our life

We won!

We won and I didn't even know we were part of it.

I got my email today from paypal confirming that I am part of the Class action suit in the US against them. Even though I'm in canada I still aparently am eligible for the money. I get the choice of a long or short form to fill out. Since I've actually not had any issues with paypal that were paypals fault ( I have had issues but they were instigated by other people ), I'm going to go for the short form and collect the default $50 US.

Its a nice pick me up after the last two weeks of money issues. We've been sorting out our taxes because we got hit with three years of tax for the townhouse ( of which I really am only responsible for a year and 2 months ). With the help of the lawyer, and an accountant with the Reids Heritage group, it looks like tomorrow it will be sorted out. I looked over the details and the math looks correct, so I will let Reids send me a cheque to cover the difference, and things will get sorted out soon.

I also bought almost a $1000 worth of Palm stuff in order to do my testing/recommendation thing for work. It gets paid back, but it was just an awkward time with the taxes.

The last issue was my own fault. The speed and convenience of internet banking finally caught up with me. I paid our credit card bill, but sent it to Guelph hydro instead. Took a few days for one of us to notice, and so I had to send money to the credit card company, and today called Guelph hydro to ask them to send me a cheque back. Luckily they were okay with this, and so the cheque to credit me back for that is in the mail.

Weekend is here soon....so I'll try to relax and forget all of this stuff.

Had the CD changer put in the car today. Man it looks sweet. The installer did an amazing job. The changer lives under the passenger front seat, and he completely hide the wires under the carpet in the tunnel that already was there for the wires that run from the front seat ( GM puts the changer there too, so there is room for cables here ). The coolest part is he mounted the changers remote display on the windshield above the rear view mirror. So its near eye level, and doesn't obstruct my view. Wires all totally hidden.

So once again I'm impressed with Powerline here in guelph! You guys made my week, and weekend too....we'll now have tunes for the trip. After packing the car tomorrow, gotta now burn a bunch of MP3 cd's.

So next weekend we are going to jail...

We wanted to visit the Manitoulin islands, and so we got things rolling this weekend. We booked our spot on the car ferry, and after more then a few calls we found a place to stay. We didn't want to go tent or car camping, so we decided to look at Cabins, and Bed & Breakfast places. We ended up finding a decent deal on a cabin. A family in Providence Bay on the island owns a group of cabins, one of which is a renovated Jail house, and this is the one we picked. Its pretty reasonable I think at $75 a night. We are staying for two nights. We have a BBQ and a full kitchen in the tiny cabin, so we can also bring food and cook stuff while we see the sites.

So Saturday we are driving up to Tobermory, and seeing the Lighthouse and other sites around town before we go on a Glass bottom boat tour. After some supper, we'll board the Chi-Cheeman, and go to the island. Then a 30 minute drive to the cabin. The owners say they will stop by sometime after we arrive and make sure we are settled. Trusting folk too, they just needed my word that I would come, no deposit needed.

Sunday we plan to enjoy Providence Bay, mainly walking around town and the beach.

Monday we want to drive over to the north side of the island and rent a boat and buzz around for the day. We also want to see the Bridal Veil falls, and take some pictures.

Then its back to the Chi-Cheeman and our drive home.

I'm going to be so tired going to work the next day.

Endless tunes...

In time for our trip to the Manitoulin islands we are getting a MP3/CD changer installed in the Vibe. We saw it at Futureshop and asked for the details on installs. They charge a $70 fee to install plus parts ( 2 antenna adapters - $15 each ). I thought I could do better, so we visited Powerline in Guelph and asked what they could do. So they said they could do the install cheaper. $50 for the install and they told us they have done the installs before and know I only need one antennae adapter ($10).

When it comes to car audio, Autosonics and Powerline in Guelph are always better value then getting Futureshop to do the installs. They can usually do a better deal on the hardware too. In this case changers only seem to go on sale around Christmas/New years so I didn't have any leverage here. Decks, speakers and amps; these places can do much better deals then FS.

