Devauld.ca

Yesterday started off as most Thursdays do, with me dragging myself out of bed, enjoying the three S's, then driving down to the office to give TheMan® his eight hours. After the game, a few of us made our way down to MacMahon Stadium to take watch The Stampeders take on Hamilton. The game was alright, and we barely squeeked out a win with a field goal in the last three seconds of the game to edge out the opposition by one.

After the game I thought I would get a jump on the camping peeps for the long weekend and head out west to secure a camping spot.

Boy, did I ever think I was being smart.

We drove out to Kananaskis, our hearts set on getting a well treed site within the Canyon Creek Campsite. As soon as we were off Hwy 1, and cruising into the K-country we started noticing a trend: Campsite Full. We steeled ourselves for what was coming, but continued our drive into some of the most beautiful terrain on earth.

When we reached our initial destination, we saw what we feared, the campsite was full. Not to be detered, and because we really wanted to go camping for the long weekend, we continued into the park, looking for available campsites. We eneded up driving down to the Interlakes location, again to find there wasn't a single available space to pitch a tent.

At first I thought someone was playing some sort of a prank. How in the world could the entire collection of campsites in Kananaskis get booked up on the Thursday before a long weekend? Seems like there were a lot of people with the same great idea I had. So, we continued driving from campsite to campsite, checking everything we could find directions for on a map, and nothing was available. Absolutely nothing.

After the witching hour, we came to a park information turnout, so we shone the headlights of the car on the board and went to have a look. On the board, dated and timed for 4:30 on Thursday, was a list of all the campsites in the area, and the number of vacancies. At the time of the report, there were still some 50 odd campsites scattered throughout the Peter Lougheed park, but we knew that these had since been filled. We canned the list over, and I quickly realized that the long weekend makes a lot of money for the Rec and Tourism department of the government. Most of the campsites on the list, only had a handful of vacancies, which I would speculate were now filled, many many kilometers from where we currently were situated.

There was one campsite that held some promice: Sibbald Flats. the same Sibbald flats that cost me close to three grand, because of a silly little accident involving the digits on my left hand and an axe. At least I could take comfort in the fact that I knew where it was.

The notice said there were 97 vacancies out at Sibbald, so we jumped in the car and started our trek out of K-country and back towards the Jumping Pound. It was quite late when we finally arrived, and my heart lept when I noticed that there was no Campground Full notice at the front gate. Logically I knew that anyone could have arrived just before us, and could have scooped up the last campsite, and the caretaker, sleeping soundly on his big pile of money, hadn't yet updated the information. We drove around all five loops, and found only three open sites.

I was relieved as we setup our decoy tent for the night to hold our spot until we could return the next evening, but for the whole drive home I was stunned at how many people went out before the long weekend to reserve a spot. It's going to be a great weekend, let's hope I can keep all my fingers

I figured as soon as I knew what this week's PhotoFriday challenge was, that I would be using a family picture of some sort. It wasn't long until I settled on this shot of Kuldeep and Lauren

We had a nice, thought provoking conversation at lunch today, regarding world news, and the views that people hold based on the information they recieve.

Ever since I saw the Gulf War coverage from Houston, TX while reading a copy of 1984 , I've had a distinct distaste for modern news outlets. In fact, that was the summer I got rid of cable, and stopped watching the news.

I'm not saying that I'm living in a world of ignorant bliss. I keep up with current events, from some international sources, which is the same crap, just covering up different social issues. But, since that day, I look at every story, wondering how true it is, and how much can be believed.

The problem, I've realized, is one of trust. I don't trust the North American news agencies to give me unbiased views of current events. Currently, I don't trust any single news agency to give me the whole picture, but instead, if a story intests me, I try to see how it is covered from several angles. Sometimes, even what people have blogged about the subject can reveil something that is otherwise overlooked, or will provide a different point of view.

Reflecting upon this, I've come to the conclusion that this is the direction that media is going. Already we have companies worth billions of dollars that were built upon giving people what they want, and selling advertisements to capture the attention of their audience. The internet is disolving borders, and making information (including mis-information) incredibly easy to get. Which brings us back to trust.

Let us say you have an entity on the internet that you trust to give you the no nonsense view of things (even if it is their view). I'm thinking that you would begin to use them as a regular outlet for information. Be they a journalist on the ground in a hotspot, a hockey fan that attends every game, or your grandmother commenting on local happenings, the trust would be the key factor in you coming back, and believing what was given to you.

It would be the new age of information. There are already success stories of people being able to walk away from a full time 9 to 5, and make a very decent living talking about stuff they love. Podcasting is another catalyst that is making this transformation from mainstream to anystream happen at a breakneck pace. Already there is a few of these authors (audiotors?) that make their podcast exclusively to support their lifestyle.

The transformation isn't going to happen as fast as I would like. There is too much interest in our current government to keep Industry alive (and making money) over the interests of the common man. I'm confident, however; that change is coming.

The weekend is over, which usually causes a bit of remorse, but this particular weekend held the phenomenon of a LAN Party out at peice of real estate that Jeff secured for us. I'm no stranger to the LAN event, but in case you've never been to one, I'll give you some things that I've learned at the events that I have attended:

• When setting up, it is a unspoken law that someone will kill the power to your computer at least once.
• Human males start to escrete a pungent, smelly liquid substance after a few hours of gaming. The odour given off by this substance can become an irritant after a few hours without ventilation, and will become lethal after 12 hours.
• Games that are incredibly fun as a single player, aren't necessarily fun multiplayer.
• Games that are fun for a few hours, are not likely to still be fun after 8 (like Diablo II, right Glen?)
• 500grams of bacon produces more grease than can be held the drip tray found on a table top grill.
• The three beer rule does apply to gaming.
• Nobody shows up with all the software installed

The event was a lot of fun, and I'm thinking that I may want to host my own sometime in the fall. We will see if I can get together a big enough crew of Geekalotious when the leaves are turning.

This week's PhotoFriday challenge is one of those words that seems quite difficult to capture in a picture. Starting out I was completely useless, so I scanned through some of the other entries to see if I could come up with an idea.

There was a lot of entries that showed people working out, cycling, running, etc. At which point I thought about putting up a rugby photo. After thinking about it for a bit, I remembered that although rugby does make me fit, it hardly makes me healthy.

I was starting to get frustrated, being that I couldn't think of anything, and furthermore, there were piles of photos that didn't seem to have anything to do with the theme. That was until I found this entry and I immediately recalled the photo I took for this week's entry