One of my players introduced me to these. http://www.koldwrap.com/Koldwrap.html They're great. I recommend checking them out. Wrap my ankle, cools and compresses for 8 hours.

Mmmm....dark chocolate mocha -- Now I'm awake and a little quivery.

Up at 5:45 with the baby. She was ecstatically happy to be back with her people again. She's looking at you thinking ... you're not going to just fall back asleep on me. I need to eat. :-)

Entering user profiles in our wiki this morning and making up new archetypes for our application development process this morning and parsing election results. 135 for the libs + 19 for the NDP - 1 for the speaker means only 153 seats when you need 155 for a majority. The bloc (54), conservatices (99) and independent (1) = 154. The bloc and the conservatives don't often agreee on policy issues but it's sure going to be interesting. One or two MP's miss a flight or a vote and the government comes down. I think this may be the end of parliamentary reform. Going to see strong control by the whip in a minority situation - less freedom for MPs to vote against the party line.

Voting day in Canada today. The liberals won in my riding. Looking forward to seeing a really interesting parliament in the fall.

We went for lunch to celebrate Grandma's birthday on Sunday. We were joined by my parents and Wayne, Charlotte, Blake and Vanessa. Vanessa just graduated from high school and starts at UBC in the fall. Blake is working landscaping for the summer and then back to fourth year in computer science.

Planning Communities, Building Sustainability: "MAPLE RIDGE CHARRETTE PRESENTATION
Presentation PDF

On June 21, 2004, nearly 100 people joined the Maple Ridge charrette team for a dynamic, visual presentation of the plans and recommendations generated at the charrette event.

Members of the charrette team presented an overview of their work, including the following key concepts:

· creating a vibrant Town Centre where residents live within a five-minute walk from shops, services, recreation and cultural events, and local job opportunities are provided by potential mixed use, flexible, and live/work developments

· providing an integrated transportation network that accommodates cars, pedestrians, bikes, transit and other modes

· using “greener” building guidelines for energy and water efficiency and “smarter” road construction to infiltrate water and improve water quality

· offering a range of housing options such as secondary suites, ground-oriented townhouses and low-rise apartments, with higher density situated in the downtown area

· working with natural landscapes to enhance stream corridors and the Fraser River waterfront for recreation, habitat and aesthetics, while preserving river and mountain view corridors

A copy of the charrette presentation can be found on the Events page of the Maple Ridge section of this website, at:

http://www.sgog.bc.ca/uplo/mr6.21.04presentation.pdf

Over the summmer, the charrette recommendations will be consolidated into a concept plan document. Research will also be conducted to flesh out some of the ideas in the plan. The full concept plan will then be brought to District Council for their review.

tim.oreilly.com -- Various Things I've Written: Tim's Archive: "The Open Source Paradigm Shift"

Amazon.com: Books: Managing The Professional Service Firm

Link to a book referenced in some literature I'm reading on building an IT consulting practice. Focuses on the profession of law for its examples and advice. Highly recommended by all reviewers.

Baby's moved up to the equivalent of the starter home in the suburbs.

Lots of smoke and waving arms over the RAV line in vancouver. Here is another opinion... See the Vancouver Sun of the past couple days.

Deciding the RAV line isn't like baseball

Letter

June 24, 2004

Re: TransLink is broken; it's up to Victoria to fix it, Editorial, June 23

Is this democracy or baseball, where it takes
three strikes before you're out? Twelve
responsible, representative, and highly informed
leaders have twice said no to the proposed
Richmond-Airport-Vancouver rapid transit line.
Clearly, it is not TransLink that's broken, but
The Vancouver Sun's sense of democracy.

Melbourne, Australia, and Vancouver were judged
this year to be the most livable cities in the
world. Two years ago, Melbourne also said no to a
$1.5-billion, 22-kilometre rail link to the
airport for its 3.4 million people. A look at the
State of Victoria auditor-general's report (May
2004) shows how its team evaluated a project
similar to RAV and decided to choose a rapid bus
system, rather than lose $350 million to $450
million over 10 years.