I decided this time I'd let the shop install the changer. On my VW's I always did this myself, but that was because I had a shop manual and I also knew how to take these cars apart. My Vibe, I have no clue, and I don't feel like wrecking the dash to find out how to hook everything up. So I'm going to relax and for $50, let the shop do it. To me I feel its well spent.

I was so suprised we didn't have an MP3 option on the Vibe, but now this will fix it. Its a 10 pack unit, so 10 CDR's filled with MP3's should allow us hours and hours of music for long drives. Should eliminate lots of cd shuffling.

So I get to test some thing at home and at work...

So I'm at work today and I get a call from Yak VOIP division. It was a while ago, long enough that I can't remember when I did it actually, that I signed up for the Trial offer of Yak VOIP. Right now we are both on cell phones, and don't really need VOIP, but at the time I signed up, I was thinking of dumping our land line ( which we did ). So the offer I got was that if I was still interested I would get shipped the VOIP box to plug into my network, and during the trial there was no cost for the VOIP use. Best part yet is I'm allowed to call anywhere ( world wide ) during the trial. My part is that I will get emailed monthly and requested to fill out a report on how the service is doing. At some point if the service goes live, then I'll then get asked if I want to continue with the service.

So in 3 days ( via fedex ) I should get my box, and I'm going to hook it up to the phone wires for the house. Then I'll hook up the phones back in the house. Haven't decided where I want to get a number, since I can choose a local number anywhere in canada. We'll definitely keep it as long as the trial goes, but we are so far doing just fine with just the Mike/Telus phones, so if we have to pay for this we'll likely not keep it.

It looks like I'm going to get a PDA again in my life. Normally my job has me taking care of the model office, or doing testing on software/hardware we'd like to use in the company. Sometimes at work I get tapped to do stuff that normally wouldn't fall into my job category. This time I got asked to work out how we would implement a PDA for cross canada use. So since its going to be used outside of the Guelph office I have to work out how the PDA's will be setup/configured, deployed to the field, and supported in the field. Issues such as security of the data and virus's are now a problem since these will need to given out now to people far away from the Guelph office. I got handed the project late friday, so I've basically just started. I've got a high level idea of some of the goals I should have for the project, but some of the things I want to do I will only know if they work until I get some hardware in. I've been told I can order in a few PDA's to try, so I'm going to do that soon.

So the search begins

We got a survey recently from Reids Heritage Group asking us about how well felt about the Townhouse. We rated them pretty good with regards to the house itself, the grounds, and the service we got from the contractors. We made sure to be clear that anything and everything that went wrong was due to Inspirah. When asked if we would buy again or recommend this company, we said yes.

So with that in mind we visited the West Minister planned community in the South end of Guelph. Its yet another Reids Heritage group project. Unlike a normal subdivision, this is basically a Gated Community. This means even though the houses are freehold ( there is a small group of townhouses that are condo, but even the townhouses come as freehold too ), there are local bylaws that you agree to in the community ( not city bylaws ). They restrict how you can plant, structures you'd like to put outside your house, what pets you'd like to have...all done to ensure a consistant look and feel to the community - they don't hide this. Basically if you like the idea of a Condo with agreed upon rules for consistency within the community, you'll likely like this. The difference though that has me spooked is that the board of directors is made up of people who work for Reids. Hmmmm...owners will be allowed to join the board in December of 2004, so this will change. It spooks me because its the same pattern that existed in our Townhouse complex, and other Reids townhouse complex run by Inspirah - they also had the problems we had.

So because of the fiasco that was Inspirah, I wanted to know how things worked with the lanscaping in this community. Right now everyone pays $15 ( $55 for people with seperate garages ) a month for this. Also when you buy the home, you pay a CEP fee ($500 upto few thousand ) which pays for common elements in the community. Until owners become part of the board, Reids is controlling everything. When owners become part of the board, just like in our townhouse complex, the board can contract with Reids or look elsewhere. Since Reids hasn't finished this project though, even with owners on the board, I'm skeptical that Reids will give up control on how things are run.

