Random Vista's

I took my daughter around Ile Bizard tonight so she could take photo's for her photography class. As she put it, Ile Bizard is at least good for a few old barns and that makes a great subject.

I parked the car on side of road a few times and went out with her to take pictures too . On the right is the Riviere des Prairies, notice the moon and it's reflection, facing Ste Genevieve. The other is the reflection of trees in a pond near the side of the main road on Ile Bizard.

User Access Controls = Vista Hell

So I've been in Vista hell for several months. I don't turn off the UAC because I figure the average schmuck using Vista will have them on. But man do they annoy me. I like that new apple ad on TV. The mac is speaking to you, allow? Allow? allow?

My boss' boss is this somewhat more conservative looking fellow, a little bit older then me. He's a very nice man, very down to earth. He was working on a Vista issue with one of my employees earlier this week, and after they debugged an issue together, he sent out an email giving steps to reproduce the problem to his programming team, copying my employee.

One line in the email said "Turn on UAC, for maximum pleasure". Had my employee laughing so hard he had to share with the rest of us. It was just so unexpected coming from this VP :)

Spring has sprrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrung!

I'm sitting here crying tonight, after my sweetie went to sleep, the 8 hour time different is a real PITA. When I looked into his eyes in the webcam, I could not stop myself from crying, and each time I see his eyes in my mind again I start to cry again.

However it does not stop me from feeling the allure of spring. It's almost tangible. It was 10 C outside today. I saw people on bicycles and inline skates... in between the rest of the snow left on my lawn is all sorts of leaves of bulb plants starting to grow. I could see crocus, tulips, daffodils, snow drops and glory of the snow

Here's another photo of the same trees outside my bedroom window around sun down.

Gnomes?

I was browsing through the photo's I took in 2006 and there was this series of pictures with My Little Gnomie, my lava lamp and my Moonet. This is the best of this particular set. I have no idea what was on my mind the day I took this particular picture.

It is a pity My Little Gnomie is so big, otherwise I would have dragged him to Dubai with me. I mean I'm sure My Little Gnomie would have loved to pose in front of the Burj Al Arab.

Of course I could always have a trunk full of Gnomes. No wait that is a " Yaris with a trunk" commercial...

Snow all melted

I took the picture of snowy trees out my bedroom window 4 hours ago, same view, 4 hours later with the Spring sun....

Broken Water Pipe

IT was a good thing I had decided to take some pictures of the pretty snow outside yesterday and this morning. It made me notice something odd, snow melted in a really weird pattern.. Did not hear the water last night, but sure heard it from my bedroom bathroom's window when I took pictures of the trees still full of snow...

Nice isn't it?

Here's a nice picture of the snowy outside before the sun came out today, taken from my front bedroom window. You can see my apple tree, and birch tree branches full of snow and the neighbors fir tree in the back ground.

Pain: Together but so far away.

I have the song 'Pain' by Three Days Grace stuck in my head. This is part of the chorus:

Pain, without love
Pain, I can't get enough
Pain, I like it rough
'Cause I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all

So it's been looping in my mind for a few days now. Pain sometimes is what reminds us that we are still alive. The pain I'm going through at the moment, is being apart from a person I love. The pain kills me at times. I was crying earlier remembering how all the little things felt. I miss being in the same location as him. I know the emotions are still there. I know I would feel him no matter where he was in the world. [And now I'm getting flash backs of that show "Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?"]. The 11,000kms that separates us makes it kind of difficult to back him up against a wall to kiss him ya know?

Ok.. I should get myself to bed. I'm not completely over jet lag. I mean tonight I mostly slept between 8pm-1am. I dozed off sitting on a straight chair in front of my laptop when my sweetie went to sleep. I migrated to my bedroom to watch TV, I don't think I saw any program completely. Missed most of Law & Order and most of CSI Miami [Even the bad one liners did not keep me awake]. I hope I can sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream...

Gros beta!

Just before Christmas, some of my team and I at work borrowed a beta VCR to convert old beta tapes to media files. I got 7 or 8 of my beta tapes converted. Last week I started making DVD's out of the image files. Not something I'm particularly good at, I even ended up making blank DVD's the first time around.

