mikesdotcom.com

Craziness in T.O.

What a day..

I was on my way in for a Sunday afternoon at work which is normally a 25 min. drive at the most. It was pouring rain, visibility was horrible and the traffic volume was insane. I decided to get off of the Gardner Expwy. at Jameson. Turns out Lakeshore was even worse due to the CNE. As I got further east some of the traffic lights were out along lakeshore due to a large power outage in the city. Turns out a raccoon came into contact with a transformer at a power station downtown and took out power to a huge chunk of the downtown core. The Lights were out at Spadina / Lakeshore where you can't make a left from Lakehore, but people were doing it anyway. Nobody was taking turns and there was a huge jam in the middle of the intersection with horns and yelling. That intersection took me about 10 mins. to clear. Finally I reached York St. and realized you can't make a left from Lakeshore onto York either. At this point I really had no concern for road rules and made the turn anyway. About 5 mins. later I reached the parking garage on York where I usually park, to find out the security gate is down and it's closed. I had to circle the block and ended up parking in the TD Centre at York / Wellington which usually isn't known for its competitive pricing. All said and done, the drive in was about 1 hour and 45 minutes. I'm glad there weren't any nuns in my car, as the language was less than wholesome.

But, I'm not bitter... I'm actually quite content now. I have a stomach full of pizza, paid for by the company. You can't complain about a day that includes a free lunch !

It's now quiet, and I hope it stays that way.

That's Flashy

Picked up my new Kingston 1 GB Compact Flash card this morning for only $170. Now I don't have to worry about dumping my pics off of my card for a while. Here are some comparisons between my 256 MB card and the 1 GB in terms of number of images:

1024 MB

2272x1704 - Superfine = 491

1024x768  - Fine      = 2974

640x480   - Normal    = 8924

256 MB

2272x1704 - Superfine = 123

1024x768  - Fine      = 762

640x480   - Normal    = 2700

Purchases

Got to try my Dexit tag at lunch today... Purchases show up right away. I have to admit it is really quick and easy to use. Don't need to worry about change, or a PIN number. Good stuff!

XP SP2

Looks like the Network Install version of SP2 is finally available. No more waiting for Auto Update to pick it up. It was weird, my one box got it right away.. but my laptop picked up every critical update except SP2.

If you want to get a hold of it, you can download it from Microsoft here.... Just beware, it is ~ 266 MB.

Dexit

Got my Dexit tag in the mail today. I already put some money on it, so I can use it tomorrow. It's too bad the one place I visit most downtown doesn't take Dexit. That being the Tim Hortons on York / Wellington. Oh well !

Free GMAIL ?

Who thinks they are worthy of a free GMAIL invite ? I have a few extras and I will consider giving them away. If you want one, plead your case in the comments for this post...

(note: Attractive females willing to date me are given priority over all others ! Pics are required.)

Curse of the blank blog

Seems to be some kind of virus or worm going around that is deleting all of the content from peoples mt blogs.. :)

Ready to fly

Finally got the airline tickets booked this morning with Westjet. I am now ready to go. It's amazing how the prices for these charter airlines appear to be so cheap, yet they spring all of these freak taxes on you afterwards. There are 4 taxes, not including GST.

Total for 02 guest(s)
Fare:                672.00
NAV/INS:             92.00
TORONTO AIF:         24.00
CALGARY AIF:         30.00
ATSC:                22.44
GST/HST:             58.82
                   -----------
Total:               $899.26
Visa:                $899.26-

Encrypted E-mail for everyone

Mike V. and I were bored last night and decided to setup PGP encryption for e-mail. This is actually my second venture with it, but I didn't really have many people in my keyring to actually send/receive encrypted e-mails with.

We are using GnuPG in linux, and you can even tie it directly into Pine. You can also get a plugin for Outlook which works great. Get it here...

Here is a doc on how to setup GnuPG in Linux and setting up Pine.

If you want to find out public keys you can go here... and search for our names and e-mail addresses. Or you can get mine from the side bar of my website.

IPSEC Fun

Decided to see just how difficult it was to configure an IPSEC VPN between a Cisco PIX and a Linux box running FreeS/WAN. Turns out it wasn't that bad. Most of the stuff on the Cisco end was standard, I just had to make a few changes to my FreeS/WAN configs and everything was rocking.

Here are some snips from both configs..

The NOC Pizza

Dave and I now have an 'official noc pizza' :

Large thin crust pizza:

kalamata olives
sun-dried tomatoes
red onions
feta cheese
baby spinach
roasted garlic
jalapeno peppers

All this for the affordable price of: $ 22.97

And you can see Dave ready to dig in !

Damn Airlines

Looks like I might have waited a bit too long to book the flights to Calgary. The prices just shot up a bit. It's now $451.77 round trip, all taxes included. A little more than we were hoping for.. but it's not going to ruin our trip. We have a lot of Calgary bars to visit in a short amount of time.

Also, we need confirmation from Dahil... What's going on ?? I don't think he even has a choice in the matter, he's going.

Calgary Trip

The plans are now solid... A few of us are flying out to Calgary on Sept. 17th for a few days. I should probably start shopping for some cowboy boots and a hat. I've already booked the Best Western Suites Downtown Calgary, which comes with the added bonus of FREE high speed Internet in the room ! Going to book the airline tickets next week. Most likely from Westjet or Jetsgo.

So What ?

Got SP2 installed for XP now.. I was running on one of the Beta releases for a while, so it really wasn't that big of a deal. You can only install it by Auto Updates right now, and if you have a bad cd-key you are S.O.L. Guess it pays off to generate your own cd-key ;)

What ?

Put it all on 21

Just got home (**yawn***) from Niagara Falls. Went with "The Mike's" to both Casino Niagara and Fallsview Casino. Lost a bit on slots throughout the night, but the kicker was putting $50 on 21 at the roulette table and losing it all in one turn. Overall it was a good night, especially the steak n' eggs breakfast at the casino. Oh yeah, and Dahil was able to score two new ass washing containers from the casino !!

The Wild West

Kieron and I were talking about his observations of Calgary folk:

kieron says:
people wear cowboy hats.

kieron says:
and sport jackets.

kieron says:
and conduct business thusly.

Doomed

Figured I would give it a try, since it is all I have been hearing about the last few days. It was the best seeded torrent I have ever seen: 2,069 seeds, 13,131 downloads. Now I just have to wait for this BT download to finish, so I can actually play the game :)

Funny note: the release of this game caused some heavy bandwidth spikes for a customer we provide bandwidth to at work. When we called to let them know about the spike, they informed us it was because some people were downloading Doom 3 at their office.

mmmm

We went to Shopsy's Deli today for lunch.. I hadn't really heard much about it until the other day. I had the Maple Leaf Club sandwich, and it was amazing. I will definetly be going back again soon !

Not Quite Sure

I think I was supposed to post something of value here, can't seem to remember what though. Oh well, I guess this is it. Thanks for your time.