Among the many interesting differences between Canada and England, one that I find the oddest is that in place of Exit signs, you'll see either a "Way Out" sign, as pictured here, or an even odder 3-part comic of a running stick man, an arrow, and a rectangle representing a doorway.

How to move

I've moved a few times now, and I'd like to document the following random facts about moving. I'll likely forget them, so be a good friend and point out the following to me the next time I move:

Canada Post offers an Address Change Service, which forwards mail from your old address to a new one for 6 months. Then, letters mailed to your old address come to the new one with a sticker on them, and you can then make a point of calling those businesses. The last time I moved, there was a huge pile of mail waiting for me that was thrown out when the current occupant moved in (what a dick). This is a $30 fee that makes the address change seamless.

U-Haul truck rentals are sketchy. The truck itself was fine, but the outlet I visited was poorly managed. I booked online, and I was only allowed to choose the day of the move, not the specific hours. I spent a lot of time on hold trying to reach them. When I arrived at the garage, it seemed that choosing the truck and the hours I wanted online was a waste, they asked me the same questions when I got there anyway.

Toronto kicks ass. My neighborhood is cool, and you'll be able to experience it with the pictures I post this summer, taken from my 'painfully analog' SLR.

Overall the move went well, thanks for asking TH.

interesting MSN hack

I'm using MSN Messenger Live Beta, but I think this should work with any version of Messenger. Add encarta@conversagent.com to your friends list, and start asking questions.

RP says:
What's the population of Steinbach?
Encarta® Instant Answers says:
There are 9,227 people in Steinbach, Canada.
RP says:
what was the population of Steinbach in 1981?
Encarta® Instant Answers says:
8,213 people lived in Steinbach, Canada in 1981.

Jack the Ripper walk

My European Travels: Part II

This is the continuation of Part I.

Returning to the airport, I decided that I would give the online hotel finder near the payphones a try.

I need to be very clear about how incredibly shitty this machine was. It had a touch-screen interface, which would normally make things easier. But this one in particular had to be hit very hard. It took a solid pecking of the finger to click the mouse. It gets much, much worse. When you're hitting the screen that hard with your finger, it's impossible to be precise. A normal touch-screen only requires a light tap, which means you can use the tip of your finger, and be precise about it. But slamming your finger into a glass screen means that you're hitting it with about a square inch of skin, so the exact spot that you click on is a seemingly random point within that square inch. All of this is still acceptable though. Slamming my finger into the approximate square inch of the button I actually *want* to click is still reasonably acceptable. But for some incredibly annoying reason, the point at which you smash your finger is approximately 2 inches above the point where the mouse is clicked. So now, as you're ramming your hand into a sheet of glass, you have to aim about two inches high. And in case you're wondering, the last screen did not have nice big buttons, but rather a list of text-sized hyperlinks that made things even more of a gamble.

After successfully jamming my finger into "Amsterdam" twice, I realized that the machine was actually so slow to search, that by the time it started printing it's search results, it's 'idle timeout' was reached, so it thought I had left the machine, and went back to the beginning. Since I'm a nerd, I overcame this small hitch by ramming my finger into random corners of the screen while it sat there trying to search.

This story is literally too long to tell, so let me just switch to point form:

The finger-busting machine which was probably sponsored by a chiropractor eventually found a hotel for me, located in "Warden, Amsterdam."

"Warden, Amsterdam" is like saying "Steinbach, Winnipeg." But the cab-driver drove the 50 minute drive anyway.

"Warden, Amsterdam" does not have cab service in the morning, so after driving 50 minutes, we decided we should probably just head back.

Somewhere between midnight and 2:30 in the morning, hotels decide that empty rooms are empty rooms, and start giving them out.

2 hour taxi ride wasn't cheap, ask my company. Specifically, ask the guy who didn't book my hotel room ahead of time, *ahem*

At about 2:30 AM, I climbed into bed. The hotel manager knew that I had to wake up at 5:00 AM, and programmed a wake-up call.

I slept through the wake-up call. Actually, I picked up the phone and hung it up, without waking up, according to the hotel manager.

The hotel manager was nice enough to bang on my window

At 5:15 AM, I arrived at the train station, with minutes to spare to catch my 5:30 AM train.

I eventually arrived at the customer's site. It's a train tunnel currently being built, so it was basically a construction site. Very dusty, and there was no water, which everyone seemed OK about, they had their coffee and their cigarettes, why would they need anything else?

I didn't have a lunch along, and no, there wasn't anything nearby. My 'host' gave me a sandwich from his lunchbox. It was two slices of brown bread with a 1" slice of pepperoni in each corner. No sauce of any kind.

