub was trashed by the end of it and the crowd was doing some serious pulsing to the very loud, very lively music. It was a great night which didn’t end until about 3:30am.

Saturday night I was blown away. Calgary’s own Kilbourne played at Vern’s (the venue we choose to go to that night) and were loud and tight. If I hear of them playing again wild horses won’t keep me out of the venue. Last was Tricky Woo from Toronto and they were also great, and tight and hard rock.

Mark and I showed The Get Down to a late night Chinese restaurant and we all chowed down. Pat and Brett slept on my available furniture and I gave them a ride in the morning.

Sunday was spend biking and skating, also things I really really enjoy.

It was a great weekend, one of the likes I haven’t had in a long time. I have to make a note for the fridge to always try and get out to listen to our local talent. There is a lot of it and some of the music just carries you away.

So by happenstance, I managed to wake myself up. If only for a weekend.

Grass Man!

The one thing I have never really liked about our house was the backyard. It was always so small and the deck looked kind of off, having a second level which was too small to really do much with. I’ve always wanted to do a brick patio but never did anything about it until now!

It started in August with, “oh that won’t cost too much” and ended with 4.5 yards of sand and gravel, 6 yards of black dirt, grass, and shale removed, 12 yards of trash from the deck removal gone, 1700 Holland pavers, 2 bags of masons sand and 38 rolls of sod, a sore back and extremely rough hands.

I have to finish sod one corner and one edge along the patio and then do the railing on the deck and frame in under the deck and side it somehow (still not sure what we’ll do that in). It is rewarding to go into the backyard now and see such a change, we can’t wait till next summer so we can use it.

Yes, it finally happened.

The baby finally came. Here’s the announcement I sent to everyone on our mailing list:

Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 23:44:39 -0600 (MDT)
From: James Bourne
To: jaimehadababy@lists.hardrock.org
Subject: Announcment
Aloha everyone!
Jaime and myself would like to announce the birth of our son.

At 1614 (4:14pm MDT) this afternoon Jaime gave birth to our son,
Jonah Isamu Kalewalaniopu`ukini Bourne.

Jonah was 11 lbs. 4 oz. (5100 grams) and was 20 inches long (50.8cm). Jaime
and Jonah are resting well and both are very healthy and happy. They should
be released on Sunday.

Take care and we thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers.

Jaime, Jim, Jonah, Connor, Richard, and Anthony

PS: oh my that list is getting long…

We came home from the hospital yesterday afternoon, bought Jaime a glider rocker, and since then it’s just been a matter of eating, resting, and taking care of little Jonah. The kids are happy about the baby and so are all of our pets (except dusty, she doesn’t like much of anything that makes noise). Everything seems to be going well, and the baby and Jaime are both happy and healthy.

Today my oldest came to visit us (the one who just graduated from high school), and he hasn’t been here in a long long time. That means a lot so now I have to plan a quick dinner and pick some things up before the kids get back.

I love all of these kids of mine. And the dog and cats too.

Constructing

Thought it might be time to get something in the journal this year besides biking and snowboarding!

The last couple of weeks we’ve been busy in the house. I’ve pretty much finished downstairs (the ceiling and the window frame, closet doors, mouldings and baseboards). That was fairly easy and made the bedroom down their much brighter. Middle kid’s bedroom upstairs has been painted (finally) and it looks really really nice.

Next was the baby’s bedroom. Jhb picked out the colours, and the decor and this is seriously the first room I have ever “decorated” as it were. It looks beautiful and as if it was meant to be, we even found a crib set that matches the border.

One other thing I started working on was a new bookcase. This is a massive bookcase to sit inside the front door, therefore it seemed only appropriate to put two shoe shelves (she sells shoe shelves in the shoe store?) in the bottom of the book case, and a large enough base that it has overhang for a phone. We’ll see how it looks when I have it finished, maybe this weekend or next!

Last boarding of the season

We went for the last snow boarding of the year today. So friends traded us 2 lift tickets for sunshine village for a few of our raspberry plants which I’ll be thinning out.

So, we wake up early in the morning (still not early enough), pack up, have breakfast, and head for the hill. This was the first time I tried spring sking and it was really good. We’re not talking fluffy powder but the snow was deep and soft although a little wet.

So, the morning went well, we had lunch, jhb was having no problems on the lifts (ok, well just a little problem) and she is actually better at snowboarding than I am. Then we decide to do this one blue hill.

I tool off down the hill ahead of jhb, get to the bottom on the other side where I can get a bit of speed up and stop. I look up the hill just as I hear her on the radio "the ski instructor is going to contact the ski patrol, I think I tore something". My heart jumped into my throat, I whipped off my board and started the trudge back up the hill to where she was lying.

