School pictures 2010

 

Christmas Photo 2010

They're looking so grown up! :-)

 

Picture With Santa 2010

 

Sarah's first swim race

Sarah had her first fun-meet at Club Warriors this weekend. She had a great time, and - since she's never raced before - she had all best times! :-) She swam the 50 free, 50 back, 25 free, 25 back, and 100 kick. For some of the races, she swam against the better "Jr.C" swimmers. She did really well and we were very proud of her.

You can see some photos below (click to see larger images), and I'll attach some video as well.



Warm-up:


50 yard freestyle:


25 yard freestyle:


25 yard backstroke

Operation closet-clean!

Leah took the kids to her parents' house for the week, and I stayed home. I decided to surprise her by tearing out the walk-in closet, and building a custom solution. It is made by ClosetMaid. Halfway through pulling all the stuff out of our closet, I realized I may be in over my head. Construction time will only take half the time - the other half of the time will be sorting and folder through the piles. Oh boy.... I finished it just in time. As a matter of fact, I was done putting away the tools just as they came home. You can see some before-and-after shots below.

You're only as young as you feel

From the post on YouTube:

"An elderly couple walked into the lobby of the Mayo Clinic for a checkup and spotted a piano. They've been married for 62 years and he'll be 90 this year. Check out this impromptu performance. We are only as old as we feel, it's all attitude. Enjoy! They certainly do"

Cottage - Allison's Pics (slideshow)

Here are some pictures that Allison Pessack took - mostly of the kids tubing and kayaking, and us visiting with Sharon. We kept forgetting to bring our camera with us when we went to Sharon's... :-@

Cottage Pics (slideshow)

Here are a bunch of pictures as a slideshow from our trip to the cottage. (As usual, click on any image to go to the Picasa web site to view larger images or start a full-screen slideshow).

We had a wonderful time at the cottage once again. Weather was great - only a few days where there was some brief rain, but it didn't stop us from doing any activities. The girls had a great time swimming (they swam every single day), fishing, boating, tubing and kayaking (with Sharon, Jenna, Justin, Allison and John).

In the photos you will see pictures of the family of ducks that visited us every day, a family of Merganser ducks, and some great pictures of a couple of Loons that Leah took. Sharon and Allison saw a deer on the mainland.

The trip went by much too quickly, and we are already looking forward to visiting again next year. Thanks to Nana for her hospitality, and to Marsha and David for being our hosts.

Moodie Cottage 2010

Cottage Panoramics

I took some pictures of the cottage and lake, and put together some panoramic pictures. If you want a larger size or original, let me know and I can email to you.

More pics of our trip to the cottage coming soon!

 

 

 

 

Canada Day 2010

Once again this year we went to celebrate Canada Day at Columbia Lake, hosted by the University of Waterloo. Great weather this year (no rain like last year). For the first time this year we went back at night to watch the fireworks - instead of trying to watch them from the end of the street. The kids were exhausted, and it took us forever to get back home with all the traffic (estimate of 60,000 people were there to watch the show). But all in all it was a success! See the pics below. I will add a video clip as well.

[As usual, click any image below to see higher resolution images or full-screen slideshow from Picasa]

Video:

Abby's 6th Birthday

Here are some pictures of Abby's 6th Birthday party. This year she wanted to have a Build-A-Bear party. She had 12 of her friends (including Sarah and Jessie) there, all making new bears and having fun. We followed it up with DQ ice-cream cake and presents at the food court. :-) A great time was had by all!

Dad's new book!

A Bard of Wolfe’s Army:
James Thompson, Gentleman Volunteer, 1733-1830
Edited by Earl John Chapman & Ian Macpherson McCulloch

Advanced information from the publisher can be found here.

Congrats Dad! Great job.

Golf + Darth Vader = pure awesome

All I can say is, SpikeTV really knows it's target audience!!

BP Spills Coffee

Very funny. And yet is makes me sad.

Jessie playing soccer

I took some video of Jessie playing soccer last week as well. I like how she picks it up to carry it in front of the net. Hahaha. Something you won't see in the World Cup!

Abby playing soccer

Here are some pics and video of Abby playing soccer today.

She played pretty much 4-on-1 soccer today (one of her team sat and cried the whole 'game' and the other tried but didn't do too much). Unfortunately, my camera battery died and I missed her scoring a few goals, but this video shows her intensity. LOL! Don't get in her way! :-)

Sarah's Ballet Dance Recital

The Surprising Realities Behind What Motivates Us in Illustrated Form

Cool video I found through LifeHacker:

GO HABS GO!!!

"As seen on TV" dummies

Hilarious...

Samsung TV repair

Consider this a public-service announcement for anyone who owns a Samsung flat-panel TV that is ~ 2 years old. A few months back, our 46-inch Samsung LCD starting having a few extra "clicks" on when powering it up. Eventually, a few clicks turning into 15 seconds of clicks, then 1 minute of clicks, then several minutes, then >10 minutes, and then it would no longer power up. I was extremely unhappy, since this TV was about 1.5 years old (warranty expires after 1 year). A little searching on the web showed a lot of Samsung owners having a similar problem - almost always after the warranty expired. In almost all cases, the root cause was some blown capacitors on the power-supply board. It seems Samsung used sub-par (read: "cheap") capacitors that were not of high enough voltage rating. These capacitors would eventually explode, resulting in the TV never powering up. I tried calling Samsung first - their "tech support" guy knew nothing of the problem... When I told him "Just do a Google search, you'll see all kinds of complaints", he just said "So what, he wasn't going to even look". I tried escalating to Samsung, but that just resulted in some dead email links.

I ended up fixing it myself. It took about 1 hour start to finish, and most of that time was taking it all apart and putting it back together. The soldering job was 5-10 minutes. It now works as good as new! Pics below. Not sure I'll ever buy Samsung again...



Found lots of good information here and here.

If you find yourself stuck with the same problem, give me a buzz!

Abby riding a 2-wheeler!

Jessie Reads Me A Story

Here is a little video of Jessie reading me her favourite bedtime story: "Too Many Cats", Written by Lori Haskins Houran and Illustrated by Joe Mathieu

Genius! :-)

Tom Brokaw video about Canada

Tom Brokaw explains the relationship between Canada and The United States, in a pre-recorded short film that aired on NBC prior to the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver

(embedding is not allowed, so you'll have to follow the link)

Tom Brokaw explains the relationship between Canada and The United States

Well done!

Bell TV launches remote PVR programming

Looks like the relationship between Sling and Bell is starting to bear fruit with the SlingGuide being supported now by Bell. If you have a Bell ExpressVue HD PVR you can now remotely schedule recordings using the internet or smartphone. Press release from Sling is here

http://www.sync-blog.com/sync/2010/02/bell-tv-launches-remote-pvr-programming.html

Works pretty well! If you want to be able to access your PVR recordings, you'll have to connect an ethernet cable to your PVR. Looks like everything is getting set up for Sling to release the SlingBox 700U in Canada. Coool.

Beijing and Shanghai

Just came back from a business trip to Beijing and Shanghai. My company has local offices in each location, and I have some staff there (growing). So I went to do some training and interviewing. Had a great time. Beijing is a lot nicer than what I was expecting - very clean and friendly.

The Great Wall was spectacular. It just blows my mind the work that went into constructing something of this magnitude.

As always, click on the slideshows to be brought to my Picasa page where you can see larger versions. Glad to be home!!!

Beijing - Great Wall


Beijing - The Forbidden City And Olympic Village


Shanghai


Here is an HD video I took while on the Great Wall. Listen to the wind... Brrrrr!!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!