Recently in Personal Category

Long long time no type. Lately I’ve been blogging a bit on my photography site and naval gazing on twitter and mucking around a bit on Google+. Lately the one interesting thing is I’ve somehow managed to get featured in two videos. Yup, you can see my ugly mug by going to…

http://www.scorpionsoft.com/levelplatforms and watching the video. Ignoring the techie bits at the start and end, I play and evil and disgruntled worker fired from my job and wrecking havoc on my company. My buddy Dana was apparently looking for someone old and bitter to play the part and thought of me! I’m… honoured I guess. It was fun to play for sure, lights and cameras and microphones all around, me with lines on the screen, repeating the lines, drinking the beer, typing, more beer, rinse and repeat. I’m really impressed with the final product, awesome work by Dana and his crew (especially for what he had to work with!).

The second is embedded below, it’s a promo video for MVP Workshops, the photography group in Vancouver that I hang out with. Chris runs the meetups and got Winston Wong did a great video of what goes on at the workshops. Short story, great fun. I’m sadly not the star in this one, but it’s fun and you get a few glimpses of me in “fun mode”.

Metro Vancouver Photography Workshops Promotional Clip from Winston Wong on Vimeo.

Yea, yea, dead blog that has only 3 readers.   Not completely dead, I've been feeling more guilty as time goes on and I don't update, or at least point to where I am actually doing stuff.  Basically now that I've been working at Left of the Dot and my commute went down by about 2 hours a day I've been able to ramp up my photography business (well, "business" not in the terms of making any money, more "business" in the sense of taking up extra time (and being damn fun)). So you can go over and check out the Bailward Photography.com site and see the site, or check out the Bailward Photography Blog to see various pictures of mostly cute young ladies (hopefully) nicely lit up and posed. I'm trying to create a bit more "real content" there in terms of capturing what I've been doing in moving from amateur photographer to slightly-above amateur photographer.

I've also been (kinda) active over on twitter if you want to check me out at @alanbailward. Not much of interest there for the most part, but random tweets about photography and related things.

If you're interested in hiring me of course, or paying me gobs of money to take pictures of you, your family, friends, or more young ladies, feel free to let me know :)

Other than that, changing jobs, and having a horrible trip to Edmonton involving moving a horribly disorganized person up there, 32 hours in the hospital (don't ask), and breaking the truck we were driving back in on the Coquihalla, in a no cell service area at 1am, things have been pretty much status quo.

So hit the new blog, I will update here if anything interesting, it'll come here, eventually.

Ok, now I feel better.

Been doing a lot of "Strobist" stuff lately, the shot to the right is of the beautiful Terra-Jean whom I had the honor of shooting a couple of weekends ago at a meetup.com gathering of photographers, led by Chris Pike. Great time was had and I got some great shots if you hit that image's link and wander in and out of the flickr stream. I'm fairly proud of this shot as well of my coworker Cory, not because it's a great lit image (not that it's bad), but that it's all mine, in execution and gear.

Today is also a day I'm not at work because I get to get a tooth taken out. Sucky thing is it's a fairly prominent tooth, broken in grade 3 in a fall on the playground which has apparently decided to finally die and give me some issues. I would really rather not do this, if for no other reason than that it's my tooth dammit, but looking at myself in the mirror this morning that tooth is clearly grey and different than the others around it, so I don't feel as bad.

I had a dentist appointment last week that was supposed to be a tooth extraction for a tooth that's been bothering me for a while, actually not the tooth but the gum above it.  Dentist tried a few things, and eventually said the tooth had to come out, unfortunately.  I got two choices, either a bridge of some sort that'd cost an arm, but would also damange the two teeth on either side, or a metal post implanted where the tooth was, that wouldn't damage any other teeth, better in the long term, etc, etc, but costs both the arm and the leg.

I went into the office and he got me all ready, gave me details, etc etc, and just when he's about to start doing whatever it is he has to do (apparently they don't just tie a string around the tooth with the other end on a door knob and slam the door), and asked if I was going bridge or post, and when I said I was going to sell off my first born (if I had one) to do the post he basically stopped and decided I needed to go to the specialist for both the extraction and whatever came afterwards, not just the stuff that came afterwards.  He did manage to use the rest of the time though, taking pictures, more poking and prodding, etc.

So now it's another appointment, another having to explain to my boss why I didn't have all the dentristy done, and so on.  On the plus side, I get another few weeks with all my teeth :D

Short version: got up early, didn't get one, bummed.

