100 trillion dollar bill

Day 2 of the PSYOPS course and one of the guys pulled out this bill from Zimbabwe... And we get worried over 3-5% inflation!

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70.3 done!

So, we didn't get the bike split that we wanted, but we got a time of around 2:08 or so.

I am a little disappointed that I can't hang around for the dinner or hang around the expo... I had to grab my stuff right after the race and stay packing to leave tonight.

Off to kingston in just a couple hours for the residence portion of the PSYOPS officer course!

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70.3 preparations

Our prep for the 70.3 world championships on Saturday is going well so far.  We are in a hotel that is walking distance from the start line, we checked in and got our race packages today and took a walk through the expo.

 

Yesterday I marked up a map with the directions to ride the race course ahead of time so that we would know what to expect for turns, hills (not many at all) and condition of the roads.  Brian kept on joking that he thought that we must be on the wrong roads since we didn’t see a single other bike out on the course!  After speaking with one of the other guys that has done the course in the past, he said that nobody dares ride the course before the race since a lot of the course goes along major freeways with lots of traffic...  There were a couple of spots where we had to cross 2-3 lanes of traffic, but I have ridden in way worse traffic than that!

 

We went for a swim on the first day that we were here that worried us both a little.  There were waves swelling up over 3 feet at times where I felt a little like a surf board sometimes shooting up the front side of a wave and then crashing down on the other side.  Brian and I are both hoping that the waves are nothing like that on race day because we both drank a lot of ocean water and we weren’t moving very fast at all... The last couple of days have been quite calm and nice.

 

Nexus pass is amazing!

I just passed through the US customs line at the calgary airport where the line was out into the airline desks this morning and I got through in less than a minute with my nexus pass.

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The shower is complete!

At long last, the shower is ready and my dear bride will stop threatening to hire a contractor to do the work :p thanks for all the help Dad!

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KidSport board and staff

A nice group photo of the KidSport board members and staff in attendance at our first donor appreciation event.

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Day on the ranges

Today I was the range safety officer for our unit range exercise
Thankfully the weather was beautiful and nobody got shot. So far so good. I got a couple of pictures of some troops doing a jump after we closed down the ranges. Not sure how week the pictures turned out, but I attached them anyways.

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The power of ebay item titles...

so, I just sold two sales on ebay that are the same brand and close to the same model, but one retails for 2 times the price of the other because it is much lighter and mostly made of carbon. The cheaper one that I had put the msrp of 170 into the title for sold for 135 while the one that retails for around 350 sold for just 100... The only reason that I can think of to explain this would be the description that I listed... Go figure...

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Canadian military slang

So, while driving to Edmonton for ranges, one of the guys in the car said this his son came across this list of canadian army slang on wikipedia.  Quite amusuing, and quite accurate.: Appendix:Canadian English military slang - Wiktionary

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Scum of society...

We had someone break into our garage last night and steal a laptop, GPS, and who knows what else out of our garage.  I used to think that we lived in a pretty safe area where we didn’t need to worry about these things, but I guess I was wrong.  Thankfully my mountain bike is still there since we are going riding on Thursday :P  If only these wankers could put their time towards doing something productive with their lives, we would be a lot better off...

 

Our garage door opener has been flaking out on us for the last couple of years and I know that the security isn’t great on those old models so I am going to Canadian Tire to buy a new one today...  I guess the bathroom reno can wait a few more days.

proven right...

Just like clockwork!  This morning while I was picking up some printouts, there were a couple of guys standing around the printer waiting for a big print job to finish.  After only 1 hour and 5 minutes of work, the one turned to the other and said "shall we go for a smoke?  Should take about that long for this to finish" and the two of them disappeared for 20 minutes…  I rest my case.

smoking... the socially accepted reason to slack off at work!

One of the other guys on the course raised an interesting point while we were both going to get some water this morning.  He pointed out that taking up smoking might almost be worth the negative health effects in order to have an excuse to drop all of your work and hang out in the sun and get some fresh air every hour and a half or so.  If you think about it, smokers are rarely challenged or criticized for going out to smoke several times a day.  It is just an accepted practice that they need to satisfy their addiction.  If a non-smoker were to go and stand outside chatting with other non-smokers for 15 minutes every hour and a half he would be called a slacker… if a smoker does it… he's just a smoker…

Every time like it's the first time!

