hexstatik

very early saturday morning, crystal and i headed out to horseshoe bay to catch a ferry to the sunshine coast for a weekend of kayaking and crabbing in sechelt inlet. after a short wait for the ferry, we found ourselves pushing off from the boat launch at peddles and paddles and on our way. our chosen campsite was on the west side of the inlet, so we decided to cross right away before the winds got too strong and make the crossing more difficult to manage. after only a short paddle, we were across the inlet and heading toward our campsite at halfway beach. we had timed our padding so that the prevailing winds and tide would be in our favour and they definitely helped to make the 2.5 hour paddle that much easier.

after getting caught in a freak rain shower, we arrived at the beach to find that one group had already set up camp at the far end, so we planted our stake at the south end of the beach. in no time at all, we were all set up and back on the water to drop our traps (1 crab and 1 prawn) into the water. with only 50ft of rope on each trap, our options were limited and it took a bit of trial and error before we found a spot that would work. we left our traps in over night with the hope that we would score some prawns.

unfortunately, except for a few jelly fish and two sea stars, we came up empty all weekend. crystal blames the “commercial” crab food the we opted for considering we didn’t have refrigeration for either chicken or fish heads. while i was convinced it would work at the time of purchase, i think we’ll stick to chicken or fish heads next time.

overall, it was a great, sun filled weekend that allowed us to try out all our new super light camping gear. the conditions for the paddle home this morning alone would have made for a great day, but combined with the sun and fun of the previous two days, it was definitely a great long weekend.

Crystal’s version of the weekend’s events are up, and hers has photos!

after reading an wired article about the clover, i did a quick google search to find out if any cafes in vancouver had managed to aquire one. luckily, of the only 250 machines manufactured by hand before the company was bought by starbucks, 8 are located in vancouver, 2 of which belong to caffé artigiano.

caffé artigiano is known locally for bringing in world class coffees and cup of excellence winners that often retail for $130/lb or more and over the past couple of years, i’ve tried a few different winners from the cup of excellence awards. it will be interesting to compare those (brewed in a french press) to the el salvador cup of excellence winner #2 i’ll be sampling tomorrow with my team for our morning coffee break. at $5.95/cup though, it’s not something i’ll be enjoying very often. i’ll report the results back here tomorrow.

Update: so, the results are in. the coffee was pretty damn good, and didn’t have a single tinge of bitterness. now, was it the clover, or the award winning coffee? i don’t know, i would have had to have a cup brewed in a french press and a cup from the clover at the same time to distinguish if the clover machine itself made that much of a difference. either way, it was a nice little treat.

you know, now that canada’s wireless auction is complete, i am totally ready to have a total shake up of the canadian cell phone industry, and i think the rest of the country is too. we definitely need it!

what, from ridiculous voice and data packages for the iPhone from Rogers, to getting charged for incoming messages by Bell and Telus, Canadians are being asked to bend over by every cell carrier available.

the best parts about getting billed for incoming messages by your carrier are:
a) they are no longer motivated to block spam from their networks, you’re going to pay for it (in fact, there is now incentive for them to allow it)
b) they have effectively just doubled their profits on text messages because they get to bill you AND the person you send the text too. bastards.

the one positive thing about all this is that the federal minister of industry, jim prentice, has taken notice and is finally standing up for canadians and asking Bell and Telus to justify charging consumers the new text messaging rates.  

like my good friend zameer pointed out, how is it that in a country with 1/10th the population of the united states, our cell phone carrier profits are equal to those in the united states? an excellent question i think.

this was sent to me by a co-worker last friday. unfortunately, i decided to watch it at work and had to explain to a cube mate why i laughing so hysterically. if you’re in IT, you’ll probably be able to relate.

plug your headphones in and enjoy: the website is down

a few weeks back, crystal and i went down to the US to do a little shopping. while at the seattle premium outlets, i stopped off at a starbucks to enjoy a grande latte. apparently, while starbucks prides itself in consistency of it’s product, the branding and experience is slightly different in the two contries. when i ordered my coffee, i was asked my name and the barrista wrote it right on the cup. odd. also, the cup had a brown logo, whereas here, we have green. perhaps they are just changing their branding and it hasn’t moved up to canada yet.

the whole name thing though is a bit weird though - next time, i’m going to ask the barrista their name before i give mine.