Here's the long version though. I've wanted an iPhone 4 for a while, accuse me of being a fanboy or silly or whatever, but I have. My current iPhone is two generations old now, and is starting to feel like it, and with the official Canadian release of the iPhone 4 coming July 30th (that'd be today), I was amped, ready and prepared.

Last night I was up late (I blame the tea) and couldn't sleep, wondering if I should be one of those crazy people who camps out the night before, telling myself I'm not that crazy, then envisioning myself as person #11 in a lineup outside a store with only 10 phones and wondering if I should just go and drive to Abbotsford to check. My compromise was to set my alarm a bit earlier and go to sleep.

After tossing and turning till about 1am, I finally got to sleep, or at least I must have. Then at 4am I started hearing a strange noise, strange enough and loud enough to wake up up. Got up and found it was my laptop making the odd noise, not the hard-drive it seemed (thank the computer gods) but it must have been the fan. In my groggy state I had enough presence of mind to shut my laptop down and go back to bed.

Of course, now at 4am my cats saw me awake and figured now was the time to talk to me, so the next 40 minutes was more tossing and turning while being head-butted, pawed, cuddled, and purred against by various furry critters. At 4:40am I gave up (as my brain was now asking me if there weren't crazy people who may not line up outside a Rogers store in Abbotsford the night before, but first thing in the morning?) and just got up, got dressed, and headed out. I hit the store where I was at for the first iPhone line I was in at and there was thankfully no one there.

I filled up with gas, got a coffee at Tim Hortons, and drove back, still no one there.

I took my rightful place in line as person (fool?) number 1.

About 30 minutes later two other guys showed up and we chatted for a while, then another, and another, and we got to know each other and were happy to be with "our people"... those who were perfectly self-aware of their shiny-tech-gadget lust. We talked about rumours we'd heard, guessed as to the various numbers of phones that would be at the store, and everything else. All through this I kept on realizing that no matter what happened, even if the low number of 5 of the version of the phone I was wanting was true, I'd still get what I wanted as I was #1 in line.

A couple of hours pass now and there are about 7 people in the lineup, and we start to notice that there were people actually inside the mall, sitting right outside the Rogers store.

To clarify, we (the "real" lineup) were standing outside one of the mall entrances that was closest to the Rogers store, but there were 5 other entrances, and there were a group of old folks who walked the mall in the mornings who go in through a service entrance.

So it looked like the two people inside the mall got in there through either the service entrance or another set of doors. The inside group grew by a couple more and people started to get a bit nervous and annoyed. Finally a mall-cop came by and was nice enough to let us in.

Now the douche-bags came out. First of all there were about 7 people ahead of us (the "real" line) inside already, and they some how multiplied to about 13 as others glommed on. In particular there was Douche-bag In The Hat, who was around 8th in our outside lineup, went to the front of the line to chat, and then just sort of stayed there when the Rogers people came out. Then there's Douche-bag With The Popped Collar who came late and just stood ahead of me, saying "don't freak out, I'm just here for my brother" when someone complained, even though he didn't seem to be with anyone and there was no younger brother nearby. Turns out he was standing behind his brothers girlfriend or wife, and his brother came later as well (isn't it nice you can come to the line up at 9am and end up ahead of the people there at 5am?). I have no problem if you're there cause you need to co-sign a cell phone contract, but if suddenly there are now 2 extra people in front of me that's also 2 extra phones disappearing.

So when the Rogers people arrived I had somehow gone from first in line to 13th. I could say I'd be ok with being 3rd, as there was a guy there with his wife who got there at 11am the night before. Still, 13th? *sigh*.

In the end though, the store only got two of the 32GB models (which after all this I wasn't going to compromise and not get exactly what I had come for) so they were gone by 9:45 when the 3rd or so person went in. Of course, the Rogers network was also down from the demand on it (my buddy Bryan has yet to have his phone which he got in Vancouver activated as of mid-afternoon), so people weren't actually getting phones to take away, just a phone reserved in the store for them until the activation tools were working again.

A couple of people came out of the store ahead muttering about "no more 32G versions", and I decided not to just go home and try next week, but stayed just in case there was a list to put my name on. Turns out that was a good move, because there was a list, and I am (trumpet call) number 3 on the list of people who will get called when more 32G versions are in (monday or tuesday maybe).