One of the beta's was a tape of my daughters, at random events where my ex happened to have taped them because we had access to a camera. First scene is daughter at maybe 10-12 months old. First in our apartment, then at the pool for her swimming lessons. If I remember correctly, there's also a christmas in Florida with my parents, and one birthday party of each daughter.

Those tapes had been lost to me pretty much since daughter was 5 years old, because a beta tape had gotten caught into the machine and she used a knife to try to retrieve it and killed the mechanism. I was incredibly grateful we had a co-worker whose dad had a beta VCR that we all got old beta tapes converted.

I had a point... to say that this morning I handed the DVD of the girls as toddlers to daughter along with birthday wish... I thought a trip in memory lane could be fun.

I also got the tape of my wedding 21 years ago on DVD, if nothing else it is highly entertaining because it was taken by bro-in-law who was totally intoxicated. His idea of stuff to tape was uhm interesting.

My baby is 20 today

My eldest daughter, who it seemed was a baby just yesterday, turned 20 today. Time flies when you are raising children. Can't believe she's 20 already. That really ages me.

Happy Birthday Sweetie!

Gotta love the Nor'Easters

Sitting in my bedroom, I can hear the vent on my roof whining. The only time I hear that is when it is pretty windy out. Apparently it's 40Km winds. It seems stronger, just from the noise it's making and from how the birch tree in the front lawn is swaying.

Of course there will not be that much snow falling. 15cm's is nothing. I miss the big snowstorms of my youth. I think so long as I live on the Island of Montreal I won't see those anymore. Though moving 100km anywhere off the island would probably give me the snow I crave.

I love to watch it snow and am enjoying it now. Would be more fun if it wasn't in the city. Can't win them all. Sadly we don't get the full brunt of the nor'easters most of the time in Montreal. Between not being east enough and an island we just get the tail ends.

*****

Sigh, there was only 8 episodes of Little Mosque on the Prairie. I hope they make more shows for next fall. It promises to be as big of a hit as Corner Gas. Which also had their season finale last week.. with episode19. Can't complain there, this was the longest season they had. Love that show too. I was looking forward to go home both Monday and Wednesday nights just to watch the show,and if I happen to miss it, find it online and still watch it. Did not miss one episode of either show. But it's over for this year *sigh*

Jet Lag sucks

I dunno how much time it will take me to get over jet lag. I can't stay awake in the evenings and then I'm awake at 4 am. I HATE being awake at 4am, unless I stayed up that late. Waking up at 4am does really nothing for me.

Thankfully Daylights saving time was early this year [so much so I had to adjust my PC twice for it to take it], at least it's one less hour for me to re-adjust to. And besides it makes it only 8 hours different with my sweetie, gives us a bit more time together.

Something tells me I will be at work today way way early. I figured I'd write an email, then tried getting back to sleep but no luck. In fact my back is saying 'Get up dammit, before I seize'.

*sigh* I fell asleep last night during every TV show I tried to watch, couldn't even write an email, kept falling asleep. I tried so hard to stay awake till midnight so I'd get a good night sleep.

Grumble. Grumble Grumble

Miserable March in Montreal

Ok I admit I chose the title for it's alliteration. March isn't anymore miserable then usual in Montreal. I mean admittedly it was -21 when I arrived Wednesday evening and today it was 0. Also it was raining today. Meaning that there's coats of ice on all the snow now.

You can almost smell spring just around the corner. And that in itself would excite me, I'd be poring over seed catalogs and finding which new plant I want to add to the garden. Maybe next week. Now I'm still stuck in no man's land. Wanting to still be with my sweetie, instead of in my home. *sigh*

I cooked up a storm today. Great way to forget the time and make sure I'm well fed. I made an eggplant curry, and told my youngest when she saw the eggplant that it was all mine and she couldn't have any. In fact since people always make fun of the eggplant, I'm keeping my eggplant dishes all to myself. I made rice pasta to go with the curried eggplant. YUM! I also made a curried lentil stew [That smelt awesome, even cold, when I put it in a container to store in the fridge], and curried Indian vegetable stew along with some brown rice to accompany both. I should have food to eat till the end of the week. Was just thinking I bought spinach, and should make stir fried spinach with chick peas. Something to do tomorrow.