So why is it that when TransLink directors did
not support the largest public expenditure ever
contemplated in this region, with further high
cost over-runs likely (they occur in 70 per cent
of major infrastructure projects), some people
regard those directors as incompetent people?

Transportation and transit funding is very
complex. Too often peoples' views are based on
ego and blind faith, rather than on facts.

So here are some facts:

1. To build the SkyTrain Expo Line in the 1980s
consumed so much money that only 32 buses were
purchased over the next decade. We are now 300 to
450 buses short of the number planned for 2004.

2. The Vancouver region has the lowest number of
transit hours per capita of any major city in
Canada.

3. Even after building two SkyTrain lines, 80 per
cent of our ridership is still in buses. We need
more buses.

4. The largest gain in ridership seen since 1986
(last year's jump of 13 per cent) was not caused
by building a new transit line, but by the new

U-PASS program at the University of B.C. and
Simon Fraser University. This demand-management
strategy required students to buy a year's bus
pass when they paid their tuition, thereby saving
them the costs of a car, gas and parking and
reducing UBC parking needs by 30 per cent.

5. Public-private partnerships require a 15 per
cent to 25 per cent profit to be worthwhile for a
private investor. That's a lot of extra public
money to spend when you're spending $2 billion.

Fred Bass

Councillor, City of Vancouver

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

------- End of Forwarded Message -------

Yet another reason to change your browser. check out www.mozilla.org

The table would go in this space. http://www.kenandlinda.com/listings/25nwarwick/4.jpg

This table at scan design is a strong contender, however the picture didn't turn out well. 78 inches long, frosted glass top, looks like it is floating in the air. Does not collapes and expand though like the other table. Spent a lot of time trying it out with a variety of different chairs.

In yet another furniture store just before Felicity and I collapsed from exhaustion. My wife just gets stronger and stronger as the day goes on. :-)

Spent the day hanging with the baby, dealing with finances and then furniture shopping for six hours. Really, the furniture shopping is my wife's perfect day. We took a look at this table at Inspiration Designs (shown with the extension out)). I'm not a big fan of the table but I like the chairs. Had a neat moment in the store when baby rolled from back to front under her own power and I was there to witness it. She's been going front to back for quite a while but the opposite is a new development. She seemed quite surprised by the whole procedure.

Ever feel you're trapped in a box and can't get out?

A top homeland security official told Congress that five major domestic airlines turned over sensitive passenger data to the agency or its contractors in 2002 and 2003, contradicting numerous statements by airline and government officials and confirming some of the worst fears of privacy advocates.

You know those days where the work is so hard you just have to catch a nap at your desk?

Bubbles with baby - Stuck at home tidying up and doing laundry as best I can while hobbling around. Took some time out with my wife to play bubbles with baby.

Guardian Unlimited Sport | Special reports | Greece facing decade of debt as Olympics bill soars: "It could take Greece over a decade to pay back a ?C36bn (�24bn) deficit created in part by the ballooning costs of hosting the Olympic games in August, a top government official said"

Me, wife and baby with team at the beach.

Hospital Row

A day at work and then ultimate at Jericho followed by a team bbq at the sailing center. Ultimate game was okay but blew out my left ankle on a hole in the field I hit at high speed about halfway through the game. Lots of rest, ice, compression and elevation. First picture shows the other two players lost to injury last week, one just had surgery and the second is waiting for the swelling to decline so he can have surgery. Had a nice bbq with hotdogs and hamburgers at the windsurfing shack down at locarno beach. Very little breeze, beautiful view of vancouver and good friends.

Joel on Software - Bionic Office: "Most software managers know what good office space would be like, and they know they don't have it, and can't have it. Office space seems to be the one thing that nobody can get right and nobody can do anything about. There's a ten year lease, and whenever the company moves the last person anybody asks about how to design the space is the manager of the software team, who finds out what his new veal-fattening pens, uh, cubicle farm is going to be like for the first time on the Monday after the move-in.