My other worry is that all of these Common elements are in my opinion subsidized by Reids, thus the low monthly fee's. Since this a flagship area, they want things to look good at least until they finish the project. After that, the board ( now controlled by owners ) will likely realize the true cost of the maintenance, and the monthly fee's will rise. I don't know of many projects like this in Ontario, so I think Reids might be trying to start a new trend here. Gated communities mean that Reids will not just get to build homes, but by maintaining the grounds, they are assured continued revenue streams. A good plan as Guelph starts to fill up, and new good pieces of land become less and less availible. They are doing that same with creating retirement communities - with plenty of services that create continued revenue streams for them.

We really did like the community though in terms of landscaping. There is lots of greenspace, walking trails, parks, and a great diversity of housing types. Its very nice. The prices of the houses themselves are higher then what other builders are charging for similar sizes and features. If you want to have a house backing onto greenspace you have to pay $6000 for this. A terrace lot ( backing onto greenspace ) charge is also added ( gets you a deck ) - $9200. Finishing the basement in the homes we looked at ranged from $15,000 to $30,000.

So I don't think we'll consider West minister. While I do like all the greenspace, until owners are given full control ( board of directors turned over to the owners completely ), I don't want to be in the same situation our townhouse ( Towns at Sundowne ), experienced with Reids owned Inspirah. If I lived there I'd be pushing Reids to disclose the true cost of things so that I'd have a better idea of the direction of the monthly fee's. The other thing that worries me is the bylaws of the community ( not city bylaws ) that we'd be controlled by. Again this is because of the problems we are having now ( being told what plants we can grow, what we can do in the backyard, and the satelite dish's ).

Lastly the look in the eye of the sales person when I mentioned Inspirah and that we lived at 'Towns of Sundowne', was priceless. She did a quick look around to see who else in the information center could hear our conversation.

Things I'm pissy about..

A bunch of things have happened recently that have made me kinda pissy...so why not blog some of it to make myself feel better.

The Townhouse: When we moved here even from day one I got a pretty shady opinion of the property management company that took care of things here. Like most things to do with the Reids Heritage group, they are basically yet another sub company - which means they do things in the interest of the parent company. At first it was just laziness. Getting our house cleaned for move in day took several calls to remind them that it needed to be done. The cleaners who don't work for Reids did a great job though - but they were rushed because Inspirah kept forgetting to book the time to get it done. For fixing things inside the house from the previous rent to own tenants the outside contractors did a pretty good job, but again the weak point was the person with Inspirah who was supposed to book the people comining in - calls not returned, forgoten appointment times - just really poor service. We later found out it wasn't just us, they were equally neglectful of everything. They forgot to pay our lanscaping company who in turn started to slow down the work done for us. They didn't take care of enforcing townhouse bylaws, and they didn't enforce parking issues. Most importantly though is that they took our money from us ( money held by the Board of directors of the townhouse group ), and put it in a Reids Heritage bank account. They gave it back, but we didn't get back the interest they earned on it.

Just unbelievable.

They got fired by our board. Good for them.

We had our first meeting for Townhouse complex, to introduce our new Property management company. These guys do seem to be alot better, but they haven't been given much direction by our overworked board, so they've been going nutty with fines everywhere. The board also allowed the city to take care of our parking problem, and now they've been ticketing everything they can with $20 tickets. So this made for a bad first meeting. Everyone was right pissed, and by the end of meeting nothing was accomplished. What was supposed to be an introduction meeting, became a huge venting session for the tenants against the board. Of the many issues, only one affects us. They want all the tenants who have added plants to provide in writing documentation of all the plants we have added, and then *IF* they approve the plant arragement they will add it to our deed to reflect they are not plants managed by the townhouse complex - oh and doing this costs money - the legal cost of doing this is higher then the cost of the plants. This outraged everyone at the meeting, and so we aren't lifting a finger on this one. We will wait to see what the board does instead. It states in our book of regulations that we can plant small plants in addition to our provided plants, so we will wait. The same happened for our two satelite dishs. We got a notice to document and send in for approval the dishs. We ignored this, since we signed and agreement with Reids on buying the Town house that we could have them.

