Due to what looks like a bug/change on the MSN/Live/whatever messenger servers, I’m unable to get online at the moment. It’s been ongoing for a couple days with no particular end in sight, although I have faith that the pidgin authors will find a workaround.

If you do need to reach me, email me or use the Contact Me link at the top of my blog, ‘eh?

UPDATE: Microsoft has reversed the change on their servers, pidgin users can now connect once again.

This morning I glanced out the window to a fire across the hill. Sweet!

Click the photos for the full resolution shot.

We signed a lease for a new apartment in Kelowna, my first call was naturally to have our internet connection hooked up, and 12 minutes after placing the order by phone, I had a Shaw cable modem installer knocking on my door, modem in hand, and was up and running a few minutes later.

Wow.

Some big news that most of the important people in my life know, although certainly not everyone just yet, but Lori and I are moving to Kelowna!

Last July we drove to Oliver BC for my grandmother’s 90th birthday, and the way luck would have it, Lori happened to have a job interview in Kelowna. One month later, she was starting the job, and we were starting to plan for the move.

We gave it a few weeks to let Lori get the feel for the company, make sure she would be happy committing to stay for a minimum of a couple of years, and once she was sure.

Last week I flew out and we started the house hunt, found an absolutely amazing condo, reasonable price, with pretty much all the upgrades. Air conditioning, two balconies, a nice view, stainless steel appliances, front loading in-suite washer and dryer, dishwasher, granite counter tops, pretty much the works. We formally took possession on September 1st, although we actually got the keys a couple days earlier.

Now I hate moving, but having lost track of how many times I’ve moved in the past six years, I’m somewhat familiar with the process. We’re taking a bit of a different approach, in that we’re trying to get rid of absolutely anything we can, cutting back both the amount of stuff we need to move, and the amount of junk to store on the receiving end, hopefully only keeping what we actually need and use.

We took care of some of the important stuff already, got internet service on day#1, and I’ve got electricity and insurance all arranged as well, mail redirected, now just working on all the other details, health care, address changes, mentioning the move to work, friends, family, trading in the polar bears for brown bears, etc. Did I mention the weather is beautiful?

Based on our current plans, I’ll be wandering back to Calgary every two or three months or so for several months. Why not, it’s a $49 flight ($105 or so with taxes. Yes, that’s over 100% taxes, fees, and other garbage, but still, $105 isn’t bad), and besides, the Calgary –> Kelowna trip is the closest you can get to time travel, you actually land about 8 minutes before you depart.

Anyway, things are looking good, just keeping me busy busy busy, so expect blog postings to be sparse. As time permits, Lori and I are working on another little blogging project, a collaborative effort with a bit of a different focus, but more on that once it’s closer to being ready for human consumption.

So who wants to help me pack?

So with that in mind, Lori has accepted a job offer in Kelowna! 36C (97F) today, not quite as hot as Texas, but close.

Still some details to arrange, but she’ll be starting in a week and a half, I won’t be moving for a couple months or so, with the goal being to let her decide if she likes the job, and take a bit of time to find a place before we uproot and move.

One of the big perks of working remotely is that I can move without having to do the find-a-new-job thing. When you’re already 2000 miles from your office, what’s another 250 miles?

Great. Ants.

We didn’t have the car, so I started killing ’em by hand just for fun until we could get some ant poison. Even went shopping with my dad, managed to forget the ant poison.

So a couple days later, I’m still killing ants as they walk by on my floor, my dad drops by with some ant poison, both some “ant traps” that we’re hoping will be semi-cat safe (I’ll take extra precautions, but cats being cats, I don’t plan on putting open poison in my office), and some liquid ant poison to use outside to hopefully kill off any ants coming or going.

I think sweet! I’ll watch for ants and figure out where they’re coming or going and put the poison out right away. Not an ant in sight. Nadda. Zilch. Zero.

Damn effective stuff, and as it turns out, no fear of the cats getting into it since it’s still packaged on my desk. I’m calling this one a win.

In the past I have gone to Vegas and continued to work part of the time, spent a month in Chicago while working, and even moved from Calgary to Winnipeg for a few months without mentioning it to my employer for over a month.

This is a new one for me though, as I write this post I’m sitting in Bow Valley Campgrounds, located in Kananaskis Country on the Alberta side of the Rockies, writing this blog post on my laptop with a EVDO card. Almost 1Mb/s, only 150ms to Texas, this is not far off of the earlier cable modem deployments in the area.

Life is good.

In traditional geek style, I have no natural light, just artificial light. In addition, I have cats. As a result, I am rather limited in terms of what sort of plants I can have.

I’ve been trying out a few different types of cactus, and apparently I am doing something right as I’ve got little baby cactus running around now!

Talk about my type of plant! The secret? Don’t do anything. Look, don’t touch, don’t water, don’t prune, zippo, zilch, nadda.

Perhaps not as much fun, but it does add a little something to the room.

It’s interesting people watching, especially watching how people react as they find out the flight is late — I think I’ve seen six stages of grief so far, but we’re waiting on the inbound flight before stage seven.

Okay, in fairness not too much disbelief, this *is* a commercial airline afterall.

No sir, there isn’t any way to connect you through another airport and arrive faster then a direct flight that is only expected to be 45-60 minutes late.

One guy was rather irate, he’s been sitting in the airport since 7-something in the morning. Why so long? Well, from what I overheard, he was booked on the 7am flight, slept in and didn’t quite make it. hah. oops. I’m unclear as to what he thinks yelling at the gate staff will do to get the inbound plane here faster, but since I’m on the same flight, I suppose I’ll benefit too if he manages to talk the gate staff into building a new plane out of whatever spare parts they might have kicking around.

At this point it’s pretty calm, although it would be nice if Susan Bdukchkkcuaktrk would “present herself” sooner rather then later, it’s getting pretty scary listening to all the different ways the gate staff has tried to mangle the name.

Ahh well. An hour delay in the airport isn’t bad, although if you ever have the opportunity, don’t make the same mistake I did: When Harvey’s asks if you want fries, for the love of $DIETY, say no, it’s a trap! They’re only offering you fries because they’re desperate to get rid of ’em. I cannot stress this enough, they’re horrible.

On the plus side, I have free access to the Calgary airport hotspot as part of my EVDO service, so that’s a nice perk — I not only work from home, but I work at the coffee shop, the airport, and anywhere else that has EVDO or wifi.

I tucked Lori in my big suitcase so I could bring her with me since we don’t have the spare cash to book a seat, they’ve got all the suitcases out in the sun so at least she’ll be nice and warm for the wait.

Life is good.

Lori did manage to create a little micro-garden though.