The ski patrol got there, then called a sled and pulled her down the hill. A little bit of swelling (the cold we kept on it may have helped) and it was stiff but she was able to leave the infirmary on her own legs.

So, other than that bit of excitement the day went really great. It’s actually pretty unbelievable how much easier boarding is now compared to when we started. Although, I’m still a lot better than this on skis!

Big bike, west bragg telephone loop

The kid-in-the-middle and I took our bikes out to the west bragg area and did a trail called the Telephone Loop. It’s a X-country ski trail by winter and a hike, horse, walk, bike, and run trail by summer. Conditions were a bit wet but generally good. The trail was a lot of fun and I think we’re both looking forward to more of these types of trails in the future. It was all off road. Single track, lots of up and down. Nice ending with a long long downhill bit that lets you cool down slowly.

Total Time 1:33:53
Total Distance 15.98 km
Average Cadence 63 rpm
Average Speed 10.2 km/h
Odo 113 km

Bike and dog walk

Went from home to Elbow River Pathway, through downtown to Edworthy park, up that big f’ing hill (and jhb did it too! YAY Jaime!) then home. This pathway is a great ride.

Total Time 2:01:02
Total Distance 31.12 km
Average Cadence 68 rpm
Average Speed 15.4 km/h

Weather was beautiful. It was 22C for a high here today. Along the Elbow river the trees are starting to leaf out and you can already smell the sap in the air, it’s one of my favourite smells on earth!

Tonight, a 45 minute puppy walk with jhb and Miss Puppy Fantastico (aka, Missy Monster).

Happy Birthday to me!

So, today was my birthday. I turned the ripe age of 37.

To celebrate jhb and I went for a bike ride from our house, down to edworthy park then over to 14th St. W. then back again. It was a great ride and even at our pace was less then an hour and a half long.

For the trip and for my birthday we bought bike computers. These things are cool (jhb has an Echowell F7 and mine is an Echowell F2) and measure speed and distance as well as keeping track of riding time, average speed and maximum speed (the F2 also does cadence as well). Installation is really nice but their tye wraps (otherwise known as zip straps) blow goats. I broke 4 of mine just doing them up with my fingers so now I’m forced to carry extras with me just in case…

At any rate this also means that for my own docs I’m going to start logging on the date, stats, and weather of all or our bike trips (not counting rides to work and back of course). Thought this would be a good thing to keep around and see if I’m improving at all!

Dropped off the kids with their mom (as happens every second weekend) and we went for All-You-Can-Eat Sushi at the Sumo Lounge. Mmmmm, good stuff. One thing I love about living here is all the great food, which of course in other ways is a bad thing.

I’ve started a kind of diet. Just watching what I eat and how much (no, the sushi didn’t help but wasn’t all that bad) and how much exercise I’m getting. I’m hoping to lose about 20 lbs. by December, as all the weight/height charts tell me I’m at least that much over weight for my frame size. This kind of makes sense because I was 190 lbs from the time I was seventeen until I was thirtyfour when I first stopped smoking. I then proceeded to gain 40 lbs and topped out at 230 lbs. At some point after that (I think just after I bought the house) I started biking to work and biked all that fall and winter. I ended up in a lot better shape and had dropped 30 of the 40 lbs I gained but also started smoking again and then lost the biking (just stopped for some stupid reason).

Now with the recent additions to my bike I’ve determined that I have to use it more. jhb and I are going to be biking more this summer anyway and I’ve decided the bike to work is a must again! So, my birthday present to myself is fairly simple. I want to be healthy, fit, and strong.

I’ll report back next year on if it worked or not =)

More boarding and…

So we took the kids to Nakiska today. The local CO-OP has this deal on that for $99.00 you get 4 lift tickets and rentals which makes it cheap enough to go.

So we go, get the youngest a lesson because he’s never been to the hill before and spend the entire day going up and coming down (I think we did 5 lifts and runs today).

At any rate we came home, the kids fell asleep on the way home and we got home and went for a 15 or 20 minutes bike ride just because we felt like it! I think the working out, the snow boarding, the eating new foods, the stopping smoking, everything really has really started to pay off. I like it =)

And now for the news

So, what happened exactly that I can’t lift my left arm?

Well, it all started on Saturday. jhb and I first were looking at our boards and I tweaked both of our bindings (my feet are so large I had to adjust my bindings toward the heel of my boot to centre my foot more on the board and jhb’s feet are so small that I had to adjust hers the other way) then we decided we both needed stomp pads.

