I always said I’d try to keep at least semi regular posting going, I wasn’t going to have one of THOSE blogs. Well, I have one of THOSE blogs now. Lets see if I can’t kick start things again.

Updates and stuff… in no particular order.

I am in no way an Apple fanboy. I’ve made my Apple/Mac slurs along with the best of them in the PC world, but slowly and surely more and more Apple products are creeping into my life. How exactly does that happen? I’ve had an iPod for a while, but who doesn’t. That hardly counts, even. Last year I bought an AppleTV, which makes for a pretty decent and compact video streamer when hacked for XBMC. (Though it may soon get replaced with a small Atom HTPC with even more flexibility). In September it was time for a new MP3 player and I bought a 32GB iPod Touch. My reasons for going this (expensive) route were the Nike+ integration (which I fully associate with keeping me running over the last 9 months). It turns out I use the Touch a whole lot more than I expected. Its a great little couch browser, theres some legitimately good games and apps available for it. Its got a good screen for doing video and media on planes and traveling and, in a pinch, it makes a decent ebook, though I still prefer my full sized ebook readers.

Fast forward to April and Apple finally updates the MacBook Pro line of laptops. I’ve been feeling the restrictions of my Asus 1000HE netbook for a while. Its was a good couch machine but the tiny screen and weak processor made it pretty much useless for doing any sort of photo work. I didn’t want a ginormous 15.4″+ lap-breaker system either. I missed the days of my 14.1″ ThinkPads. Anything larger than that is just too big for my purposes. I had my eye set on a 13″ MacBook Pro, fully expecting them to get the new Core i5, or at least i3 treatment with the new refresh. Unfortunately Apple didn’t see fit to go that route and continued using the Intel Core2Duo processors. After some serious thought and consideration I ordered a 13″ anyway. I don’t really need the horsepower of the i5, as nice as it would be, and the nearly $650 price difference between a 13″ and 15″ MacBook in decent spec just couldn’t be rationalized.

So far I really like the 13″. Its just the right size for a portable laptop. The screen is beautiful, even if its glossy, which wouldn’t be my first preference. The MBP trackpad can’t be beaten for control and I love the keyboard. The solid Aluminum block design is pure sexy too. I would like a bit higher res screen and an eSATA port, but at the 13″ level the only laptop that comes close is the HP Envy 13, and it costs MORE than the 15″ MacBook!

OSX had a bit of a learning curve but I’m pretty comfortable with it now. Having a Unix back end makes it feel like a Linux flavor to me. I’m not a convert, by any stretch. Its still clunky in a lot of ways and, despite what they say, I’ve had my fair number of crashes and even a lockup or two. Pretty much on par with Windows 7. I can’t say its better, I won’t say its worse. Its come a long way since the old PowerPC’s I last used from Apple.

Final verdict, pretty happy. We’ll see how it lasts longer term.

Next up on the techno-updates, shortly after my last blog post I got my Canon 7D and sold my 40D. Man, how I wish the 7D had come out sooner and I’d had it for Targa. If you had sat me down and told me to write out all the features I wanted in a Canon body for my shooting purposes I would have made the 7D. From the incredible focus modes, the speed, the feel, all the bells and whistles, there’s literally almost nothing else I’d want in a camera! I’ve only had the chance to use it at a couple of events so far, but I can tell I’m going to love this camera. Bring on the cars!

In late April, Daphne finally had her long-coming jaw surgery to fix her TMJ problems. It was a long time coming and we’re both glad to have it out of the way. Everything went very well and she’s doing great now. The surgery and recovery were pretty rough, but I think everything went as expected. There’s still some braces and recovery to go but things appear to be on the proper mend.

We head off for our summer vacation in a couple of weeks, off to Savannah, Georgia via Charlotte, North Carolina where we’re going to visit some friends. We’re going to be in Savannah for our 10th wedding anniversary. A whole decade. How in the heck did that happen?? Wouldn’t trade it for anything though. I can’t wait to get away…

More stuff to write, but I should save it for other posts so I actually keep updating.

Interesting month, October, but hard to summarize.

Late last month I took a western-jaunt to Toronto for a few days to visit a friend. It doesn’t seem like that long since I’d been there but we did the math and I think its actually been 6 or 7 years. I’m getting to that point in life where I’m acutely aware at how quickly time goes by. I can see why people start to have breakdowns.

Visiting my friend was the primary goal of the trip but we had a bit of an agenda planned… the first night we threw on our darkest metal-blacks and headed to The Sound Academy to see my current band of the moment, DethKlok! Dethklok is an odd deathmetal band spawned from the Adult Swim show ‘Metalocalypse’. Its a violent, offensive, over the top and entertaining show about the most brutally popular band on earth. The music turns out to be excellent melodic metal and the show was great. Its been a long time since I’ve been to a metal show and, this being my year of concerts, I really enjoyed myself. I even sort of missed my long hair for a minute.

