Devauld.ca

Just recently my trusty SB-28 decided that it had finally had enough, and would no longer be carrying it's weight on this material plane. The death was caused by the zoom servo not being able to push the levers right to the top of their sweep, and the flash could no longer make it though it's startup test.

It really bummed me out, and now I'm trying to heal my wounds by looking for a new one. Most of my persona is leaning towards a SB-600 or SB-800 to make use of the amazing wireless commander abilities built into my D70s for Nikon's creative lighting system. Although leveraging the same system I could get into Nikon's remote macro setup. These decisions weigh heavily upon my soul, and truth be told, I don't want to part with the money for either at the moment.

The gents at DreamHost are having problems at the moment. From their status wiki:

Most of the filer problems from yesterday have been resolved, but there are still a few outstanding issues. One of our switches is saturated at the moment and is causing high loads on some servers. If you’re still experiencing slow load times with your site or email, this is probably the cause. Our team of admins (who haven’t got much sleep the last couple of days) are down in the datacenter now trying to remedy this situation and hope to have it back to normal shortly. We thank you all for your patience as we try to clean up the last of these issues.

They're usually pretty good, but if you've been wondering, that's why this site is so bloody slow.

The idea initially was to tear down a small section of fence, and then to use the salvage to patch up the remainder of my dilapidated perimeter. That was, until the two generations of estrogen showed up.

I was very proud of my mother for navigating to my house and not once panicking, or resorting to calling me for directions. We had a quick visit, and then I retired to bed in order to fulfill my last day of obligation to TheMan®

Wednesday Ma and ÜberMa attacked the foilage around my home, cutting grass, trimming hedges and pruning back trees. The only thing that slowed them down was TMUTS not allowing us to turn the power on the to outlets outside. It didn't slow them down at all, and by the time I was done at the office, they had already changed my home into something else entirely.

Friday, I took off of work, and Ma and I attacked the back yard while ÜberMa cleaned a house that I didn't really find dirty. Friday was pretty much a prep day as we cleaned out the back fence, set up some equipment at gravel to be brought over, and bought a pile of stuff. ÜberMa kept us in tasty food and ice cold water while we started down the path of the largest transformation this home has seen thus far.

It wasn't long into Friday, and the Bobcat was delivered. It's amazing that they will deliver that kind of machinery with nothing more than a driver's license and a credit card. It didn't take me very long to destroy landscape and level my yard. It was a lot of fun bombing around in that bad boy.

Saturday morning Ma and I put up the new rataining wall; a position previously held by the bottom foot of my fence. Already the neighbours were starting to take notice of the work we we doing, and people would stroll by to see what was going on with the crappy yard at the end of the alley. We were hoping that the Bobcat would still be around when the gravel arriced, but unfortunately Fate was being a prick and decided to have the Bobcat picked up as the gravel arriced, ensuring that we would have to shovel all that gravel by hand.

Finishing off the day, the whole household was outside in various attire putting up the chain link portion of the fence. After pounding in the seven poles by hand, and stretching the wires, my arms were killing me, and during the entire weekend, I never had any problems falling asleep.

Sunday was the day for the fence. The speed we created this fence was amazing. You can see a visualization of the here. In all we ripped down the old fence, set new posts and stringers and screwed up a new fence on the inside of a day. We also managed the throw in some time getting rid of garbage, and a bit of time inside during the thunderstorm.

Monday came pretty quick, and Ma and ÜberMa still manged to get a lot of things done before they left town, and now I've got a million little things to do in order to get the back yard finished. I've already got most of the larger stuff done (Yes, I stained the fence), and I don't think I can make the grass grow any faster.

During a rather regular work day, Mike introduced me to a social networking site with a bit of a twist. Linked In appears to be strictly for developing your career, and a list of contacts that will help you get where you are going. Once you have a profile created, you can add some contacts. From there you can just watch your network grow, on a who knows who basis.

It's simply another seven degrees of separation experiment. Although, you'll quickly find that you have 'Ins' in a bunch of different industries and companies that you never thought of before. Adding to the sweetness of the deal, is that if your profile is even half completed, it serves as a pseudo resume

Go on and add yourself, and don't forget to add me as a contact.

The camping adventure was excellent despite the rocky start.

We gathered after work and stuffed all of our equipment into two vehicles and rumbled out the short distance to Sibbald Creek. The campsite was full when we arrived, and we were thankful we spent the time the night before to secure a campsite. After pulling into site 34, we quickly set up tents, unpacked gear and started a fire. Because of our short sleep the night before our site was rather tame, and went to be rather early, unlike the rest of the campground, which partied to loud music, screaming and shouting til the wee hours.

Saturday, after a big breakfast we went on a 14km (round trip) hike to the top of Cox Hill. The view from the top was amazing, and I'll have a stitched panoramic up as soon as I've polished it up. Hurly had a grand time leading us up the hill, playing in the creeks and chasing the scarse wildlife we happened across. I enjoyed the entire trip, but was very thankful to return to camp for a steak dinner, and some adult beverages.

Sunday was quite a bit more tame, as we went on the 5km Deer Ridge trail, where we came across a few piles of rocks arranged about the top of the hill. The photographer in me couldn't resist the opportunity, and I snapped away as best I could without my tripod. That evening, the campground was pretty much deserted, and I capitalized by heading out to the lake side and taking this wonderful picture looking across at the Adventure Camp.

Monday came entirely too soon, and we headed back to civilization. I couldn't help but partake in a mid-afternoon nap, especially since I could rest on something slightly softer than grass covered earth. Chores around the house, and some catching up online finished up my weekend perfectly.

This week only has three working (at the office) days in it, as Ma and ÜberMa are coming mid week and I'm sure the weekend will be packed with landscaping and renovations. I'm looking forward to some labour outside.