I ended making a Powerpoint presentation with my trip to Dubai. It has 92 slides and is about 92Megs large. It didn't dawn on me that it would end up this big. But it looks really nice on a 30" apple cinema panel when I play it at work :)

Last day in Dubai

The Burj Al-Arab in the day time. The second picture is a really pretty Mosque, the stone has this pink undertone. Such a beautiful building.

I'm all sad, this is my last night in Dubai. Though it's not the most easy country to live in, I will miss the people, especially my sweetie.

I've been to the beach twice during the day, and once at night. Good thing the first time was at night. I didn't realize there was Jelly fish, lots of Jelly fish and I walked in the water at night. This week I saw how many jelly fish were on the beach. Not something you want to be bitten by. ICK.

Isn't the persian gulf nice? This picture looks like a club Med ad. Love it. :)

Erections in the Dark.

This is the Burj Dubai in the dark.

Random pictures of erections in the dark.

Gotta love the 'double night' mode on my camera. The building that looks like a giant sail is the Burj Al-Arab.

Pictures circling in Bur Dubai

Pictures I took yesterday while we were circling.

Going around in circles in Bur Dubai

Yesterday we decided to go to the gold souk. Tourist sites encourage you to go there for the cheap gold. Of course we now know it's a bit of a tourist trap, though admittedly the gold is pretty cheap, say compared to Montreal.

The funny part is that we were looking for the gold souk. We had actually studied the map and written alternate ways to find it, should we get lost before crossing the creek. Well you know what they say about the best laid out plans. We drove around looking for the two streets I had marked on my paper, but they were not significant enough streets to be able to find them from the main road we were on and thankfully we turned around just before we got to Sharjah. We asked for directions several times and to be honest I got to think people were just sending us off to a wild goose chase. We eventually found one of the two streets and I suggested we park. At least it was a commercial area, and not residential like most of where we had been circling around. We took the first parking spot we found and didn't have change for parking machine and could not find a place opened to get change. For some reason most of the shops in that area seemed closed between 2 and 5. Of course it was 3 o'clock.

I had studied the map enough to know where to expect the gold souk so we walked and found it, but by the backside. We couldn't even find a door, but we found it's underground parking and entered that way. Of course most of the shops were closed until 5, except for the 1 food place, which interestingly enough actually had veggie burgers on their menu. So we ate, and window shopped for a bit. I did end up getting the one thing I really wanted to get, a new gold chain for my astrological sign pendant, that I've been waering for 20 years.

Overall there was way too much bling. I don't like things that are big or attract attention. But I looked at the different jewelry. Sometimes I find things pretty even though I would NEVER EVER wear it. I did spot a very delicate ring, no more then 2 mm wide with little sapphires and diamonds. I don't care for diamonds especially knowing most are 'blood diamonds', but this ring spoke volumes to me.. so much so my sweetie insisted getting it for me. It was a battle I wasn't going to win. So I've got this really perty ring now on my finger :)

On our way out, we actually left by the front of the building. It made me realize we must have driven past it early in the day. That fact was confirmed by the picture I'd taken of the building when we first drove past it. Of course it didn't say "Gold Souk", it said "Gold Land". How were we supposed to know???

The moral of the story is that it is so incredibly easy to get lost in Dubai traffic and roads.. especially the closer you get to Sharjah. People complain about the poor road signs in Montreal. Obviously they have NEVER been to Dubai.

Oh and we ended up getting a parking ticket. But it was about $50 CAD. Much cheaper then the parking tickets in Montreal [$75 CAD]

Getting Lost in Sharjah....

It seems to be a common joke in the UAE that one gets lost in Sharjah. Well this morning, we took a drive down to Sharjah to pick up one of my sweetie's friends, who had spent the night there. It didn't take long for us to get lost. I figured out we were going in circles when we passed both the post office and one particular mosque serveral times. It was interesting, we started from Dubai, went to Sharjah, back to Dubai and then dropped off the friend in Abu Dhabi. Not just anywhere in Abu Dhabi, but in the furthest suburb just on the edge of the desert. Because it was night by then I did not manage to get any pictures of the desert, but I did manage a few nicely lit up mosques. We ended up the trip back in Dubai of course at a Mc Donalds.

I've included 3 pictures. 1 is the post office in Sharjah, the 2nd is the mosque, and the 3rd is the McDonalds I spotted in Sharjah. McD's looks the same pretty much everywhere in the world don't they?