The next day was the launch event of Forza Motorsport 3 at the Canadian National Exhibition grounds. A simple 30 (down to <20!) second slalom course was setup and folks brought out their cars to do ride-alongs and even some public drives. I had the chance to drive my friend’s Honda Fit but I’m very rusty when it comes to Slalom and decided I’d rather shoot the event instead. It was fun but a long day overall.

The following Tuesday night it was time for the ears to bleed again, this time to see Metallica at the Air Canada Centre. Another great show but for different reasons. It was really interesting to compare and contrast the smaller club metal show with the giant arena one back to back. Metallica are essentially the ‘U2 of Metal’ at this point. Their music is very polished and they have the spectacle down to a science. The old guys can still rock a show though, even if they’ve reached the point where they drop beach balls on the audience for the finale. Seriously… Metallica is dropping BEACH BALLS on their audience!

While I was away the BAC RallyCross season got started, judging from the brown AMP-clay coloured car-blob in the driveway it looks like it was a fun and muddy day. Daphne did very well coming in with a 4th overall time for the day. Next event is November 22nd and I look forward to shaking the cobwebs off. There just hasn’t been a lot of driving in anger for me this year.

You may have guessed from my last post that I started running (hopefully) regularly a couple of months ago. Its something I’ve been putting off for ages but it was time to start. Prior to September I can pretty much count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever run when it didn’t involve getting to something or away from something. So far it’s been an interesting experience. I haven’t quite reached that plateau where I truly enjoy it but I haven’t minded it nearly as much as I expected. I’ve at least gotten to the point where I crave doing it and miss when I don’t. Having the Nike+ pedometer for my iPod gives me the geeky feedback I need to keep myself motivated too. Of course now that I’ve finally build up momentum the weather turned and the time shifted so its more and more inconvenient to go running, but I’m trying my best to lot lose momentum! You can see the Nike+ widget at the bottom right of this page, if it looks like I’m slacking please send me snarky comments!

Have I mentioned I hate winter? (Possibly with the exception of RallyCross, but I prefer doing that in the dry and warm too!)

Putting this out there for all to see hopefully makes sure I don’t slack off.

9 days until the 2009 Targa Newfoundland tarmac rally. We’re headed back for the 6th consecutive year so this is really the usual fall milestone for us. Its a hectic week but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The social aspect, the scenery, the people of Newfoundland… oh yeah, and the cars!

I did a little Hero Card shoot the other night for the Barbarian Mutter Werks team, of which my wife is now a member. She’ll be taking up the right seat for the event having an entirely new Targa Experience! It’ll definitely be different shooting her from the sidelines.

Seems like I’m settling in to about one update a Month. I’d like to do more but you know, maybe it just takes a month to build up something worth saying.

Big news this month is that we finally only have one Mortgage! Our previous house closed on Friday and we received a big ‘ol cheque. Though we were never stretching things to any sort of limit, its still a relief to not have to worry about it selling. Seeing it go was a little bit melancholy, really. You only get one first house and it was ours for 8 years. It was a good place to live and we had a lot of good times there. I hope it makes the new folks as happy as it did us.

I’ve been asked once again to be the official photographer for the Targa Newfoundland rally so preparations are under way. As a big change this year I’ll be doing the job without my co-driver as Daphne will be spending the week in someone else’s car. Its a great opportunity for her, it’ll definitely be interesting shooting her from the sidelines.

The last few weeks have been pretty busy, even not counting the process of selling the old house. Two weekends ago was the 15th annual Slalom at Slemon in Summerside, PEI. After a few crazy weeks I just wanted to go and relax so I decided to forgo driving and jut shoot for the weekend. While I enjoyed myself, I really should have got in a car. By Sunday I was really regretting my decision. Oh well, c’est la vie. No Slalom for me this year. Daphne drove ‘Leon the Neon’ with very respectable times for the weekend.

Pretty much as soon as we got back from PEI was back on the road, this time to Indianapolis for business. A quick trip involving 3 hours on the tarmac in Toronto because of lightning, getting a VW Bug Convertible for rental with no headlights when the Avis girl saw my reaction at being offered a Grand Marquis and a trip to a great little Camera store to buy some goodies.

I’m getting used to Indianapolis, I get sent there a fair bit, but I’m really ready for a proper vacation. Too bad there isn’t one on the schedule.

We should be painting about now, too bad life doesn’t stop when we have chores to do.

Off to Quebec for the Rallye Baie de Chaleurs. We won’t be painting there, either.

Slalom-y.

We’ve been in the house for a few weeks now and its starting to feel like home… an empty, empty home. Currently we still have the old house on the market and it hasn’t moved as quickly as we would have liked. Some of this is our fault since we really should have done a bit more to it before the first-week viewing rush, but we listened to our agent that the aggressive pricing we put on the house would have people looking past things like ‘needs paint’ and ‘ugly carpet’. A busy weekend later and we’ve got the paint and carpet issues on the way to resolution, just have to get people in the door again.

We’ve spent some time getting minor things around the new house done, some minor plumbing issues corrected, stuff moved around wallpaper pulled down. We’re going to start painting this weekend and be on the road to making it our house properly. Unfortunately the one major thing we want to do, replacing the carpet with hardwood, has to wait until we’ve sold the old house. Good times.