So that's a long way to spend a morning to get nothing.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm ok with not getting a phone. It's just a phone, and I have a perfectly fine working phone now (shiny as it is). Really, I am. What I'm pissed off at is not getting a phone EVEN THOUGH I WAS FIRST IN LINE. I feel a bit cheated, and have to say will not be going to this store for the next "event" and will instead go to a Rogers store that has a single entrance.

The rest of the morning (now approaching afternoon) wasn't much better:

• Cost me $150 to have the fan on my laptop fixed, or at least the part ordered and pre-pay the costs.
  
• Have my doctor tell me my bad cholesterol is down (yay), good cholesterol is up (yay), and blood pressure is perfect (yay).
  
• Coming home and poking at my laptop the noisy fan seems to have fixed itself, but of course they won't cancel the ordered part and refund me the money. *sigh*
  

Now I'm tired, a bit cranky, but still hopeful that new stock will get me a shiny toy to play with before the new work week appears. There's still time for it all to turn horrible though...

It's like the outside gods don't want me to leave the house, or have fun, or have any money....

First of all, Saturday was a family barbeque, which was great, a full day of some productivity at home, then family, a huge delicious salmon, homemade bread (thanks dad!), cheese, etc. Great all around.

Then came Sunday.

So we had arranged a climbing day in Squamish. I've been hankering to get out on the rock again even if it's just to see that I'm way too old and fat to be out on the rock again, and my buddy Lawrence was up for it, so we and some other friends arranged to head up early Sunday morning. I had all my gear ready (got it out of storage the night before, spent some time going through everything and smelling it to see if I could smell the rock again), and people were all about ready to go and meetup with Lawrence in Abbotsford to get on the road. As we were out on the driveway someone pointed to a cat and said something like "what's wrong with her?".

Closer examination showed that Munchkin's whole backend was black. Not dirty, like she'd fallen in a mud puddle, but she had somehow gotten her whole back end into either paint, or tar, or the goop they use in asphalt. Her back legs, tail, and belly were covered in a black tacky goop that made it hard for her to walk, and was covered in dust and bits of plants that she'd picked up walking around. It also was splattered on various bits of her, including mouth and tongue (from trying to lick it off no doubt).

So there goes the day. Andrea saw pretty quickly that it wasn't something we could just hose off, so we cancelled the day with everyone, and set to work figuring out what to do next. Of course being 6:30am on a Sunday the vet wasn't open, but the answering machine pointed us to a Langley 24 hour clinic, who suggested we bring her in in case she'd injested any, as well as to get it off. Better them than us I say.

OK, so pack the cat into a carrier and head off. Heading up to the highway on ramp about 20 minutes in my car started making a funny noise. You can see where this is headed right? A bit farther down the road it stopped making the funny noise. OK, can't be that bad, I'll keep on going and deal with it later. A bit farther down the road it made a "schwack" type noise and I figured it was time to pull over.

Toll of the car was a belt had come off. Not bad right? Except there was another belt connected to another pulley that had also come off. And then the pulley at the bottom of the engine that that connected to was moving in a way that even a non-mechanic like myself could see a pulley attached to an engine wasn't supposed to do.

*sigh*

So 30 minutes latery my mother-in-law showed up and too Andrea and the cat off to the vet, while I went with the tow truck and car in the other direction to leave it at the dealership. Course, the on-ramp is far enough away that it cost me money to tow the car there. And as I found out today, it's not a cheap fix. Not "oh my god have to buy a new car" expensive, but a fair hit. Plus the other stuff that needs to be done to it as well, and at this point, I'm in for a penny in for a pound you know?

So a while later cat and wife returned, with the poor kitten very unimpressed and extremely silly looking in the carrier, with her hind end, tail, legs, belly, all shaved down. And we still need to bath her to work at getting the rest of the tar crap off.

That trip to the vet was costly too, not only the after hours call out fees, but the multiple baths they gave, vet consulting fee, etc. Luckily she wasn't showing any "sick" signs of having eaten any of the stuff, so other than being completely emberassed and silly looking, she's all ok.

Something about the experience (or maybe the cone of shame) has turned her into a bit of a lap cat though.... she's spent the night on the bed with us, and a lot of time beside me and Andrea on the couch, something she'll only do once and a while. Maybe in my "cat ownership by alan" book I'll put a chapter on dunking your cat into tar or paint to get her to spend more time with you.... :)

So obviously the gods don't want me out on the rock again, so I'll probably not tempt fate by leaving the house on the weekend anymore. The way that it's going I'll be completely broke if I venture out the front door again!

