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.

Snowing Upwards

I'm not sure if everyone who lives in Calgary gets a chance to see this, so I took a video back in 2007/03. It shows snow "falling" upwards, which is pretty neat. This was taken from the 28th floor in a downtown building.

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!

Shooting Firearms in California

When I relocated to San Bruno back in 2001, I had to write the driver's test to get my California driver's license. I often tell the story about how I was reading the driver handbook and came across a section in the book which had to explicitly tell the reader that it's illegal to shoot firearms at traffic signs. It was amusing to me as an outsider because it reflected, accurately or inaccurately, the kind of place I was moving to.

Anyway, I've told this anecdote so many times that I started to wonder if I just made it all up. Luckily, I was digging through things in my study a few days ago and found a copy of the California Driver Handbook 2000. There it is on page 29: