Tag: home Posts

Back At Home

 Journal

As many people on Twitter know, after four months of traveling I am finally back at home in BC. I was originally going to fly back home on Thursday, but the combination of a friend of mine having a death in the family back home and the fact that I found a really cheap flight leaving Dublin on Sunday made me decide to head back a few days early. Sunday was a long day: I had an eight hour flight from Dublin to Chicago, a five hour layover, and then another four and a half hour flight to Vancouver. Chicago was bursting at the seems, and people were literally camped out in the hallways waiting for their flights. So it made for a long five hours. I realized somewhere at 36,000 feet that I probably was going to need to declare all the items I bought on my trip. I […]

Europe And Beyond

 Journal

I left South America a few weeks ago, and have since been to New York City and a great deal of Ireland. Ireland was quite the whirlwind adventure. I spent the first night in Limerick at my friend Andy’s place, and then the next day we did a road trip up to Galway. The day after we headed down to Cork, and made a quick pitstop to kiss the original Blarney Stone. The next two nights we stayed at little 200 year old cottage in Mitchellstown. All in all a great adventure. I flew to Edinburgh, Scotland Monday morning, and am currently sitting in a hotel. I haven’t had time to go take my photos yet, but I can say that Edinburgh is an amazing city. I was walking up a road last night to a pub and the entire scenery reminded me of Minus Tirith from Lord of the […]

Buenos Aires Update, Day 44

 Journal

I’m currently at around 35,000 feet, somewhere between Buenos Aires and Puerto Iguazu. No, I’m not blogging from the plane, but rather I’ve set this post to publish while I’m up in the air. I wasn’t going to do another post before leaving for Iguazu Falls, but then I remembered my weekly Friday updates and wanted to get another in. So I thought that for this week’s Friday update it would be fun to create a few lists about what I enjoy here so far, and what I miss the most. Things I Love About Buenos Aires The People – Everyone I have met here has been super nice, especially when they find out I’m from Canada. Canadians seem to have a universal reputation of being worldly and polite, and that goes a long way with everyone I’ve met. Being a Gringo – Argentine guys are known to be super […]

Photos From My Argentina Home

Argentina

Here are a few photos from the little apartment I’m renting in Palermo Soho. It’s located near the corners of Paraguay and Gurruchaga if anyone is interested. There are a few more on Flickr. In terms of location, the apartment is about a 5 block walk to the area of Palermo Soho with all the fancier restaurants and pubs (although, there are lots of little ones all over the place). About three or four blocks north of here is one of the main subway lines in the city, which will be nice (as soon as I start to use it). The only real downside is they are doing renovations on the apartment downstairs, and there’s a bit of noise during the day. But, nothing I can’t put up with.

Vancouver, Canada

CanadaPreparation

I’m originally from a small little town about 150 kilometres east of Vancouver called Chilliwack. It’s a picturesque farming town nestled between a few mountain ranges, and far enough away from Vancouver to have a little peace and quiet. And while Chilliwack is my birthplace and where my most of my family lives, I’ve spent nearly a third of my life living in Vancouver, either out at UBC where I did nine years of post secondary education, or in the downtown core, where I’ve worked the majority of my career. When I set out on my upcoming travel adventure, it’ll be from a familiar place: Vancouver International Airport. While I don’t do as much traveling as I used to, there was a period of time when it felt like I was in the airport all the time, often making quick trips down to the San Francisco Bay area to assist […]

New Tube Amp Blog

 Journal

I’ve made a few posts about the little tube amp project I’m probably going to tackle in the fall, but decided to put the entries on its own blog, as I want it to be a single glimpse into a big design and build process. If you want to follow along, subscribe to the feed over at tubeamp.posterous.com. It’ll probably only be an entry every week or so for the next few months as I debate things in my head, but I’m hoping to be in a position to build something in the fall or early winter.

Back In The Wack

 Journal

Well, I made it back home late last night. Thankfully, the border agents didn’t grill me as hard as they normally do, otherwise I probably would have started with the smart ass responses. I gotta say, WordCamp Portland was a really amazing event, so major kudos to everyone involved in pulling it off. In fact, with each WordCamp I attend, I think that bar is getting progressively pushed higher and higher. For example, prior to my talk someone came and fitted me with a wireless microphone in addition to a normal microphone, the former being for the live stream. In addition, they exported all my slides to JPG/PDF such that the people watching on the internet could go through my slides while I was talking. Apparently the live stream was nearly flawless as well, which is great. One thing that still bothers me about conferences in general though is sort […]

The Tomato Plant Slave

 Journal

Yes, that’s all I’ve become. I wake up, I go outside, my plants get mad at me, and I spend the morning watering them and looking after them. For those who are just joining the saga, I planted a few tomato plants on my patio at the end of May. I’ve watched them grow, seen them fall down a few times, nursed them back to health, and in return, I’ve been rewarded by the growth of a pile of little tiny tomatoes. One of the challenges with growing fruits and vegetables on your patio is that it’s really hard to get them enough water, especially in this kind of heat. With a normal garden, you can soak the soil thoroughly such that the plants basically have a moisture reservoir. For a plant in a 12″ pot though, there’s really not too much you can do, other than water them twice […]

And Thus It Ends

 Journal

Well, folks, Blogathon is over. Most of us left workspace sometime around 6:30am yesterday. I went with Rebecca and John back to their place, and we got there probably close to 7am or so. While everyone was totally fried, there was brief talk about watching a movie for a while to help the brain ramp back down to sleep mode. I laid down on the couch then, and woke up a few hours later to some of the sounds of downtown Vancouver. At that point I adjusted some blankets, and fell asleep again, waking up sometime around 12:30pm. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really sleep anymore, so I decided to just get up at that point. Given that I didn’t really have any clothes that were clean at that point, and that my brain was still totally friend, I decided just to head back to Chilliwack and recuperate for the day, which […]

Random Thoughts From Home

 Journal

Some days I wake up and still find it a bit weird that I’m back in my home town. I’m totally enjoying myself here, more so with each passing month, but certain aspects of being here are still strange to me. High school literally feels like yesterday to me, probably because I spent so much of my 20s in school, but when I think back to high school here, I have a hard time putting all the pieces together. For example, I went by my old house I lived in when I was 17. Strangely enough, I couldn’t remember how I got to school in the mornings. I’m pretty sure I walked to school, and I’m pretty sure I met my friend Landy on the way, but I really couldn’t say what route we took or where we met in the mornings. It’s hard to believe that it’s been about […]