One of the playgrounds beside Science World. That’s False Creek off to the left, the blue and yellow tents belong to the famed Cirque du Soleil. 

The aforementioned Big Ball of Science.

OK, this is one puzzle I was determined to finish, but Michael was a big help.

One of the many puzzles we attempted to do this morning. Whenever I go to Science World, I feel like a dufus. It takes me so long to do a puzzle that a kid usually figures it out before I do. This is no doubt linked to the fact that I’m always at Science World on a Sunday after a long Saturday night.

Michael and his new friend Brandon, hiding from the giant arachnid on the ceiling of Science World. Since the other kids had chicken pox, I took Michael out on his own today, to the “Big Ball of Science”, a.k.a. Science World. I pulled an all-nighter giving this website an overhaul, so by about 10am, I was already bagged, while Michael was raring to go.

Dinner at Chez Hopkins Friday night, with Eliza, Tosca, Mike, Mark, and Vicky.

Dessert at Chez Hopkins, courtesy of Eliza. 

The twins, last weekend. 

I’m trying out a new feature, Photoblogging, which allows me to post and HOST photos directly through an application called Hello, from Picasa. There are some great features here, including being able to enlarge the photo by clicking on it (three different sizes as options). By far the most appealing feature of this is being able to host the photos on the Blogger server, thus saving space in my Telus webspace. Plus, I don’t have to rename, resize, or FTP the photo to my webspace, either. Who knows, maybe one day they’ll charge for this, but until then, I’m taking advantage of the convenience.

May 1, St. Bartholomew’s Church, Wolverhampton, England. In the bridesmaids’ car, a lovely white vintage Rolls Royce. (click on pic to enlarge)

I’m going to my first ApplesBC Computer Society Meeting this evening. Don’t laugh. For those in my inner circle, you know I barely use Macs — mainly at SFU and, more recently, the eMac — so why am I going?

Kevin, the true MacHead, says a Microsoft guy who’s involved with the programming of Office for Mac will be there tonight, and he wants to know if I’d like to go to gladhand and see if Office for Mac has new features that can help us migrate out of our PC environment over to the sunny side of the computing street.

Hey, why not? I wish I were more conversant in VirtualPC and all that jazz, but I’ve experienced firsthand enough compatibility problems at the office in our Mac and PC co-existence to ask a lot of questions.

Besides, an evening with a bunch of users and programmers will do my Inner Geek a lot of good.

Someone from Orkut complained that this blog has black text on a dark background. So far, he is the only person to complain about this, but he’s done it TWICE now, and will probably continue. But I’m not about to change my template for one – albeit annoying – guy. I’ve checked this blog in IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. I don’t know what black text he’s talking about, since I customized the template back at the beginning of the year, and all the text is coloured.

Please do me a favour and leave a comment if you are having any difficulty reading this blog, by way of odd colouring, messed up text layout, or whatnot. And don’t forget to include what browser you’re using, the version, and your screen resolution.

Thanks!!

I was at The Bay on Saturday afternoon, buying a gift for somebody in the cosmetics/fragrance department, which wasn’t busy since the weather was good. The ladies at the counters were on me like flies on… poop. I went in there to buy something fairly specific, but found myself in a sea of items that matched what I was intending to buy.

Clarins, Shiseido, Clinique, Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, Lancome, MAC, Helen Rubinstein, Guerlain… the array of brands was dizzying, and I was pretty unfamiliar with most of them, only knowing their names but not the products.

Finally, I made a decision on two gift sets. The cashier rang up the sale and asked if I had a Bay card or rewards like HSBC HBC. I said no. She looked at me expectantly.

“Would you like to get an HSBC HBC card?” she asked.
“No thanks,” I replied. “I don’t shop at department stores.”

She stopped, then looked at me like I’d just said I had a toad for breakfast.

“I go to department stores maybe once or twice a year,” I offered. I don’t know why I felt the need to say that, since what did it matter? I didn’t want a card. Years ago, I procured an Eaton’s card on the spot so I could get a discount at the till. That was the only thing I bought with the card, paid the bill, and never used it since… For anyone familiar with the demise of Eaton’s in Vancouver, that is indeed a long time ago.

“Once or twice year?” she repeated. Her movements after those words indicated to me that she had no idea where on earth (or, at least, in Vancouver) one would shop if not at The Bay. In fact, I think it stymied her, since she said nothing after that. I felt she was either waiting for me to offer an explanation for what I do with my money, or say that I’m unemployed and have a filthy shopping habit courtesy of my Aerogold VISA.

Inexplicably, I took the bait: “I spend my money on travel…” She glanced at my clothes, with either a look of oh yes, that’s obvious or where do you shop, then?

“I just returned from a trip…” I began. From that point, I think I brought her around by telling her how cheap clothes and shoes were in Spain, and how good the selection is in Europe. It’s obvious I’m no fashion maven. I was also tempted to round things off by telling her how I’m an advocate of clothes recycling — second-hand shops, consignment, Salvation Army, etc. — but I left it at that. I was more perturbed by the fact that there are people in this world who feel that they should only buy new, trendy clothing from the likes of department stores. Department stores are generally money-sinks, if you ask me…

I saw the film earlier this evening, and I have one thing to say:

If this film doesn’t turn you off McDonald’s food, I don’t know what will. A medical practitioner would have to intervene. I don’t know what was scarier: watching Morgan Spulock’s health decline at such a rapid pace, or watching the reactions of the people around him as his McDonald’s experiment took its toll on his internal organs and mental health. Scary, scary stuff.

Supersize Me

I’m at the new office with the million-dollar view, surrounded by muscular tradesmen… what better way is there to work? (Kevin’s going to laugh when he reads that tradesmen part.)

I guess the only way to beat that is to sit on the veranda with a tall, cool drink, but let’s not be greedy.

I took this pic from the top of the driveway, looking down the hillside towards the house (the office is to the left), which overlooks Jervis Inlet and what I think is the Garibaldi mountain range?? Yesterday I watched the ferry come in, which is amazing since when we were at the Sechelt office we never knew if the ferry was on time. I left the office at 6:16pm and was sitting in the ferry lineup three minutes later! My mileage was chopped in half, too, and I didn’t have to deal with that dratted Sunshine Coast Highway, either… all in all, the move was the best thing to happen to all of us (Kevin still has to move his family in; the house won’t be finished for probably at least another month or so).

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