Back on the train after a long but successful day. Watching the countryside, everyone was riding around on bikes with big wheels and round handlebars, smiling with their blonde-hair waving in the wind.

Several trains and a flight later, with no leisure time in between, I arrive at Heathrow at about 9:30 PM local time. I look at the bus schedule, figure out my quickest path back to Birmingham, and board the Heathrow Rail Air Express, which again is neither rail nor air, but a bus.

At my connection point in Oxford, England 1 hour later, I realize that the last train to Birmingham left an hour ago. I am now stuck in Oxford. Birmingham is a 150 Pound cab ride away, or more than US$300. So, I resign myself to a hotel in complete disgust. For the record, the first hotel I went to was full. The second one was insanely cheap; there was no phone in my room.

The next day, I took a train back to Birmingham. As one last kick in the ass, there was a circuit problem on the tracks, and I was delayed an hour. Then, after the 1 hour delay, we found out that a freight train had made it's way in front of us, and we'd be finishing the rest of the trip at half speed.

All in all, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to have gone to Europe, and I learned a few things the hard way.
p.s. The British food I had actually was in fact quite bad, but I had some incredibly amazing French food.

My European Travels: Part I

Alright, I'm back from my world tour. Thanks to all the fans that supported me. In summary, I was flown out to the UK to help with a tradeshow. While out there, it made sense for me to visit a customer's site for whom I had written some custom software. The tradeshow was in Birmingham, England, and since this was my first trip to Europe, we planned a 2-day stop in London before starting the tradeshow. During the 2-day visit, I did the Jack the Ripper walk among other things, and I'll post a few pictures I took, though I'm very displeased with almost all of the pictures I took.

The customer's site just so happened to be in Amsterdam. The scheduled trip was very tight, but if everything went well at the customer's site, I'd have about an hour to check out the city.

I left the tradeshow early in the afternoon, and started my lonesome travels. My first train left from near the tradeshow in Birmingham, and stopped at Reading Station. From there, I transferred to the Heathrow Rail Air Express, which is neither Rail nor Air, but a bus that travels straight to Heathrow airport. The bus driver, glancing at my itinerary, noted that my flight would depart from terminal 1.

I'm sure he meant well. Walking into Terminal 1 with a dead cell phone, I scrounged the entire place for a battery booster, which *someone* promised would definitely be available. After finding nothing, and with just under two hours before my flight boarded, I decided to phone Cristine. We chatted for roughly 20 minutes, and about 80 minutes later, I decided I might as well do the check-in process.

Sauntering over to British Airways, I asked where I could check in for the flight to Amsterdam. A panicked look washed over the attendant's face, as she explained that I needed to be at Terminal 4.

"Go straight there. Don't wait in any queues, just go right to the front. Go, now."

OK, so they must like people checking in early, I thought. I followed the signs to Terminal 4, which for starters meant sprinting across the bulk of Terminal 1, down some escalators, up some more, and eventually arriving at an elevator. I took this elevator down to the never-ending hallway, which led to a tunnel. This was a subway tunnel which would take me to terminal 4. Ten minutes later, the subway arrived, and another 10 minutes later, I arrived at Terminal 4. Sprinting across another never-ending hallway, I located the check-in counter, checked-in, and started the run to my gate. I cannot describe how disgustingly far this gate was, but let me just say that the flight from Heathrow to Amsterdam must be one of the least popular flights on Tuesday evenings.

I arrived at my gate with 10 minutes to spare; the whole race took just over 1 hour. Later, on the flight, the in-flight magazine noted the following caution: "If you are connecting at Terminal 1 with a departing flight at Terminal 4, please give yourself 75 minutes to reach your gate."

Well, I had made the flight, and now I had time to relax and think about how to cram in an hour of pictures in Amsterdam. I was to arrive at 11:00, and so perhaps I could take some pictures of the Red Light district at night...

11:05, and I'm walking through the Amsterdam airport. I was told to go to Hotel IBIS, but I see no signs, so I resort to one of those big switchboards where you just push a button to speak to someone at the hotel.

Hotel 1

Do you have reservations with us, Sir?

No.

Sorry, we are fully booked.

Hotel 2

Do you have reservations with us, Sir?

No.

Sorry, we are fully booked.

...

Hotel 15

Do you have reservations with us, Sir?

No.

Sorry, we are fully booked.

I tried every hotel on the switchboard! With nothing available, and trying to quickly out-think the 10 or so others in my predicament walking the same paths, I ran up to a hotel information desk.

Do you have anything available just for tonight?

Sorry, I don't know of anything in the city of Amsterdam.

