A whole pile of things

I figured while I have a few minutes, I’d sit down and post an update of all things Matt. Today is Dylan’s birthday so I suspect I’ll do a post about him on his site later but for now, I’ve had a pile of stuff going on lately so here’s some of it to share.

Let’s start with my latest geocaching jaunt. Take a look here and this will give you an idea. Now, based on the “route” the map gives you, imagine that I did a more or less straight line from A to B instead of going by road. I did it by bike and the total distance was around 10K. I snagged 20 caches and going by bike certainly made it easier. I did see some interesting sites but I think the most interesting was the old rail bridge which I started to cross and then bailed on. Check out these pictures here to see some of what it looked like. Pardon the lack of rotation on a few of the pix. Basically the rail bridge was WAY up from the water by at least a few hundred feet. Decided not to take the bike to the other side and took the side trail which brought me to the road instead. This was about 130 meters east from point B on the map link I gave. I didn’t get all of the caches I wanted to for that day but I got enough that I was happy with the results.

In the latest cottage news, we are FINALLY nearing the end of the construction. The outside is pretty much done and they are completing the interior cupboards and bathroom. Storage area in the back should be done by now so hopefully we will finally be able to get this thing fully done and put the nail in the coffin on this contractor work. The only thing that remains outstanding is the water issue and that is hopefully going to be resolved before the end of the month. I won’t get into details but it’s been a long freaking battle and I hope it’s over.

We have finally begun our plans for some of the attractions we want to see in Vegas. Tamara has always been a HUGE CSI fan and a new CSI Experience is opening on October 1st at the MGM Grand so we bought tickets to go see it. Should be pretty cool. If you’re a CSI fan, you’d enjoy it especially since the experience ends in Grissom’s office. Pretty cool. Thinking about hitting up a few other places but also just wandering around. Can’t wait to go.

Just got an email saying that my Darth Vader travel bug actually made it to George Lucas’ house, Skywalker Ranch. Pretty freaking cool. Can’t believe my bug made it from here to there after being stuck in Quebec for like 6 months or so. Very cool.

I am now over half way through my parental leave and only have less than 2 months left before I go back to work. Little bit of a mixed bag with regards to that as I have a few things I am hoping to iron out but there are some parts of me that are anxious to get back. It’s more of a normal routine than anything and knowing that my pay will be going back to normal is also nice. Plus, it’s nice to be back in the office around familiar faces.

I’ve managed to make it through to season 9 of Stargate SG1 and am slowly getting through it. I should have the whole series completed within a week or so. Interesting to see how things changed from season 8 to 9 but all is still good. Once I get through that I’ll have to check out the DVD movies and possibly start on Atlantis. Not sure if I want to bother with it but we’ll see.

I finally moved my arcade machine Manarc from the basement into my new office. I found a good spot for it and decided to fire it up and see if all was well. Turns out all was not well. Machine would not boot at all. After doing some slow troubleshooting, I narrowed the problem down to a single stick of RAM which I then removed and all was well again. The computer is only running on 256MB of RAM but it’s an older machine with Windows 98SE on it so it doesn’t need much anyway. I’ve also wired the sound from the arcade machine into my surround in my office. I now need to move one of my rear speakers since the cabinet now covers it up. Should be all good to go in a manner of days. It is pretty cool finally having it in my own space instead of the basement.

Speaking of which, the arcade machine was removed from down there and so was the fish tank. The 55 gallon tank has been moved out to Tamara’s office. The fish themselves are sitting in the small tank in the living room while the tank cycles. We had to remove all of the gravel and water to move the tank. Whether you realize this or not, but that tank we had in the basement, with all the gravel and water, weighs about 2000lbs and that’s not an exaggeration. Once the water is ready, we’ll move all the fish into the big tank and get rid of the tank in the living room. Anyone wanna buy a 20 gallon used fishtank?

I thought the weather was cooling off but my office is a paltry 32 degrees and my back is sticking to my chair. LOVELY!

I was sure I had more news to share but right now I can’t think of anything so I’ll sign off for now. I’m going to go do a post for Dylan’s birthday and then do some cleanup.