The final thing that has us pissy about the townhouse is that in our backyard over the fence is some commercial land, and now there is a Gas station moving in. The area has a few other Armel owned properties, one also beside the townhouse complex, and these ones will get small apartments. At least the plots of land will get something put on them, since the way Armel leaves these pieces of land looks ugly. Sunoco next door looks to be making a natural wall with tree's, like they have at other locations, so thats nice. But even though its not all bad, we are now looking to upgrade. Its not even been a year, and I think we've outgrown the Townhouse/Condo concept. I don't need the training wheels anymore...getting tired of all the rules.

Oh can't forget Rogers. They have decided to sign an agreement with Yahoo, not unlike what Sympatico has done with MSN. Now I'd rather be partnered with Yahoo then MSN, so I'll give credit to Rogers for that, but like everything rogers, this upgrade has been one big mess. We loose our webspace and its to be replaced by Geocities ( ya the same free service, with ads...). Webspace already was up and down for availibility, and now its even more down then up. Mail moved to Yahoo. Good news is that Yahoo has a great Spam filter system, and the web interface is much better then Rogers had before. Bad news is that you can find all the email address's now in the Yahoo directory, so they can be harvested away - so we will definitely need that spam filtering. Worst part is we are in that transitional phase. POP3 mail downloads the same messages over and over...so I've had 1000's of messages to delete. The webmail site mostly times out, since its so overloaded. Like most things with Rogers they will work it out, but its SO disappointing that everything that Rogers does always works like this. They don't plan, they react to competition, and do it so fast that they do the changes in a piss poor manner.

I'm just glad that I already transitioned to my own mail server. I still kept some of my Rogers accounts though. The mail server downloads them, and they are also stored on the IMAP server. My important stuff has all move to accounts on my own mail server though, so i'm not really affected by all of this.

Digital this digtal that...

Decided that it was time to try using the digial out on the Xbox and the DVD player. I did a quick browse of the Futureshop site to see what the cost was and came up with $29.99 for a 6' optical cable and $39.99 for the coaxial digital cable. The first is a Acoustic Research brand and the latter is the Monster cable brand.

While doing some shopping in KW, we stopped by KW surplus and I picked up RCA brand cables for $9.99 each ( for the same cable lengths ). There is no way of really knowing but looking at the casing details, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that these were all rebrands from the same cable supplier. They all had the same specs on the packaging for the cable housing and details of the cable construction. The cable market is like most other commodity markets, where you have only a small handfull of manufacturers making a product, and then branding them for many other company who is turn get to sell them for very different prices. Monster brand is likely the best example. They have managed to create a convincing marketing campaign, and so they get to charge very high mark ups for the same quality of cables. They don't sell bad cables, but they do sell them at 4 times the retail price to other retail brands. If you want to pay less, you can skip the brands all together and just get the same cables at generic/oem prices at a lot of good stereo shops or electric stores ( electronic stores being the best option ). Specify the guage and insulation values you need and find the same cable you'd pay 6 times the price for. You won't get a nice logo on the cable, but it will perform identical. Learned this one from my car stereo hobby days - the kind of talk you had with other installers and other people who would complete in the audio contests.

I waited this long because I didn't think it would make a difference, but it really does make a diffence. The speaker seperation is much more refined, especially for the rear speakers which often was just a mono sound source for the both back speakers. Thats the product of analog Dolby 5.1 vs digital Dolby 5.1.

The Xbox media center supports digital output as well, so I tried to listen again to saved movies that I had that had a digital audio track - very crisp.

So this was a worthwhile $20 upgrade.

.hack//sign ^_^;;

Thanks to Suprnova and its Anime section I stumbled upon this series called .hack

.hack is both a video game, manga ( which is a comic ), and a tv series. This series is a unique one for me. So get this, .hack is a series about a video game set in the near future ( 2005 ). Its an MMORG ( think ultima online or evercrack ). So the series follows the lives of the characters in the game, who are obviously controlled by real ppl out in RL ( real life ). I'm watching //sign which is a series about the game characters. I also BT'd the next series ( Liminalty ) which follows the lives of the characters in RL. All of this sets up the background for the video game, which places you in this MMORG with these characters. The animations is great and thankfully the english dubbing is very well done.