Stomp pads are made of metal, plastic, or foam rubber and you put them between the bindings on your board to give your back foot something to step on when you’re “skating”, meaning your back foot isn’t in the binding but you push yourself with it like on a skateboard. See, this helps a lot when coming off the chair lift as you can then put your foot on the pad and glide off, still using your back foot as a rudder, to steer you clear of any obstacles like fallen or dumb people in your path…

So, at that point we hit about 5 different stores looking for the foam rubber ones (and 2 of the stores we were pretty sure wouldn’t carry them) and spent more money of course than we should have. At the same time we bought a MEC membership (something I’ve wanted to do for a while) and dinner stuff for saturday night (from a Korean store down by MEC).

So we arrive at home, laden down with Clif bars, sippy cup inserts for our Nalgene bottles, a book on mountain biking in the Canadian Rockies, boarding gloves for jhb, miso soup mix, and other oddities INCLUDING stomp pads. Saturday night we turn in early to get a good start on the day at Lake Louise.

We arrived at Louise at about quarter to nine am (lifts open at nine), unload, change our shoes, put on our ski pants and wind breakers, get a locker (one of the great bits of Louise are the $4.00 a day, multi entrance, full sized lockers), then get our boards and head to the gondola!

We first went down the backside of Louise on Pika to the Ptarmigan chair, then down again (second time I dropped over a small black cutoff that joined the top and bottom of one of the switch backs) on Pika to the Ptarmigan chair, and finally back up and down Eagle meadows and Wiwaxy to the Lodge for lunch. It was good with only a couple bad spills.

One of the things about boarding is the transition from your toes to your heels then back again. You have to be very very VERY careful to not dig in that downhill edge (if you transition to your heel from your toe and your toe side edge grabs for example) otherwise you end up either on your ass or your face. VERY careful… Good fun, huh?

So, after lunch jhb decides to take a break and I went up the gondola. I dropped down the backside on Old-Ptarmigan then back up and down to Wiwaxy again. I was concentrating on linking my turns (transition from heel to toe to heel and back again). This is kind of like Tacking or Gybing a boat because you do a heel slide then a toe slide and it not only checks your speed but also allows you to control your direction.

So I was working on linking my turns, and transitioned from heel to toe (this I find is the harder transition) and guess what? My heel edge caught. I was actually moving fairly fast at this point so as you can imagine with my left arm pointed down hill, my heels (and the heel edge of my board) facing the slide when the edge caught and all 210 pounds of me flew very ungracefully through the airs above the ground. I lit on my left shoulder with my left arm under my side.

It knocked the wind out of me so badly that I had to sit there and recovered for about 10 minutes. Wow, did that hurt. The snap on the removable sleeves of my shell left me with a bruise on my elbow, and the force of my arm under my side seems to have pushed my ribs around enough that it hurts to cough.

I made my way to the bottom, then radioed jhb to find her on the gondola heading back to the top. Back on the horse I say and up I went to meet her. We came back down Wiwaxy and both of us made it to the bottom safely so all was good.

On our way home we stopped at The Grizzly Paw Pub for some offsales beer and dinner. Home again by 9pm to cats, dog, painkillers and the sofa.

So after a good sleep it feels better, but still sore. Assisted by my right arm I can lift my left arm above my head alright and my chest still aches from the pounding it took. Even though there is pain, and the fact that I know it will likely happen again, it IS worth it.

If you ever have the chance learn to snowboard do it.

I’ve been skiing now for almost 20 years although at times not that much I didn’t lose the ability at any point. Snowboarding looks like a lot of fun and it is. It may be a bit harder to learn (there’s more to it then skiing) it’s all the same from begining to end.

With skiing you start to learn by snowplowing, then you learn to keep your feet together and slide into the turns (completely different and you have to learn it again) then when you advance to the blues, blacks, and double blacks with bumps (moguls) you again have to learn how to lift your ski tails, then dig into the moguls and bounce out again to dig into the next one. Always learning new stuff.

Boarding on the other hand is fairly straight forward once you learn the basics. Heel slide, then toe slide, then transition toe to heel then transition heel to toe then link toe to heel to toe to heel. That’s almost it and with those basics you can go a long long way. Flat and steep or a glade it’s all the same, toe to heel to toe to heel to heel switch to heel to toe to toe switch etc (switch is when you board with the back end of your snowboard going down first and leading with the wrong foot).

So it’s easy to see why with boarding it’s harder to learn (that transition is a hard one to grasp) but once you get there it’s all the same and you keep getting better and better because you’re always doing the same things. Skiing, although easier to learn at the start, is much harder to get really really good at. It’s not uncommon to see someone boarding that’s only done it for 2 years looking like a complete pro and 2 years on skis you still look like someone that’s been on skis for about 2 years (turns are loose and such)… Some people naturally catch on faster but still…

At any rate, next weekend is Nakiska with the kids. Maybe one day maybe two days. We’ll see when we get there! I still want to get at least 3 or 4 more runs in this year.