Archive - June, 2005

----- 06.19.2005 --------
First & foremost, I want to wish my Dad a happy Father's day! He's the best Dad I've ever had and I wish him nothing but the best. Maybe once I shower up, I'll give him a call and talk a little longer then the brief "Happy Father's day" call earlier today. Why do I need to shower up? Cause I'm soaked! I just came back from a sweet little blade down to the Humber Bridge and back, and then a little more around the neighbourhood. It's nice & cool outside and I was haulin pretty good :) I went 16.9 KM and my average speed was 15.2 KM/h. I think I'm finally getting better at this! I can feel my endurance coming back, but I have a LONG way to go to get myself to where I was at the end of last season.

Hmmm, what have I been up to since my last update? Thursday I had an EMC technical forum that I attended instead of work. It worked out pretty good since we're about to make some big purchases and a lot of it will be what was talked about (and marketted) at the forum. I'm so excited for what the future holds! We've got some designs and ..... oh wait, I can't share those with you. Anyway, I'm really excited! This weekend was a lot of fun. I met up with Jen after I had my workout on Friday. Her and her friend Sam were at the spa getting a pedicure (sp?) and then went up to the Raddie to have a glass of wine on the patio. I met up with them and shortly after, Sam left and Jen & I had a couple more then left ourselves. On Saturday, we got up and did some housework around Jen's condo to get it ready for a birthday party she was throwing for her friend Mikey. I BBQ'ed burgers and we all had a good time up on her roof. Later on, we moved the party to Joe Mama's. I thought the jello shooters would have been the end of me, but we all made it home safe and sound. Today was a rather lazy day, working off a hangover for the most part. And then this evening I found it in me to go for a blade. If you told me this morning that I would be blading in the evening, I would have called you a liar! Anyway, that's about all. I guess I better hop in the shower... this shirt has gotten pretty cold, not to mention quite ripe smelling! Just what you needed to read... ;) OK, hope all is well with everyone. Later!

----- 06.12.2005 --------
Yesterday 80K (aka Cousin Andrew) and I went for a blade down to the beaches. Once we got there, I was delighted to see they finally repaved the path. Not only that, but the doubled the width of it. It's pretty awesome now! Anyway, while we were down there, there was a huge volley ball tournament on. I can't get over how many courts there are.... there must be about 75 !!!! Anyway, it was hot as a mofo out so we decided to take a dip in the water. We took our blades off and put our sandals on. We were thinking enough ahead to bring sandals, but not enough to bring beach towels. Oh well, we laid down on the sand (the HOT sand!) and tanned anyway. Every once in a while we took a dip in the water, then it was back to being beach bums. Around 3:30 we decided to head back. I thought I was going to die! I don't know if it was the extreme heat, this cold I just got over, or the fact that I had a backpack that felt like it was restricting me.... but whatever it was, I was having a hell of a time! No amount out water seemed to help... I was hurtin! So, I had to take a few rests on the way back. I feel sooo out of shape! Last year I was blading much harder and it seemed easier. Then again, most days weren't an "Extreme Heat Warning". I think it was about 32C, but with the humidex, it felt over 40C!!! But, I feel good for it now,and I cross the 100K mark, as you can see on my blade meter above.

After the blade I got home and relaxed a bit, then Jen came over. The 3 of us (Jen, me & 80K) went up to the roof for some beers & a BBQ. Summer is officially here!!! Later, we popped into Joe Mama's for a drink (or two), and then Jen headed home. I went across the street to the Raddie (aka Radison) and had a couple more beers on the patio with 80 & his buddy Ben. We called it quits around midnight and I came home to retire for the night.

GEEK SPEAK WARNING! For those of you who aren't geeks, you can stop reading..... This morning my uncle came over with his laptop. He had a nasty virus that had buried itself deep into the winlogon process. Using my new favorite tool, Process Explorer and HiJackThis (probably my 2nd fav tool), I was able to beat it. McAfee found the file with the "Vundo" virus, which was PCVSS.DLL (or something like that) and prompted to delete it on a restart. Well, if the file is loaded into memory before McAfee tries to delete it, it will get access denied because it's in use. So, using process explorer, I search the memory for the dll and found it in use by both explorer and winlogon. I fired up a command prompt and killed explorer. No more task bar.... but that's OK, I still had ALT+TAB to switch to my command prompt to do the deleting. Winlogon would be the tricky one. So, I got the command prompt ready. suspended winlogon, killed explorer, then killed winlogon. At that point, I quickly deleted the file with DOS and then the laptop blue-screened as I expected. But, I got it in time :) So when it came up, no more dll in memory.... cause there was no more dll :) From there, I cleaned up all calls to it from HiJackThis. Now at this point you might be thinking, "Why not stop it from starting, then delete it". Well, this process watches itself. As soon as the reg entries to run it are deleted, it writes them back.... ticky bastard! Anyway, once I kicked it's ass, I did a full sys update, virus scan, and the works. I went through every process to make sure I knew what they were and authorized their activity. Using TCPView and netstat, I made sure there were no backdoors listening on any ports. The system is back up and running smooth.... with no data loss :) Anyway, if you're ever stuck and need some help, feel free to email me and I can see what I can do to help or give advice. I'm still preparing to battle the botnets and rootkits that are next generation, waiting to unleash on the unsuspecting Internet. I've got a strategy to fight this, but I must remained tight-lipped as I intend to move it into a business. Want to be my partner? Let's talk.... I got some great ideas. OK, that's all of now. Cheers!