It's now 12:00. Panicking, I phoned someone staying in Birmingham who had internet access to try Expedia and the usuals. With two idiots standing beside me trying to out-smoke each other, 20 minutes of online searches was all I could wait on the phone for; I hung up and searched onward.

Walking to the front of the taxi line-up outside the airport, I asked the cab driver to consult his list of hotels. After checking the usual hotels, followed by his insider guys, and then some new hotels which nobody really knew about yet, he was amazed, and agreed with me: there really were no hotels in Amsterdam tonight.

It was now 12:30 AM. I had to catch a train at 5:00 AM. My dead cel phone meant I couldn't simply sleep on a bench in the airport and use my phone's alarm-clock, I needed an alarm clock, or better yet, given how tired I would be, a wake-up call.

Heading back into the airport, I had to decide whether to buy a few cups of coffee and just stay awake, or make a last-ditch effort with an online hotel finder.

to be continued...

i'll be gone for a while

I'm leaving for the UK tomorrow. I get back to Toronto in 8 days, but only a few hours after landing, I board a plane to Winnipeg. Until then, no diving allowed.

I've joined the New York Marathon

No I haven't.

But in a slightly related topic, I climbed the steps to the CN Tower last Saturday. This story is probably best told in timeline format:

Saturday
--------

6:00 AM Alarm clock wakes me up

6:15 AM I finally get out of bed

6:30 AM I'm on the subway

7:00 AM At the CN Tower; the jog from the subway station has left me breathless

7:30 AM Registration/etc is finished, I'm now in line

7:45 AM Security scan lineup

7:59 AM I hit the first of 1776 stairs, the largest metal staircase on earth

8:00 AM Jogging was a bad idea, let's try a brisk walk

8:05 AM Me: "Did that guy just say 3/4 of the way?" I can do this!

Climber1: No, 1/4 of the way

Climber2: They usually exaggerate, we're about 1/5th of the way.

8:09 AM I take a 1 minute break. Each flight of stairs has a landing which is wide enough to rest on and still allow people to pass. The air is incredibly thin, I'm breathing as hard as I can but it's not helping. Finally, I decide that my breathing won't improve anyway, so I light up a cigarette. Halfway through the cigarette, alright just kidding, I obviously didn't smoke.

8:10 AM Start up the stairs again. I'm currently on flight 88. I estimate that I'm at the halfway point (there were about 150 of them, not a bad estimate if I do say so myself). I feel claustrophobic now, because the bottom is now just as far as the top, and I can't breathe. I grab a kid by the neck, and start beating the shit out of her. Halfway through the beating, fine, I didn't kick anyone's ass either.

8:17 AM I just heard the medic on the next flight of stairs tell someone that there's about 20 flights of stairs left. I can do this!

8:18 AM Is that angels I hear? Have I climbed the tower of Babel? No, it must be the guys stamping time cards and giving out water!

8:19 AM 20 minutes and 41 seconds after I started, I reach the top. At least that's what they've told me. In reality though, my time card may be stamped, but I am now on a different set of stairs, 8 more flights before I reach what is really considered the top, the viewing balcony. A cheering section awaits me as I ascend the final staircase, but interestingly enough, the cheering dies down almost completely as I approach. Who the fuck paid these fucking University of Toronto Arts students to do the cheering anyway? Any Science student would realize that whether it's a large group of people coming through the door (as was the group in front of me), or a few people in a row (in my case), a certain amount of cheering must always be done. Screw you, shitty cheering section, I climbed this tower, give me my water, and don't forget the pickles on my next cheeseburger.

8:24 AM The view from the CN tower was interesting. That's a generous statement after you've looked down from the Empire State Building. I'm not comparing The Big Apple with The Big Orange (?) here. As insanely amazing as Manhattan is, I wasn't expecting the same vast array of skyscrapers from the CN Tower. But they have an annoying mesh fence around the entire balcony, so your view is somewhat obstructed. At the Empire State Building, I was worried about dropping my camera when I changed film; no mesh. Unbeknownst to me, the CN Tower is about 600 feet higher than the Empire State Building, and was about 350 feet higher than the twin towers.

8:30 AM I take the elevator down, and no, climbing the stairs down wasn't an option. The climb was scheduled from 6:00 AM to 12:00 PM, and when I get down, the lines are incredibly long, and I'm glad that I woke up early.

I haven't smoked in 8 days, and I've ran nearly every day to keep my mind off of it. I can't say that I'll never smoke a cigarette again though, because when I return home for the weekend in two weeks, I can name several people who I'd like to share a cigarette with. I've broken the physical addiction I think, but I still think that sharing a cigarette with one of my friends would be more enjoyable than not having one.

I don't know if I'll ever change that mindset. Perhaps if I were training for a marathon..