Devauld.ca

The remorse that fills me when a great weekend comes to an end is always painful, but hopefully it will give me a standard to which all future weekends can be compared.

Right after work on Friday, I went out to Joey's for eye candy and appetizers. I met with a recently departed co-worker to chat with him about his leaving and his new line of work. As usual I had my business hat on, and may have lined up more peripheral work for myself, which we all know I don't have enought time to complete.

Knowing that I need to spend more time enjoying life and having fun, I decided to make a huge leap and jump back into the console market after over ten years of absense. I went down to BestBuy, and picked myself up an XBox 360.

I took it home and untangled everything and in typical Microsoft fashion the bloody thing had to update itself about four times before I was able to play anything, but boy was it worth it. I picked up Burnout: Revenge and Dead Rising and had myself a whole barrel of fun crashing cars and killing zombies. The Live Arcade is a lot of fun too, playing the old games that I used to plunk away at in the theatre in Houston. I'm glad I made the purchase, and I know I'm going to have a lot of fun. Looking at my calendar, I can tell I won't be playing much for about the next two weeks, but knowing that it's there will make downtime a lot more fun.

I did manage to get away from my new electronic fun a couple time this weekend. On Saturday, Sonja and I went out to watch the Semi Finals for the Alberta Cup in which my team was playing. The game was solid, but in the end we ended up losing to the Rams.

Sunday, I made it out to the Calgary Climbing Center so that I could practice up, and get Sonja knowledgable about Belaying. It was a pile of fun but it didn't even take two hours before my hands and arms were sore from hauling my fat but up the walls.

I came home on Sunday looking forward to a little bit more XBox action, and found that my internet was borked. I called Shaw to inquire, and the man on the other end of the phone told me a troubleshooting technique that reminded me of the stupidity of blowing on Nintendo cartridges. Basically, I have to unplug the modem, unhook it from the cable, and then touch the copper on the wire. I then hook everything back up, plug it back in, and everything is good to go. That is until two minutes elapses and my connection is all messed up again. Shaw realized that there is a problem, but they won't send out a service man until Friday of next week. That's a long time to go without internet, and it makes me damn happy I switched over to a hosted solution for my websites.

This week's challenge from Photo Friday is very nice and simple. It didn't take me long to think of this shots, which is one of my favorite abstract shots. It's a truck load of piping that I took a picture of during rush hour on the Deerfoot.

I know that I've used it before but that should be any reason to not use it again!

This past weekend was the placeholder for that wonderful, periodic event we have labelled: The Smashening.

This time we met at Jeff's place, and by the time I managed to find it, the gentlemen were well into constructing our destruction tool of the evening. The initial idea as surgical tubing and dowling being used to launch a bearing through a copper tube at our targets. Although after a couple test shots we realized that the surgical tubing was too much for the contraptions we had created to stop the dowling from following the bearing towards our target.

We decided to use pneumatics to propel our steel sphere of destruction, and after some quick repairs and safety modifications, we were ready to start getting the timing down for the sensor.

After much building and shooting at an empty Coke case, we were ready to start with the fun stuff. Too bad the sun had already set and the room reeked of human male.

Our technology for doing this sort of thing has improved significanty since our first outting, and now we just need to come better prepared for the actual breaking. Either way, our air canon sent us well into the night, and resulted in a nice set of photographs. We were even daring enough at the end to produce some edgier shots...

This week's challenge I managed to catch quite early. I love the fact that I will be able to look at all the submissions before my own for the Friend challenge, and not have to dedicate the majority of a day to get it done.

Here, Sonja and I are spending a peaceful moment before packing up and leaving Ribbon Lake

It sure was nice to be in the wilderness. A plan that had been in the works for a couple of weeks finally came together and Sonja and I spent a weekend out at Ribbon Lake.

It was a rocky start. We never left as early as I had hoped, due mainly in part to TMUTS' leaving most of his earthly posessions in a car sized pile of garbage in the back alley. I spent some time using a reciprocating saw to cut his junk to a managable size and pack it away in my car. It was well into the afternoon by the time we headed out of town. Once we arrived at the Visitor Center, they surprised us with rate increases and a $24 pass to camp in the backcountry.

I decided that along with items to make me more comfortable through the night that I would also bring along a sizable chunk of camera equipment. My burden came to a humbling 41 lbs, and Sonja's share tipped the scale over 31 lbs. We finished the 13km trek over six hours, which mainly in part to the various stops to indulge my camera fetish, and us ducking under trees to avoid the sprinkling rain. We tackled the cliff hurdle at the end of the voyage and managed to have camp set up before the sun was done in the sky.

We met a surprising large group of people at the lake, the majority there to celebrate a 58th birthday. We cooked our food, and joined in the conversation, before retiring for the night.

Waking in the morning was a bit of an adventure because most of my body didn't work. Well, at least not in the way to which I've become accustomed. It did not take long, however, for the engine to get fired up and all the kinks worked out. It became quickly apparent that the effort expended was worth it. The view was breathtaking and the sound of silence was everything I wanted it to be. Getting away from the intersection of Bermuda Dr and Beddington Boulevard to a perch at the end of a valley was exactly what I needed to slow things down for a while.

We made much better time going back to the parking lot. Moving downhill advantage was over come by a beautiful blue sky with puffy clouds and my 2Gb memory card. Losing my burden once and a while to crouch by waterfalls and climb over rocks to get a nice viewpoint stretched our return to about 5 hours.

Upon returning to Calgary I didn't entertain any such thoughts as: "I need to get outside", or "I need to do something." Eat a nice meal and retire early made for a well deserved end to a perfect weekend.