----- 06.08.2005 --------
Finally, I went out for a blade! It feels like forever since the last time I went. Oh, maybe because it has been forever! The last time I was out on them was May 21st! Tooo long ago! Now that I have my speedometer working, keeping track of distance is much easier! No more maps & rulers :) After work I hit the gym, then had lots of energy so I bladed to Jen's and visited her for about a half hour until she had to go out. Her place is a quick 2.8 K blade away.... 13 minutes worth :) I left her place and continued back to Queen's Quay and then took Cherry St. down to the Cherry St. beach path, and over to the bridge just before Leslie street. Then I turned around and headed back. It was 14 K total. My average speed was 14.4 KM/h. I'm sure I can improve that over the summer once my endurance comes back to me. Anyway, if you're interested in my progress, I'm charting the numbers in the blade-o-meter on the top of my page, as well as detailed totals for 2005 in Excel format. I figure if I keep them in excel, I can make some kind of cool graph or something at the end of the season. Or not.

What else is new? Well, for one, this roller coaster is! The Kingda Ka breaks all world records for roller coaster speed and height, becoming the tallest and fastest roller coaster on Earth. This jaw-dropping thrill ride launches riders from 0 to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds before catapulting them 456 feet (45 stories) into the sky! Pretty wicked!!! Be sure to check it out! What else is new? Grand Theft Auto San Andreas came out on the XBox yesterday! All the other GTA's provided so much fun that I just had to pick it up! I got into it a bit last night and it's pretty awesome from what I can tell. It appears they built in some Sim type stuff, where your character now has statistics that he never had. Pretty cool! I'm sure it will give me many hours of entertainment, like Vice City did. OK, well that's all for now.... I hear GTA:SA calling me! I hope everyone's doing great....

----- 06.06.2005 --------
This weekend was great! As you may have read in my previous update, I was at Woofstock, a huge dog festival, all weekend. I helped Jen and the other members of the Canadian Yorkshire Terrier Rescue man a booth in "Rescue Alley". Down the alley were many pitbull advocates. This is something I feel very strongly about!!! MY ONTARIO INCLUDES PITBULLS!!! What kind of barbarians what to punish an entire breed for what a handful of bullies may have done? Punish the deed, not the breed! OK, so someone's dog attacks someone, regardless of breed, that owner should be responsible. An assault charge? Yes! Time in jail? If they commited that same crime themselves and would be punished with jail time, then yes! Why can't we just make it mandatory to chip all dogs? Register the chipped dog to the owner. No different then our gun registry. If the owner loses their dog or need to prove a dog is theirs, the chip will help. If a dog escapes and hurts someone, the chip helps the authorities punish those responsible. Come August 29th, Bill 132 goes to court. THIS CANNOT PASS! I do not believe is "Breed Specific Legislation"!!!! OK, so pitbulls are banned. What next? Whose dog is on the hit list? Will it be the German Shepard? The Akita? What about those Jack Russels and their achilles-tendon shredding teeth? Come on folks! This is WRONG! Statistically, more children grow to become killers then dogs. Maybe we should ban children? After all, there's a much greater chance that they'll become a menace to society! Maybe they'll become a drunk driver and kill someone? Go postal? Harbour weapons of mass destruction? Anyway, I strongly urge you to check out Banned Aid. They have a link to donate towards the legal fees to fight this dreaded Bill 132. August 29th is just around the corner.... help while you can!!!

And on a cheerier note, I took a ton of pics this weekend! If I don't get them up tonight (and looking at the time I might not!), then I will very soon. It was a fantastic weekend and I think everyone there enjoyed themselves, especially our 4-legged (and 3) buddies! K folks... remember: Bill 132=BAD!

UPDATE:I decided to stay up and get the Woofstock Pics posted. Click on the picture to see them all:

----- 06.03.2005 --------
Finally, Friday is here! But am I going to go out? Maybe, but definately not late! This weekend is Woofstock, a huge dog festival. Jen is a member of Canadian Yorkshire Terrier Rescue. I'll be helping her man the booth this year. I don't think response has been too good for volunteers from the group so I think we'll be working it most of the time. It should be a great time.... if the weather holds! Right now I'm looking out my window and it's threatening to rain. It hasn't yet... but the forecast says it will. I hope they're wrong. Either way, there's where I'll be. And we have to get there early to setup. Like 6 AM early. Ugh!

And on a totally unrelated note, my plants are doing quite well! For those of you who have been to my place, I've redone my solarium. This is where my computer is and I really like it out here. It's got an outdoorsy feel now. I lined the windows with a big glass shelf and filled it with plants. 14 feet of them. Not all of them survived the winter out here, but most did. And some are definatlely thriving! Hey, why don't I just take a picture and show you? OK... here you go. This taken from the far left of the window and you can see I have quite the variety. In the foreground are some tomato plants my Dad gave me. They were probably 6 inches when he gave them to me when I saw him last, which was probably 4 weeks ago. The biggest is almost 2 feet! Now I need some wire cages for them.... the chopsticks won't work much longer :) This year I hope to bear fruit. Last year I didn't because I just left the plant I had in the window and watched it grow. And grow. And flower and grow.... and eventually die. No tomatoes! What I didn't know was that although tomato plants are self germinating, they need something to be a catalyst. In most cases the wind does this. So, this year I'll try shaking things up. Literally :) Wish me luck! OK, that's all for now. Oh wait, one more thing. Check out my floor in the background of the pic. This is what I put in last November when I renovated my solarium. I really like it! OK, that really IS it for now. Cheers and have a fantastic weekend!

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