Our lives have been pretty consumed by house stuff the last few weeks, which isn’t surprising. We have managed to squeeze out time for hobbies though. A couple weeks ago Daphne took the ARMS Road Racing School and participated in her first wheel to wheel race in the TRAC Tour series. Race #2 is this weekend. She now officially competes in motorsports a LOT more than I do. How did THAT happen?

Never have I wanted to play a puzzle game so badly. C’mon, you can conjure a crayon-animated Cthulhu and have him fight God on a skateboard!

Gratuitous artsy shot!

Lets see if its another month before I update again…

I really haven’t had time to sit down and write much here since we’ve done some pretty extreme re-arranging of our lives in the last month. Lets hit the hilights…

1) After 20 years I cut my hair off. No I don’t have any decent pictures yet.
2) Daph started her long march towards having her jaw problems corrected.
3) We bought a new house which means
4) We have to sell our current house

The order of importance in those items probably depends on your perspective. The hair thing is pretty shocking to a lot of people. I’ve had long hair since early highschool mostly out of frustration with it being thin and extremely hard to manage. Throwing it back into a pony tail was just easier, except more and more it wasn’t even that and I was just fed up with it. I actually went into the hairdresser asking for a buzz cut thinking that was the only alternative but thankfully she talked me into something more reasonable. I had terrible visions of being utterly fed up with it again in any sort of short/medium length because of remembering how much I hated it the last time I had it this short. The big difference now is that ‘bed head’ is fashionable. A spot of gel and a quick muss and you’ve got a socially acceptable hair style. I still have to swallow my perfectionist ‘its so messy!’ reaction some mornings but mostly its pretty easy and I’m a lot happier. I should have done this years ago.

I know, I know, this post is useless without pics. I’ll find something.

Daph has been long afflicted with temporomandibular joint problems (TMJ in the common parlance) and her change is that she’s started the corrective process. Its unfortunately long, painful and expensive, but the risks of leaving it unattended plus the general discomfort were just becoming too much. It’ll be a long haul of braces, oral surgery and general misery, but it’ll be worth it in the end… Of course thats easy for me to say.

So that leaves… the house. In typical Daph and Gord fashion we went from casually pondering looking for something that had a bit more space and was a bit more ‘us’ than our current starter home, to signing papers in about a week. We did the same thing when we bought our current place, it was one of the houses we looked at on our very first night out with the Real Estate agent and the whole process just tumbled into place. I don’t think its that we’re that easy to please, we just know what we want when we find it. Unfortunately the timing was pretty bad, as the day after we signed the letter of offer I had to go on a business trip to Indianapolis, leaving Daph to handle all the back and forth. She was still here when I got home, though. She couldn’t have been TOO upset.

The house is a bit further out of town on the Bedford side of Middle Sackville but thats really not a big deal. Currently it will add about 10 minutes to our commute time and probably a fair bit less than that once a new highway ramp opens in the fall. The payoff, however, is worth it. The property is off of Springfield lake, although its on the land side, not waterfrontage unfortunately. Its a heavily wooded property with just over an acre of space and the nearest neighbors couldn’t even be shouted to if you tried. Exactly what we wanted. Other things we were looking for were a garage (2 car attached), a good deck (8′ wraparound deck on two sides, lots of room/possibility to expand), an open concept kitchen (excellent layout for entertaining with a great dining room), and not much lawn (lawn in the back, a bit in the front other than that its trees!). This house has it all and then some, and boy do I mean then some. At 2600 square feet its quite a bit more house than we were looking for, and definitely more than we need, but the property was too perfect to pass up and we love the house, even if its too big. I just feel a little guilty that its just the two of us (and our gigantic cats) in such a big place.

Picture gallery of the house here. Stay tuned for the housewarming(s)!

As I write this we’re in the midst of packing, packing, packing and purging, purging, purging. We’ve been in our current house for 8 years now and that leads to a lot of… stuff. So far I’ve done a purge of old computer equipment on Freecycle (Wow, I did NOT expect the response I got!) and today we get rid of a lot of the used car fluids and scrap metal that have been collecting over the years. Its still overwhelming, though. Lots of work yet to be done.

Also our RallyCross season has now ended, congrats to our partner Ian for taking the overall championship as well as tops in Prepared class. Now time to start getting ready for Rallysprint!

Isn’t it funny how inanimate objects can ‘hear’ things? My desktop is getting a bit long in the tooth, considering I built it so I could play Half Life 2, which was released in November, 2004. Lately, I’ve been thinking about getting a nice shiny new multi (Probably Quad) core system that will eat Lightroom for dinner, and this morning I walked into the office to see my Desktop on the BIOS screen:

S.M.A.R.T. STATUS ALARM: DRIVE ERROR - BACKUP AND REPLACE

Hmm. The system won’t even boot without flipping back to the BIOS. Bad juju. The drive is no loss since its a 7 or 8 year old 120GB Seagate and most of the important stuff is off. Its rebuilt now but I think its time to go shopping!

Remember folks, backup early, backup OFTEN!

I really need to start seeing other continents.