I’ve been up since 7am and was planning on doing work until I had to go to the gym/class. Class is at 2–it takes 10 min to walk to the gym, 1 hour to workout, 15 min to shower and change, and 30 min to get to school. I use this to calculate what time to leave home *everyday* and I’ve never miscalculated until now. For some reason, today I calculated I had to leave at 1:00. It didn’t dawn on me that this was a blatantly incorrect calculation until I was at the gym starting to change into my workout cloths. Arg!

At least I had enough time to catch the subway (where I am right now) to make it to school on time.

Yes I’m a big geek but it makes life easy sometimes. I’m going to the John Orr dance this year and wanted an easy way to see who else is going. The list they give you right now is an alphabetical PDF. I wanted an Excel version that would allow me to group people by year and degree so I can easily find people I know. I figured since I did all the geeky leg work I’d just share the list with the world (jonorroct31.xls).It’s current as of today. I might do an update if I feel the need to see a new list or if someone bugs me. I might be compelled to do the dinner list as well if someone bugs me.

That was a fun trip. The pictures can be found here. The story with pictures:

Flew into calgary

Crashed a b-day party, used their hammock and got free (ALBERTA) beef:

Noticed that gas is expensive in the west (blurry but it says 117.9)

Drove to Edmonton and went to the only real attraction… the mall:

Bowled and Mini-putted. My cousin is a shark so all I had to do was stay close to Paul and we won:

Paul ate a lot of beef jerky during the course of the trip:

Went to Jasper:

Took a gondola up a mountain, we decided to hike up to the top. I realized that I was wearing sandals but we did it anyways:

We went whitewater rafting:

Hung out at a beach. I found a golf ball:

Drove to Banff and saw some nice stuff:

Drove to Kelowna, hung out at the beach:

Got to Vancouver, hung out, lots of beach time, it rained, we left:

fin.

I’ll be visiting each of the following destinations for a day or two each:

• Calgary
• Edmonton
• Jasper/Banff
• Kelowna
• Vancouver
• Seattle

Drop me a line if you have any suggestions of what to do or people to see (e.g. you).

p.s. This means I’ll be AFK for a few days.

I came across a cool site that uses images to determine “who you really are ” it’s called VisualDNA. Here are my results:

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Well, I got home this morning at 2 AM and was woken up by some construction workers at 9 AM. This is wonderful since I only had 4 hours of sleep on the previous 2 nights. ugh.

Here’s a description of my vacation by use the the public pictures I’ve posted over here:

Air Canada sucks. They totally made the start of my vacation suck. I got up at 3AM to go to the airport and waited for 1.5 hours in a line to check my baggage. Apparently they thought scheduling 4 flights, all leaving for the USA, at 6:30 AM wouldn’t cause any problems. When I finally managed to get to the gate, the lady at the counter told me that the plane was greatly oversold and there were 5 people without seats. She was bumping me. Luckily for me though, a family of 4 had 3 tickets and refused to fly separately so they got bumped instead I got a seat. Once on board the plane we were informed that the Captian was not on board but would be shortly. A mere 2 hours later, sitting on the tarmac, the Captain arrived to command us on our 3 and change hour flight.

Arrival time: 12:15 pm. Here’s a picture of the line for checking baggage:

My vacation finally started, here’s the first thing I did followed a picture of the room:

At some point during the first 36 hours, I won a bottle of champaign and a trophy for representing my team in a “name that jazz tune” contest. We lost 7 to 4 but the consolation prize was considerably better than what I was given for losing at floor hockey back in the day:

First stop, San Juan for the evening. I did some sight seeing, had some dinner, and then partied at this great place called senor Frog’s. They have this big plastic container called a “yard” which they fill up with whatever you want. The place feels like a frat party. Some pictures of the party:

Next day, St. Thomas. Best beach in the world (Megen’s Bay). Here are some pictures from the day:

Next stop, Antigua:

Next stop, Tortuga. Yes, the same Tortuga that was in Pirates of the Caribbean. There are some commercialized pirate themed things that I did see but nothing authentic seems to remain. Some general pictures:

I saw a few scotiabank branches during my trip, here’s the one in Tortuga:

I went snorkeling. Here is the Captain of our boat:

Me snorkeling:

At one point when we were moving to a different location we apparently stole the equivilant of an open water parking space from another boat. The Captain of the other boat, drunk, started cursing and yelling at us. The only non-curse word I could make out was mutiny. Maybe the pirate heritage is alive and kicking? Picture of the other boat whose parking spot we stole:

We then headed back to Florida. Of course, no Caribbean trip is complete without the obligatory fruity drink:

There are loads of other public photos (161 to be exact) so take a look at them. There’s lots of stuff I skipped.

Now I have to clean my apartment which I left in a state of total disarray, unpack, do laundry, and get ready for classes tomorrow.

Yes, I’m going on vacation very soon to a place that is very warm. Walking back after my Managerial Accounting exam explains why I can’t wait. Pictures of the great Toronto weather:

Poor dogs.

I’m quite surprised by the level of security needed to get into just about any building (condo and office): multiple doors requiring an access card (or equivalent) just to get in; elevators that only work with access cards; and big huge cage doors that say to me “f**k off!”

It’s also a little surprising to see signs on a few parks (e.g. small field with a baseball diamond and a few trees) saying that no one is allowed in the park between 10pm and 6 am.

Yesterday I went to “Telus Science World” and saw the lego exhibit. Very cool. I then had a 2.5 hour lunch by the water:

If you weren’t aware, I’m in vancouver right now. I’ve been pestered by a certain someone to blog about the city. Here is my oh-so-uninformed-opinion-after-being-here-a-few-short-days:

1. It is really pretty here. Proof:
   
2. People seem to focus a lot more on quality of life here. I’m told that just about everyone skips out of work on Fridays in the Summer.
3. There’s got to be a big labour shortage here. I’ve seen lots and lots of ads looking for people–skilled and unskilled.
4. Related to number 3, Poverty/homelessness seems to be a huge issue here. For a city its size there are a huge number of homeless people. Here’s a picture in what would be considered the ghetto:
   I heard that the city is planning on shipping the “undesirables” out of town for the Olympics–go Vancouver, way to solve that problem. Ugh.

So I’m enjoying myself here. Off to Calgary on Friday. TTFN.