For a person working on intellectual capital intensive industry this office sounds like heaven.

So I'm blogging when I should be sleeping. For those of you living in the U.S. and feel that you really could get a rant or two off your chest using your cell phone on your way to work or even commentary on your day to existence in metropolitan new york check out this link.

For those of you with ipods and disposable cash - the perfect accessory for your Ipod- an Bmw.

I went a couple rounds with my computer tonight trying to get it to talk to the Internet. Tried installing Mandrake Linux 10.0, Mandrake Linux 9.1 and OpenBSD. I think my ethernet card which allows your computer to transfer data to other computers and the internet has gone to the great computer graveyard in the sky. Of course things are never simple. Still getting power to the card but no data transfer. The computer is a pentium II I use as a web server which means hunting for obscure commodity parts to hopefully replace the card and get everything running again. Computers are so much fun.

Wife went to visit some friends and their new kitten. Click photo for an expanded view of general cuteness.

For comparison purposes this is the size of the baby one day after birth at 5lbs. 15 oz. She now tips the scales at over 16 lbs.

Oh how they grow. Our baby has pretty much outgrown her bassinet and will need to move up the pack and play. Sort of like moving from the trendy downtown loft to the starter home in the suburbs. 

Had my first father's day on Sunday. Wonderful start to my day looking into my daughter's eye and sharing that with my wife. Spent some time with a friend watching the second half of the spain portugal euro 2004 game and a bit of time throwing the disc on the beach. Then out to bbq steaks with family in burnaby. 

I was offered a 5 month fulltime contract on Friday with Natural Resources Canada. This is the same group of people I have been working with in the past. The main part of the contract will be to build an english version of the Geosemantica application (link). This application will support groundwater projects we are working on in the Okanagan and another set of projects in the Gulf Islands. I'll also continue contributing to the research and development of the next generation of this application and do ancillary web page creation, project management etc. Looking forward to it. Makes the whole mortgage thing seem a lot more manageable. I'll be back working downtown at Robson and Seymour. Good news. 

On thursday my old friend Chris came downtown with his 2 year old daughter and we went down to Kits pool to take my daughter swimming for the first time. A bit of shock on the first entry but after some splashing around we went back in and she liked it a bit more. The pool may have been a bit cool. Beautiful day in Kits ... walked Chris along bikini row on the way to the pool - he couldn't understand why we would ever move. :-) After everybody dried off we headed down to the swingsets and the playground and hung out with the kids. Chris spent 45 minutes putting a kite together for his daughter....talk about obscure instructions. Nice to hang out with someone you've known for 25 years.  

Wednesday night I attended the first meeting of this committee. I was one of 20 people selected from 67 applicants. We'll be contributing to the development of the Vancouver - UBC transit area plan in combination with staff from the city of vancouver and translink. Quite a diverse group with a lot of planners, transportation experts and generally interested people. Most of the meeting was introductions and goals for the committee and a stack of reading to work on for next time. Kind of group where you throw a stick and hit a planner. Good people to know and get an idea if this is something I really want to do. I love thinking about cities and how they work so should be a pretty intellecgtually interesting experience - - especially since the RAV line was voted down on Friday so transit options are now in flux. 

So after visiting city hall headed back downtown to pick up my wife and child and then headed back to BCIT to attend an information session on the entrenpreneur training program which is funded by HRDC. It is a start your own business program, 10 weeks in the classroom and 38 weeks of followup, you have to show financial committmet for business startup, submit a well thought out business idea and be selected to be one of 20 in the program. BCIT funds you to a tune or 300 dollars a week to participate for 48 weeks. Any money made by the business you get to keep. I'm going to keep an eye on it and think the process through as one of the options for what I want to do with my life.  