Something even better then Grand Bend

Did a day trip to Sauble Beach today. We decided we liked this beach even more then Grand Bend.

Arriving into town the first thing you notice is its not as touristy as Grand bend - which isn't to bad, certainly better then Wasaga. The more I think of it though, its not the shops or how many their are of them, its the crowd. Seems the beachs on the Huron attract a different crowd. I didn't see many Toronto plates up there today. In fact what I thought was kinda funny was how many people from Guelph I saw. The cars parked near us - guelph, I saw a teacher from on high school ( GCVI ), saw people shopping on at the beach shops from guelph...and driving up and down the main drag.

First thing we did was park when we arrived. Sauble has free parking, and its right at the beach where you want it to be. Just climb over the dunes and your on the beach. Grand bend has some free parking, but not much, and its not in convenient spots.

Grand Bends beachs are clean, but wow the beachs here are even nicer. Perfect sand, I couldn't find a rock here if I tried, and the beach is just shallow and steadily gets deeper going out - no surprise spots like in Grand bend.

This time we decided to bring some food. At first I really seriously regretted getting the Hibachi. I just couldn't get the fire going. I'm pretty good at making fires, but getting those stupid little briquettes to lite with matchs and some dried wood was akin to trying to create nuclear fusion with a microwave, a coke can and perhaps some duck tape. Thankfully the monopoly that is the Weston Group has spread its tentacles even to Sauble - so the local ValuMart was able to hook me up with some starter fluid and zip bricks. So with this stuff I got the fire started literally instantly. Mmmm....chicken wings.

The water was surprisingly warm - had a good swim - though I'm feeling a bit crispy now - have to check for sun burn tomorrow.

After this we took a drive down highway 21 to see one of the light houses before going home.

The Vibe turned in 5.97L/100 kms for this trip. Engines usually get better mileage as they breakin, so things might still get better until around 10 K when it will likely plateau.

Energuide was just about right.

In replacing the Jetta TD we wanted to get a vehicle was also fuel efficient. We compared some of the cars on the Canadian Energuide site. The site is pretty useful, but they don't make something clear with the diesels. They should make it more clear that diesel averages 10 cents less per litre, so this an additional savings to the fuel mileage they get. Today filling up the Vibe I paid 80 cents per litre, while diesel was 65 cents. During the summer I've seen it as high as 30 cents difference. During the winter when diesel fuel is used a home heating fuel, the difference goes lower. With the Jetta I got upto 4.5L/100kms during the summer and upto 5.3L/100kms during the winter. There aren't cars today ( in Canada ) that are this cost efficient. The Honda Civic Hybrid, Insight, the Toyota Prius, and the current Volkswagen diesels all get good numbers - with the Prius and Insight even doing better - but all of these cars cost a lot more then what the Jetta cost back in 91 even after calculating inflation on its $13,500 price tag. Its not a fair comparison though, since cars have needed to get more complicated. We want them to be both safer, and we need them to have less of an impact on the environment. One thing though I don't get is that in Europe they still have simple cost effective cars that are fuel efficient. A VW Polo SDI is a car that would be todays equivelent of my Jetta TD. The Polo's are about the same size, and the engine is a Direct injection non turbo motor. So its simpler then a TDI engine, and cheaper to make. Fuel costs are higher in Europe so perhaps until we get gasoline at $2 a litre people likely here won't care in large numbers enough to justify these cars. At todays fuel prices people seem to prefer to have more powerful gasoline engines. So for picking a car we tried to run some numbers.

Car	MSRP of base car	Average fuel economy	Price of fuel for 15K * 5 years	Total
Pontiac Vibe	21150	6.85	3853.125	25003.125
Saturn Vue	22745	9.1	5118.75	27863.75
Jetta TDI	26500	5.55	2705.625	29205.625

So even though I wanted to get another diesel, for the distance I drive, it didn't look like the savings would pay off the difference in the initial higher cost of the car. For the table above I priced gasoline @ .75 and diesel @ .65 cents. The good news is that my first tank on the Vibe came out to 6.05L/100kms. So the average for the tank is about what the Energuide gives the car for the highway. Also it was a good normal loop. Half highway, half driving around guelph, and half of it with the AC on.

