The Hilton Chronicle

Well another week has drifted by without too much excitement to report on. The snow from our dump last weekend is lingering longer than expected although temperatures have been hovering around freezing so the white stuff should be melting. It created some doozy icicles on the eaves though. Today we have some sunshine for the first time in a long time so that should help with the melting.
We celebrated Angela's 25th birthday with a little get together and some cake yesterday. Unfortunately I had to work evenings so the festivities had to be sandwiched in between that and church.
Interesting to see the feeding frenzy on the release of Tim Horton's stock into the wild. Investors have calmed down after the emotional rush to find shares and the stock closed a little lower than the peak out during the day. But I dare say that judging by the amount of business this company does, it's probably a pretty good investment. I always have a bit of wait in the drive through to play RRRRoll Up The Rim.

Posted 3:50 PM by Jeff

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

A Little Diving Music, Please...

I've cleaned up the "links" section over there on the left a little and I have added a link to "The Loonchaser Journals", a weblog started by our good friends Al & Noelle Melnychuck who are just leaving on a diving tour of Egypt & Jordan. They will be scuba diving in the Red Sea, one of the best places for diving on the earth, and have taken a laptop along with them to document their adventure. So we will be following along excitedly as they report back.
Speaking of diving, we received a free DVD from the dive shop where we recently acquired our snorkel gear that introduces one to the world of scuba diving. I have to say it looks fascinating and has whetted our appetites a bit. We are hoping there will be opportunity for some introductory lessons during the cruise.
And finally, I have a limited supply of the new CD from The IHS World Orchestra called "Around The World 2". If anyone is interested, just drop me an email. The orchestra just got back from a very successful tour of Israel, reports of which will be posted soon on the IHS site.

Posted 2:22 PM by Jeff

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Windows XP Boots on Mac !

And this just in.. from the "why would you want to do that?" department, it is now possible to boot up Windows XP on the new Intel Mac. A contest was held for anyone who was able to do this and the winner has now been found, winning a total jackpot of $13,000. But don't all you Mac users rush out to snag the latest copy of XP (like you would!) as it is not that easy as this article explains. But it looks like the world is homogonizing as it should. Mac and XP can co-exist, but make sure you load up an antivirus at the same time!

Posted 10:36 PM by Jeff

My Kingdom For A 4x4

Well, amazingly enough, the snow has already started to melt, at least on the roads and where we shoveled on the driveway and it only got up to -4 today. I figure that if we get some sunshine for the rest of the week the snow will be mostly gone by the weekend, just in time for the next forecasted dump. We actually ventured out in the car yesterday while roads were at their worst before any plows had been by, to, ironically, purchase snorkel gear for our trip. I picked up an inexpensive underwater camera also, so, I am quite excited to see how it performs. It is reusable and was only $50, about the cost of 4 disposable ones, so I'm not expecting professional looking pictures. We have a few rolls of 400ASA film left over from a previous trip before we got into digital that have to get used up. This camera is basically a small point and shoot inside an underwater housing so I suppose one could swap it out for a cheap digital if you could find one that would fit. But we'll see how it does with the film for now.

Posted 9:37 PM by Jeff

Saturday, March 18, 2006

ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!

The problem is, about 2 hours after these pictures were taken it was back the way it was before we started shovelling. And the snow continues to fall. That tall ship is looking better every minute.

Posted 1:42 PM by Jeff

Monday, March 13, 2006

Whether The Weather Be Hot.....

Well I guess it's official. This winter has been one of the "balmiest on record according to this report which goes on to say that our winter has been quite "un-Canadian". For that I have to agree as I cannot remember such a snowless, mild winter in my 54 years of complaining about the weather. However, I think we may have broken a record for the quickest "catch-up" month in history if the mounds of snow on our yard are any indication.

Posted 9:30 PM by Jeff

Sunday, March 12, 2006

That And The Kitchen Sink

As if we didn't have enough high tech devices to wear around our necks, tuck in our belts and bury in our briefcases, along comes Microsoft introducing the world to the UMPC or "ultra mobile personal computer". But just what is a UMPC? Well, based on this cryptic ad campaign from Microsoft it's hard to know. But as this article explains, it is smaller than a laptop and bigger than a cell phone and supposedly does all that your laptop/PDA/cellphone/iPod will do but in a smaller package. But, this might be a hard sell for Microsoft as the consumers out there are up to their collective ears with neat gadgetry and the addition of something that is unexplainable might be met with some resistance. In addition, the battery life for the first editions of these new devices is only between two and four hours which will render it useless far sooner than most tech hungry users would like. I don't know, but the industry is sensing that Cap'n Bill and his crew might be taking a risk on this one and may be in for stormy seas.