1am - Go to sleep after coming back from Shaun's House.
5:00am - Woken up by odd noises that I hope aren't a mouse being brought into the house.
5:21am - Realize that I can't pretend it's not a mouse anymore, and get up, catch the mouse, take it out to the front garden, and close the cat door so they can't bring it back in.
6:00am - Get woken up by cats outside pawing at the cat door to be let in. Open it and let them in.
7:00am - Get woken up by more mouse noises and squeeking as they have brought in the same (unlucky) or different, mouse. Catch and deposit in the back yard this time.
7:01-10:00ish - Bugged by cats to move, freezing cold, can't get comfortable, until I finally got out of bed. Ugh.

Welcome to 2010. Wee.... should try to post here more than once every few months, but really nothing that interesting has happened lately. Life seems to be mostly stagnating sadly, so hopefully I'll be able to do something about that in the coming weeks and months. Christmas and new years was great though... a week off of work, great turkey dinner with Family, another great one with friends, a nice New Years Eve with friends watching the Blu Ray edition of Dark Knight on the big screen TV, and not one but two visits with friends flying through from Philadelphia. Other than that the week off was mostly sitting on the couch and doing pretty much nothing. Then at the end of it being pissed off that I pissed away a week of useful time to do the myriad of things needing to be done around the house. Ah well, that's what the 3 hours between coming home from work and going to sleep are for I guess.

It's rough going from a week of nothing to doing stuff, I do wish I had been a bit smarter in prepping for the early mornings instead of going from waking up at 9 or 10am straight to 5:30am. Though I'm still (mostly) lucid this morning somehow.

My biggest piss off is that over the week all the content creators on the Internet that I read and listen to (ie: podcasts) didn't stop, so now I have about 17 hours of podcasts that I feel I have to listen to and can't just delete. That's not even counting the remaining 17 hours of the History of Howard Stern (act III) 10 day retrospective series of the Howard Stern Show... those at least I'm willing to let those wait until I've finished listening to the daily radio show from there. I think I have a problem of sorts in the respect of feeling I have to listen to things.... it's probably a medical condition.

Hopefully work over the next few days will be slow enough that I can just sit and let the talk of tech, Apple, Microsoft, photography and whatever else is in the queue flow over me while I work. Work really hard that is. Yea, that's it.

1am is not the time any sane person should be awake. Nor is it the time that any sane person should be wandering around in the freezing ice-rain in a bathrobe. Nor even more so is it the time that you should be blogging about why.

So Firefly got some work lined up with the newly-falling snow doing snow removal from parking lots. Someone setup something with someone and it basically came down to "we'll probably call you, and it'll probably be in the middle of the night" (to get ready for holiday shoppers no doubt). So we go to bed around 11 (myself a bit later as I was getting Christmas cards done) and I can't sleep anyway, most likely due to the high octane coffee they have at work. So finally just about when I'm ready to get to sleep, the dreaded call comes in.

12:08am

Horrible time, but all things considered, expected. There's talking on the phone, and then rustling around to get the 18 layers of clothing required to run a bobcat in the snow in the middle of the freakin' night. In all of this there's also a lot of burping and sounds of someone not 100% on their game. So being that I was barely asleep anyway, I'm up and about to see what's going on. She's not feeling all that well, but hard to say if it's the fact she was jolted out of sleep to talk on the phone about snow removal or something else. So tea is drawn, a mandarin orange is eaten, and after a while I find I don't need to overreact and my loverly wife is feeling back to normal again, and ready to drive a huge truck, plus trailer with bobcat on it, to Coquitlam (luckily she does have someone driving with her and knows not to push it so I don't have to go all mother hen on her).

Almost time to go back to bed when she's back at the door from the snow/slush/rain combination falling in the -4C temperature to see if I had an ice scraper. Keys to my car are handed off, and then I end up going out to help because they're having problems finding the key hole and making sure the stupid thing is un-alarmed properly (last thing I want is my car alarm going off at 1am).

Let me tell you even with the blubber I have on, and even with the heavy duty housecoat I was wrapped in, that wind cuts right through the exposed skin like you wouldn't believe.

Luckily now they are bundled in a big truck to go off on a bobcat riding adventure and I have noted down the adventure to bring value to this oft-ignored blog and to hopefully let whatever caffeine is still in my system deplete enough that the next 4 hours will be blissful sleep.

Not a new sighting, but doing some random websearches over lunch today I found this page with this picture featured on it.