Car maintenance simplified

I've been a long time believer in synthetic oils. They don't work in all situations. They are always superior, but economically they aren't always the best choice.

My dads 2001 Saturn has been living on Mobil Delvac 1, which is changed once a year. By doing this it actually is cheaper then using regular group I or II ( these are mineral based oils that are refined via solvent extraction ).

Conventional oil @ $8 (4L jug ) + $5 oil filter = $13 x 4 changes a year = $52

Mobil Delvac 1 (walmart price) @ $35 (4L jug ) + $5 oil filter = $40 a year.

So before increased fuel economy savings, especially during the winter, it already saves $12 a year. Decreased maintenance isn't the only reason to do this though. I've taken apart engines that even with under 100K were all gunked up from using conventional oils. You could hear the top end rattle since the first area to suffer from the oil starvation is always the head where the cam and its valves are. So you hear the valve clicking noise which is a sign they are prematurely wearing. This leads to poor compression, which means lower power, fuel economy and higher emmissions.

What happens is either of two things. In parafinic based oils, the wax actually seperates from the oil and starts to clog things up. In ash based oils, the oil just simply cooks and creates hard deposits everywhere.

Synthetic oils for all practical purposes don't break down. When they need to be changed it is because the additive package has worn out, or the oil has become contaminated. In a diesel the soot level reachs to high a level, in a gas engine its usually the additive package wearing out or gasoline contamination ( during the warm up cycle excess fuel wash's past the rings and into the oil - if you drive long enough some of this will evapourate ).

I planned on switching the Vibe to Delvac 1 in August along with Hangs mom car, so that we could do the oil change on my parents car as well as the first two all at the same time - once a year. But now Walmart has decided to stop selling the Mobil Delvac line. To few sales. They sell a lot of Mobil 1 synthetic, but diesel oils aren't a big seller. No big surprise - I never understood why they even tried to sell them in the first place. So the next convenient oil to buy is Petro Canada's DURON oil. Like Delvac it is a line of cross fleet ( gasoline or diesel ) extended drain heavy duty oils. The the DURON synthetic 5W40 that I'd use is also cheaper which is nice. At the truck stops its $25.99 a 4L jug, and the Boucher Fuels place in Guelph sells it for $2 less, and is near my work so its pretty convenient.

Its cheaper since there are two ways you can make synthetic oils. You can engineer an oil ( PAO and ESTER based oils ), meaning to actually create oil from a hydrocarbon rich source ( like natural gas ), or you can refine it from a normal mineral source to the point that it is pure. The delvac is the first kind and so is more expensive, and the PC product is refined. Group III oils ( which is what they are classed as ) are now producing numbers that put them in the same class as the Group IV and V ( PAO / ESTER ) products, and so if matched with a good extended drain additive package you can produce a product that will perform the same at a lower cost.

So this year I'll buy 3 jugs of the PC Duron synthetic and do all three cars - with the money saved from buying the Delvac 1 maybe I'll buy some synthetic tranny fluid and replace the Vibes tranny fluid so its ready for winter. Synthetic tranny fluid is nice since it doesn't need to be changed at all. Where as conventional tranny fluid should be changed every 50K to 100K.

Tour guides R us

On Sunday we drove down to Toronto with Hangs mother to visit her Uncle and his family who were driving up from New York.

We did a little shopping before lunch. This is when I saw this little gem. Now this a lunch box. "Stylish lunch is essential energy source for men". Now who could argue with that.

After lunch we visited the CN Tower

It gets pretty windy up here - Hang was trying to read the guide to the tower.

I know this place is an Icon of canada, but at $32 a person, I'm not sure it was completely worth it. The kids had fun though, and perhaps on family trips its more important to seek out experiences that you can enjoy once and say you were there. Nice view though.

Maybe next year we might go down to New York to visit them. Lets hope crossing the border goes better if we do.

