A couple of weekend wrap ups in one.
Last Weekend
Last weekend headed down to Seattle to visit with Jim and Kaari, and to retrieve
a Cthulhu monitor toy.
We headed out around 9am and after the standard interrogation at the boarder
(the war hadn’t started yet at that point), had an uneventful drive down, with
the weather alternating between nice and ugly rain. In some spots between the
rain there was all sorts of mist kicked up by the cars as the road was wet, which
wasn’t nice to drive through. Arrived noonish and hung out. The Cthulhu I have is only one version,
there is also goth Cthulhu, Christmas Cthulhu, and scariest of all, on vacation
Cthulhu.
At one point I made a comment about Jim’s bullet making equipment and he
mentioned that both he and his wife had handguns. A bit later while I was
helping him fix some random breakage in linux he wandered in with a Walther
P99, shows it to me, and I admire accordingly. He then says “pop this in
and see how it feels,” and hands me a full clip. Not being a “gun person” I
don’t have a whole lot to compare against of course.
We then go into the other room and he pulls out a Russian assault rifle
(with bayonet) says “there’s an attachment for a grenade launcher as well.”
Then he pulls out a shot gun “this is the one for home defense, it’s loaded.”
This of course, is extremely odd for little ol’ Canadian me. I’m used to not
seeing guns at all, or if they are around, not spoken about (though it could
have been to see how said Canadian would react, who knows) or if they are
around, being fully locked up, ammo separate, trigger locked, etc, not just
there and complete. Guess that’s the difference in our countries’ attitude
towards guns and gun ownership. Jim did mention that Squiz had said at one time
something like “you guys are all nuts, but you get some cool toys to play with.”
I have to agree with that.
Speaking of Squiz and Sillz we managed to drop by
and see them. I was quite impressed with Squiz’s toys, the Tivos, nice computers, and a nifty look at Battlefield
1942. It was good to see that neither had changed much and were both the
Squiz and Sillz we know and love. We ended up having dinner and catching up
and it was good. After that a long drive back up to Canada. Why is it that the
drive up the I-5 seems to take longer than the drive down?
The only stop we made was at a supermarket where we spent $11.47 on a bag (a
bag!) of Kitten Chow and a couple of drinks. Had no problems getting
into the country, and were asleep before midnight.
This Weekend
Much less exciting. Went into Vancouver on Saturday to help my designer people.
They had gotten a request to add a user to a online library. Sadly, the people
on both sides of this (them and their client) had moved on, and they had no
clue, so they gave it to me. Yay. There were some other things as well,
getting access to a linux server they had there and pulling some databases off
it, no big deal.
I got to do it while being constantly mocked by JP, (head designer and whose
house the servers reside now that their company lost their offices in the dot
bomb) who is a mac person was asking questions
like “where are the pretty icons?” and saying things like “yes, that’s what I
was about to suggest!” (after giving a semi-technical explanation about what I
was doing. Actually JP is a good guy, and funny. He also let me play on his
mac (g4, flatscreen LCD) and experiment a bit with OS X. I now so want a mac, OSX is
awsome, pretty, sexy and incrediably lickable. http://www.xvsxp.com has some details on things
in the UI of XP that make it so nice. Now I just need a few thousand to buy
one. Wonder how much an iMac is. Hmm…. looks like an
iMac is $2,000CND+ and iBook
is $1,600-$2,100CND, and not even for a sexy Titanium or anything.
Anyway, finished up there and headed home, relaxed, did some work on Sunday, had
a great dinner with my parents where they sent back a very cool box
from Mexico. It’s not all that clear in the pictures, but it’s got pictures of
cats and cat prints on it, and is filled with authentic Mexican sand and an
authentic Mexican shell.
Now I leave you for bed but I want to leave a lasting
impression.