Posted 9:57 PM by Jeff

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Midnight Blues

I've been working midnights all this week and at the same time Dianne has been on holiday so I have been sleeping downstairs in the new bedroom to be out of her way in order to sleep. The room seems fairly soundproofed and has proven to be beneficial in getting a decent sleep without Dianne having to worry about making a lot of noise. It's all over tomorrow, however, as Dianne is heading off to Vancouver for a three day continuing education course. She leaves around 6:00 am so I am going to run her out to the airport tonight during my lunch break.
I have spent some time this week putting together and booking things for a little trip Dianne and I are going to be taking at the end of May. As I alluded to in another post we are planning to head down to Florida to visit Nicole in her new digs and meet the people she will be working with down there. As well we will be able to check out the facility and have a look around the town of Crestview and surrounding area. But before we get there, we are booked on a seven day cruise aboard the Windjammer Barefoot Cruise ship the SV Legacy. The cruise takes us all around the islands of the Bahamas including Nassau and the island of Bimini. Following the cruise we are renting a car and driving from Miami up to Crestview for a bit of a road trip to see a few of the sights of Florida before arriving for our visit with Nicole. So, we are already starting to get excited about the trip as we do research on the cruise and get everything ready. Stay tuned for more details and eventually another "Adventure" link.

Posted 9:29 PM by Jeff

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Nikki Arrives Safely

Nice to see the sun out today after our 24 hour "snow off". The roads are pretty clear considering the amount of snow we got except the side roads, including ours, which are now the consistency of dirty flour. Makes getting into the driveway tough. There's more snow forecast for the weekend, though. So it's not over yet.
Had a call from Nikki last night to let us know she arrived safely in Crestview, albeit 1 hour late. Apparently there were problems with the plane in Edmonton which delayed the flight for 90 minutes and totally screwed up her itinerary. She was rerouted and ended up in Memphis at one point. But she is now settling in and looking forward to getting down to business, whatever that may be.

Posted 8:30 PM by Jeff

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Goodbye Nikki, Hello Winter

Today we said "so long, farewell" to our baby girl as Nikki set off on her new adventure. She is heading off to Florida, indefinitely, to work in the mission down there and is flying there even as I type this. And in a twist of poetic irony, the day she leaves for the warm sunny climes of Florida, Edmonton is hit with a massive dump of snow. It was a bit touch and go getting her out to the airport at 5:30 this morning, in fact, I had to basically dig the car out of the garage. But the highway was driveable and we made it on time and were joined by Lee and Angie to say our goodbyes. Here are some more pictures of her leaving as well as a few of the snow we are contending with. We also had a little going away party for her with the rest of the family which included a little ice cream cake. So the house is once more a quieter place.
Speaking of travel, Dianne is off on a little business trip next week. While I am on a midnight shift, she will be jetting to Vancouver on Thursday morning for a continuing dental education seminar with the rest of her office staff. She returns on Saturday. And, plans are underway for a special trip in mid May for Dianne and myself to celebrate our 30th anniversary. The plans aren't concreted in yet so I won't divulge anything other than to say it will probably be in Nikki's footsteps.
We spent an interesting evening last night at the Quick and Dirty Festival at the U of A where Sandi was performing in a small presentation that she also directed. The festival consisted of a number of short dramatic presentations that ranged from quite good to "don't quit your day job". Sandi's was very good with some neat choreography set to a French Canadian song. Here is a short clip.
Well now that the T4's and other receipts have filtered in I guess it's time to get at the tax returns again. It doesn't seem as painless as it used to be, probably due to the ease of use of the tax software. I could never go back to manual returns. And the convenience of e-filing is wonderful. The checks are in the mailbox within a week and a half.
I have been reading recently of Sony's plans to introduce it's new Blu Ray technology for HD DVD's. Industry analysts are already foreseeing another format war similar to that which Sony waged with the Beta Max vs VHS fiasco of the early 80's. Two camps are emerging: hardware manufacturers and movie distributors that side with Toshiba's HD-DVD format and those that side with Sony's brand new but very expensive Blu Ray technology. They are announcing that the first players for the new disks will cost around $900. Yikes! Looks like I won't be jumping on any HD bandwagon soon until this showdown is over.

Posted 12:04 PM by Jeff

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