First road trip in the Vibe

We decided to go to Wasaga Beach for Canada day. Neither of us have ever been, so we thought it would make a nice road trip. I think we were both a bit disappointed.

For the trip I decided to try out the GPS in the phone. So I tossed the phone up on the dash, and the cable connects to the laptop running 2001 Mappoint ( same program that powers MSN mappoint - they obviously use the 2004 version ). Its a neat program. You give it numbers like, the time your starting, fuel price, your mileage ( city/highway ), and then give it two locations ( or more if you'd like to plot several points you'd like to stop at ), and it can calculate the quickest or shortest route. It tells you how much fuel will cost, and for me the best part is that it shows us moving along the map with its GPS NMEA in support. The Vibe has a build in invertor so on the dash beside the 12V outlet, I also have a 115V outlet like you have in the house - laptop gets plugged into that.

We saw several of these fields on the way up, and I'm not sure what it is that is growing, but they just glow yellow - really intense yellow. I think it looked neat so we paused for a few photo's.

When we finally arrived in Wasaga I was really disappointed at the place. Its basically just a mess of cottages ( thats not a bad thing ), and then small area of overcrowded tiny restaurants and bars. Using Grand bend as a comparison, this place wasn't as nice. If Grand bend attracts people from SWO, I think Wasaga attracts people from the GTA. This place was full of dropped honda's ( some nice, and some really stupid looking ), the 'New' Harley crowd ( picture a bank manager with harley gear trying to look the part - and failing ), and teen prostitutes - oh sorry I think they are just normal kids dressing this way for fun er...fashion?

Oh and the water is bad. Grand bend has beautiful beachs. The water is great too. This place was dirty.

We had a late lunch at a greek place and I think Hang was really disappointed. We spent $35, a reasonable price for a decent restaurant, but we were served what is basically the greek version of fast food. The tip is included ( 15% on top of the price + %15 tax ), and when we asked for the rest of the meal to be wrapped up, they threw it away and forgot to tell us. So we just sat there waiting for the food, not knowing it wasn't coming. Hang wanted to leave, but I wanted to know what happened, so I asked nicely. A few minutes later we were told what had happened and were given some 'replacement' food. A pita and a tiny piece of chicken...about 1/3 of what we had left over and has asked to be wrapped up.

So I gave in.

Hang doesn't like most mainstream restaurants, and when I present her with such poor examples like this place, I have nothing to encourage her to try another one...so far my track record is almost all failures. I'm a pretty forgiving person when it comes to service and food, and these places consistantly disappoint me.

So we decided to forget it - we are doing the typical oriental thing - bringing food with us.

So we drove over to Collingwood for a little site seeing and admired the downtown area with the many touristy type shops. Its nice to see renovated buildings that keep the old architechture. Even this loblaws. We went in to see what it was like compared to our Zehrs - not surprisingly - not much is different. We bought a hibachi, and a cooler kit ( Large cooler, small cooler, and a drink cooler ). So now we are set for the next trip.

We drove back in time to see the Guelph fireworks at Riverside. Not that great, but more practical then seeing them in collingwood since Hang had to work the next day.

VP overboard!

Last year was the first of what is hopefully going to be an annual Canoe race. I think everyone enjoyed last years, and this years went very well and was even more fun.

The not so used rail line that ran through the area we were having the race actually had a train come through. That was kinda interesting. I like trains so its always fun for me to see them close up.

We put in a good effort, but we didn't make it to the finals. So we did two runs. It was fun though, and still managed to get a prize. Most people got something, and thats always nice.

Oh and the VP went into the drink. He was a good sport about it. I don't often get to meet him, but I've sat at lunch a few times with him. He's pretty impressive. He's the same age as me, and he's made VP. He's approachable, and works hard. When I'd come in at 7:30, I'd often see him, and then later in the day still see his car, so I knew he was usually working late and coming in early. His hard work keeps us all employed and productive. I'm happy to have him leading us.

This is my boss. I don't spend a lot of time with him, which is both good and bad. His management style is very hands off and he gives me a lot of freedom - I appreciate this. Most of our conversations end with him say - no problem man.