Started the day on wednesday by going to Burnaby city hall to have them take a look over the rough drawings for the construction of the ramp. Father had a binder full of engineering diagrams and explanations but ran into a junior clerk who was more interested in telling us what he knew then acutally answering questions. Numerous occasions of him making a point and us bringing to his attention that we had just tried to discuss that and he was too busy talking to listen. Add to that inane applications of the building code. For example, since a ramp falls into the residential construction section of the building code each 6 x 6 post must be supported by a concrete footing 26 inches by 26 inches and 4 inches thick buried 18 inches into the ground. This post must then be surrounded by concrete to a height of 8 inches above the ground. So a width of 52 inches of concrete, a veritable sidewalk under ground to support a ramp 36 inches wide. Did I mention there are 8 posts in the proposed design? Means a return to the drawing board. Of course all drawings must be submitted on paper 2 feet by 3 feet and etc., etc. etc. ....Frustrating. Writing this on saturday we're going to find another way to proceed. We thought of putting it off till next year and quietly building it but too much of an opportunity cost. Rain soaked steps and a wheelchair are a bad combination. On the absurdity of bylaws, the entire house sets 3.6 feet from the fence however new bylaws say any structure must be 4.9 feet from the fence - i.e. the ramp. Of course you can apply for a variance which is more paperwork... 

A little something I'm working on.... 

When boy bands go bad....Went out to a friend's wedding reception on Saturday night in Hatzic held in the barn. The wedding was in november in tofino and saturday night was the party. Much cooler then expected for june but lots of fun none the less - especially will an open bar and dinner. Great to get together with friends. The longest we'd been away from the child in 7 months. Stayed overnight at sister-in-laws and spent the day hanging out. Wife went to 50th birthday party for old dance teacher back when she and sister were hotshots on the child dance tour. Back to when boy bands go bad...Apparently, thirty years ago, Maurice in the bandanna and his cousin had a band being 12 and 14 at the time - 30 years ago. So someone had the brainstorm why don't they play a few songs...Lots of fun - the 70 classics pounded out with the heavy power chords - taking care of business, some kind of wonderful, and a 2 others which exhausted their repotorie. We raised a glass of their beer for the effort.  

This is the final view with the ivy pulled away from the tree. 

Down view 

ivy contained and corraled and ready for transport 

Halfway done - note depth of ivy :-) 

Spent the day out at the house removing ivy to see what was underneath. Ivy a foot thick in places. Tenacious stuff. About 5 hours work to remove a majority of it. Need to see what was underneath while planning a yard rebuild and addition of a wheelchair ramp.

We met with the orthothist (sic?) who custom makes the helmets out of foam and laminate. First the cotton balaclava, followed by the marking of the midline and the ears with a pen followed by plaster of paris molding. The gauze with the plaster of paris on it is wet, molded to the skull and allowed to set. Removed and a cast made from that. We're back in 10 days and then in a month. She'll be in the helmet for up to 6 months. Pink of course... :-)  

Today was a red letter day. We were both showered, dressed, had breakfast and lunch, fed and changed the baby twice and managed to leave the house by 11:45. :-) We headed out to Surrey to show off the baby at wifes previous workplace. They showed her lots of love, asked the wife when she wanted to come back to work for them again and generally showed a little love. Always nice to know they haven't replaced you the moment you went out the door. We then headed over to see the orthortist about getting a helmet for the baby to reshape her mostly flat head. Unlike her father, it is not doctor recommended as a preventative safety measure for day to day living. :-) You can see a sample helmet in the background of the attached photo. It is not a pressure induced change since she is young enough to let the growth curve take care of it. The helmet will fit snugly on the sides of her head and create an empty slightly rounded space on the back of her head for her skull to expand into.  

My wife says my baby really looks like me in the previously posted photo. As Mr. Burns would say... Excellent, my plan is working perfectly.... :-)

Isn't life great. Wife and daughter off to party with mother-in-law and other assorted ladies. I'm busy reading documentation for my new content managment system and planning ways to make money. Played ultimate last night. Not a lot of fun. People cranky with each other. Today is going well. Quiet time with my computer, laundry, and business planning.