This is one of my favourite sayings for organizations that have no standards, templates or tools.  Normally, the army prides itself on standardization of tools and templates, however it is clear that the individuals that manage the content for AOC are computer illiterates... Every scenario uses different icons, a mish mash of screen shots and power point slides are peppered through out power point slides.  It seems asthough we spend just as much time playing with icons and formatting as we spend learning material...

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Still stupid, but better....

The CF has long taken the worst of both worlds in its approach to IT security.  They make silly and unmanageable rules to follow and then provide no enforcement.  Thi provided a flase sense of security to management and really didn't improve security because everyone did what they needed to do to get their work done... Now they still have the dumb rules but they are enforcing them now... So, here I sit in front of a "scrubber" ... Which is actually just a desktop with AV installed and isolated from the rest of the network... Waiting to scan the usb sticks for my syndicate... Great use of resources!!

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Home for the next couple of weeks

The building you see is the old library of fort frontenac and I have a room on the 3rd floor overlooking the lake.  Not a bad plave to stay since it is a private room with an ensuite bathrom and a LCD TV.  Only one problem... It's about a million degrees!

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

AOC excess baggage...

So, everyone that I have talked to on AOC has complained about needing to get authorization for excess baggage (3 bags) but I only brought 1 suitcase and I thought that I was packing a little excessive... What am I missing here?  Either these people don't need to travel, or I am missing a lot of stuff that I am going to need...

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

I am going to miss my aeroplan elite status....

So, this year I have accumulated 0 status mile points towards getting my eite status again.  It takes 35,000 and my flights from this trip will give me a little over 4000 points.  Going to world championships should give me another 6000 or so, but that won't even get me to prestige (25,000) and I will have to stand in line with the rest of the peons in the regular check-in line... No more lounge access (they are serving pancakes and bacon and there are fresh strawberries today!) and no more upgrades to executive class... Speaking of which, I think I am getting upgraded today :)

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

detailed time splits from nationals

So, I just got a copy of the detailed time splits from para track nationals and apparently we lost the race in the last half lap... ouch.... I wonder how the race would have turned out if we were going head to head.  It is easy to say that we could have found another 4/10 of a second of effort during the race if we had known, but on the other hand who is to say that they wouldn’t have been able to match it?  I guess that we will have to wait until World Championships for the rematch...

 

I have to hand it to Alex and Daniel, that is some pretty amazing consistency throughout the pursuit.  That was a great ride on their part!

probably just a minority... but I am still shocked

I was just watching CBC news a few minutes ago and there was a news clip where the reporter said that emergency services asked the Montreal fire department to go door-to-door to find people suffering from heat exhaustion in their homes as a preventative measure.  The city has set up cooling stations with A/C, water, and medical aid to take in people that do not have a cool place to get out of the 34 degree heat (42 with humidex).  Apparently fire fighters have the right to decline preventative services when the temperature goes over 30 degrees and several Montreal fire fighters have exercised this right and declined to help...  Of course they coupled this clip with an elderly man who was rescued from his home that was measured at 50 degrees... I understand that it is really hot, but isn’t saving lives a big part of why fire fighters join?  Again, I am sure that this is just a small minority of individuals that are refusing to help... but have they no shame?

lost by a pedal stroke

So, the track national championship pursuit is behind us and we lost by 4/10 of a second which equates to about one pedal stroke...  A bit of a crushing defeat for us, but I guess that we should be happy that it is way above the national standard for selection to worlds (we did around a 4:43 and the standard was 4:48).

 

Neither Brian or I had great preparation leading up to nationals so I am certain that we will be faster at worlds.  Since we are already 5 seconds faster than last year (although the conditions were faster today due to the high heat and humidity) I think that we are going to have a great race and hit the podium again.

 

We both found it a little odd that the national team coach didn’t say so much as a word to us after coming within 4/10 of a second of the national title, but it is par for the course.  I thought that we were starting to gain some ground and that the East vs. West thing was behind us... I guess that I was wrong.