Police Recruit Graduation at Mewata Armouries

Kevin graduated from CPS Class #169 on Friday at Mewata Armouries. I've never actually been inside before, so it was pretty neat. Too bad I only realized you can go upstairs for a better view after the ceremony.



The mayor was there, the press was there, ... so it was a pretty big deal. Congratulations Kevin!

Outdoor Paintball

Johnson invited me to play paintball with his classmates and friends. It was my first time and it was pretty good! We went to an outdoor field east of Cochrane and played around four games.



What appears to be "plenty" of old tires and trees for cover quickly turns out to be inadequate for this beginner -- there never seems to be an appropriate "next cover" to move to.

Getting hit was actually not that bad, although I don't think any of my hits were from up close. One in the arm, one on a finger, one grazed my leg, and one in my back. It's all good.

For $52, I got camouflage coveralls (less worries about getting paint on your clothes and awesome for sliding and crawling around on the grass), paintball mask (gets hot, slides around on your face, and doesn't work all that great with glasses... but you need it), a gun (in this case a Level 2), and paintballs (400 for this price). Unlimited compressed air top-up's, free hot dogs, and free water/crystal-drinks.

Trip Out East

August 2007: Johnson and I flew out to Toronto to visit Rob and Jeremy. It was a week of hanging out, doing stuff, sight-seeing, good food, and most importantly -- good friends. Some highlights...

A Dodge Callebaut (Dodge Caliber) as a rental car (Rob also called out a Mitsubishi Galaxy [Gallant]). The Caliber sounded really weird when you give it more gas, until we figured out that it has a continuous-variable transmission.



I cooked lunch one day and no one was poisoned. Johnson cooked for us that night:



Johnson and I downloaded as many crappy demos as we could find on Rob's Xbox 360.



We went to see Jeremy win a hockey game at Rinx:



Drove to Montreal. Actually, we managed to drive right through Montreal by accident, and had to turn back to get to our hotel.



We stayed right by the Guy Favreau Complex, and thus was born Rob's favourite French phrase ever:



Went to Centre Island in Toronto:



Being challenged by the maze on the island:



Rob denies plugging up Jeremy's toilet:



Getting wet at Niagara Falls:



And basically, our whole trip was 'sponsored' by Starbucks... I'm pretty sure we had at least one a day. :-)

Accessing Digital Media from the Xbox 360

Is your Xbox 360 hooked up to the biggest TV and the best audio system in the house? If so, you might want to browse the videos, pictures, and music stored on your other computer. I thought you have to run Windows Media Center for this to be possible, but it turns out you can just run something called TVersity.

Install it, then use the provided user interface to pick which files/folders are available for browsing.

Once you get this running, how will your Xbox 360 know that it's there? The Xbox 360 looks for a media server broadcasting its presence on the network. For this to work:

• The Xbox 360 and your computer have to be 'on the same network'. I don't know exactly what this means (same subnet?), but basically, if both of these are going through the same router, you're ok.
• The computer's firewall needs to allow this new type of network traffic. On Windows XP, these are called Exceptions. There're two exceptions:
  • uPnP Framework (TCP 2869 and UDP 1900) - this entry's probably already there but might not be enabled yet
  • TVersity Media Server (TCP 41952) - you have to add this port yourself

At this point, you should be able to browse media through the Xbox 360 Dashboard menus. Instead of picking Console, pick Computer. If all is well, you should then see something like 'TVersity on XXX', where XXX is the identity/name of your computer.

Good luck!

BBQ at Mahdi's

Back in August, Mahdi invited a bunch of us over for a BBQ.



Thanks man!

ThoughtBoarder Kicking Horse

ThoughtWorks had its annual snowboarding trip at Kicking Horse again this year. We had four condo units for three nights. It was great to sleep in, play Xbox 360, and spend some time on the hills with my co-workers.





There were so many cameras around this time that I barely took any pictures. Check out these huge icicles just outside the front door of our "party house"!



Or how about this amazing view from the top -- mountain peaks jutting out of a sea of clouds!

Photos from Johnson's Birthday

Johnson and Erin celebrated their birthdays at the Toad and Turtle. Here're some pictures from that night!

Zoolights

Every year, the Calgary Zoo is decorated with Christmas lights. This year, Kevin invited me to check them out with his family and Sylvia, and I got to take some photos. Since they're all night shots, lots of them turned out too fuzzy, but one of them turned out pretty well.

New York: Third Weekend: Saturday

Took the subway downtown and came out at Wall St. Since it's the weekend, downtown was pretty quiet. Huge financial institutions lined the street, exactly as I had seen in Die Hard with a Vengeance. :-)



I went to the New York City Police Museum, which showed uniforms, medals, weapons, and so on.



Since I was close to the water, I took a walk. You can see the Statue of Liberty in the distance, but since I've been there before (when I was young), I didn't go again.

At some point, I started walking away from the water and came across a church cemetary. What was neat was seeing pumpkins left over from Hallowe'en. The combination of pumpkins and the head stones just seemed cool.



Next, I got to Ground Zero (World Trade Center site). Now, it's pretty much a big hole in the ground. At one corner, folks got their pictures taken with some members of the police force. A little further down at the fire hall, visitors eagerly took pictures of anything related to the FDNY (fire department).

It was a cold and windy day, so I warmed up in the walkways of the financial center buildings. From there, I found myself by Hudson River again, so proceeded to walk uptown. Along the way, I came across the Irish Hunger Memorial. It interested me because it was an elevated garden platform in the middle of this urban jungle... and it totally reminded me of this level in Halo 2 called Terminal. Man, I miss playing Halo 2.



Back in midtown, I walked by Nintendo World at Rockefeller Center and was surprised to see a huge line-up outside the store. It turns out they're lining up to enter the store to try out the upcoming Nintendo Wii system. It looked like you could try out some baseball game where you use the controller as your bat. As much of a video game fan I am, I didn't line up (hard to believe, isn't it?!?).



Late afternoon, I hooked up with Dan, an ex-colleague of mine, to see an NBA game at Madison Square Garden -- NY Knicks played the Indiana Pacers. The basketball game itself was so-so (Knicks lost), but the game was interspersed with a lot of interesting side-shows like kid talent displays, city kids, cheerleaders, etc... Plus, we got a free hat out of it!



On my way back to the hotel, I decided to check out where Dave & Buster's is located in Times Square. Right next door to it is a McDonald's, whose lights rivaled those of the one found on the strip in Las Vegas (I think?). Also, across the street was a line-up of people going to see Al Green! That'd be a good show... I know Al Green from watching Ally McBeal way back when.