What is On Jeffs' Mind

I have really been enjoying Hockey lately. Last Friday I went to the Edmonton Oilers game with my brother, they lost to the Dallas Star, but the game was entertaining enough. Actually the Oilers have yet to win in 2010 and the worst team in the league. I am not sure what it is but I am enjoying the games quite a bit. Maybe it is the race for last place in the league is thrilling, or watching all the new ways the team can lose, or maybe since the season is done, just doesn’t matter and can just watch the game for what it is, and not be concerned about wins. My wife doesn’t really under stand, and gets upset at me if I turn an Oilers game on, she was giving me strange looks as I was watching the Oilers get run over by the Chicago Black Hawks. On Thursday I was watching the Oilers play the St. Louis Blues, I was enjoying the game, but had to step away to do some work, and alas the Oilers Lost. Saturday will be a big game, the Calgary Flames are in town, lately they have been as woeful as the Oilers have, so it will be interesting to see who comes out with the win. The battle of Alberta takes on a bit of a new meaning.

Formula 1 teams are starting to launch their cars for 2010. So far it looks like there have been Launches for Ferrari and McLaren and a livery reveal for Mercedes. Both Mercedes and McLaren are going with a silver paint scheme, and of course Ferrari has its traditional red. I must say the McLaren looks very stylish, the Shark Fin on the back of the car gives it a different look then the Ferrari which does not. I always think it is interesting the production the teams put into these launches. Way different then in Indycar, where the only news lately is that Tony George is finally gone after all the irreparable damage he has caused, and who is not going to be showing up this season instead of who will. Check out the launch pictures here

Also, here is a cool Video from Redbull

Tags: Edmonton Oilers, Formula 1, IndyCar

Yay

Today we got an extra hour do to Day Light Savings Time. So I spent it not being overly productive. There is a few more things I can do in the backyard, but I will save that for some other day. Well, unless it snows, then Cest la vie. I need to start priming the basement walls for painting, but I think that will be a project for next weekend. There are a few boxes of books and CD’s that I should unpack, so I might work on that. It might be alright as well as I can flip through them a bit and look at them, since they are mostly Star Wars and Star Trek books. I also like Organizing my CD’s, call me OCD, but I like to put them in Order of release and Artist.

I still have a bit of TV recorded to catch up on, this morning I watched the final Formula 1 race from Abu Dhabi. Real cool looking track, some interesting racing near the end for second, but for the most part it was the locale that was interesting to me. Some of these F1 tracks look like something out of a Video game. The one things I really love about Formula 1 is the in car cameras, with my TV and HD, you really do get to see the excitement of being in one of those cars. I love it every time they cut to one of those cameras. I wish every car was mounted with one, and someday maybe have a channel or feed devoted strictly to those. Just really great stuff. After that I watched the last half of the Nascar race from Talledega, Typical plate racing, with a few big wrecks at the end. Looks like Jimmy Johnson pretty much has the championship wrapped up again. I don’t watch a lot of Nascar races, but things like Talledega get me watching. Maybe partly as waiting for the big wreck, but also reminds me of my online racing sim days, and all the laps I put in at Talledega in the Sierra/Papyrus Nascar Racing game. Those were some fun times, and not sure how many online races I did at Talledega, but it was by far the one I raced the most. I just got Forza 3 the other day for my X-Box 360, so over the winter months, looking forward to putting in some time with that. 3 Nascar races left, Texas is up next, but will skip that as don’t care for that track. Will watch Phoenix, as I like that track, and reminds me of my Online Sim days as I had a big Victory at Phoenix.

Days is moving away, so I should get to something else. I picked up reading again, and maing some good progress on the Star Trek book I am reading. I will have to go to the book store and get a few more books, and hopefully I can get back on pace to at least 1 book a month.

A quote from Calvin and Hobbes on Weekends, I pretty much believe this.

“Weekends don’t count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.”

Tags: Calvin and Hobbes, Formula 1, Forza 3, Nascar, Star Trek, Star Wars, X-Box 360

Been awhile since my last post. Tao tao’s mom has made it back to China after her stay, and her trip was fairly smooth. Things are starting to get back to normal as summer winds down. Today was a nice day, in that I spent it doing yard work. It has been a few years since I have really did any yard work. The townhouse had a small yard, and the only work in that yard was pulling weeds. The yard in my new house is bigger with a lawn to maintain. The lawn is not in very good shape, so it is going to be a bit of a project to bring it to a better condition, and probably will take a few years. But it was nice to get out there and do some work today in the yard. After I sat on my deck for a little while, it was nice, even though stormy weather was rolling in.

My friend Dave dropped by on Friday, as he had something to show me. He had just bought himself a Motorcycle, and he was quite happy about it. The bike was in great shape and from the sounds of it got a good deal on it. About 7 years ago Dave had a horrible accident on his previous Motorcycle. Well driving over to my house in the city, he was cut off and ended up slamming into the back of the car. He was thrown from the bike and badly injured. He was taken to the hospital with a leg injury. After examination the Doctors never could figure out the problem with Daves leg, and they had to cut it open to relieve the swelling. Dave was in the hospital for quite some time, and then was off work for around 6 months as well.  Dave was fortunate that he did not lose his leg, since the doctor nearly sent him home originally thinking his leg was only swollen, not for his persistence at the time, things could have been much worse.

Motorcycles are not for me, but I admire Dave for getting another one. It had been 7 years since Dave had rode one, and he had talked about it off and on over the years. Finally he decided it was something he enjoyed and was missing it, so he got it again. I think it is great for him to get the bike, many would have never gone back after an accident like he had, but he did. I admire him for that.

This morning I woke up and watched the Formula 1 race from Valencia. It is the second year for this race, and I must say I really enjoy it. It is a street circuit which is my favorite, but also very picturesque, with the cars racing by the ocean and even over a bridge. Ruebens Barichello won the race, and it was a very popular win as it has been 5 years since his last Victory. Those 5 years were spent on some very bad Honda F1 teams. Barichello is the oldest driver in the F1 series, and even him having a drive this season was pretty much last minute. All the rumours at the end of last year was that he was out of F1, replaced by a younger driver. Then in the offseason, Honda, the team he raced for pulled out of F1. The team became Brawn GP, but there was still talk that he would not be back as maybe a younger driver with money might take the seat. But at the last minute he was given the ride for 2009. Brawn was dominant at the start of the season, but that was all Jensen Button. Barichello was the slower car on the team, and all the attention was given to Button. There were even a few races, where Barichello was ahead of his teammate, but due to team strategy, they were able to maneuver Button ahead of him, much to his displeasure. The past few Grand Prixs, the Brawn Team started to fade, but today, Barichello was really on it, out showed his team mate by a lot, and was very solid in the race. I am not his biggest fan, but I do appreciate the Victory, and the determination for Barichello to push to get back to the top spot on the podium. At points in the last few years and even this season, a win must have felt a million miles away.

So this weekend has got me to think about my resiliency lately. Things at work have been really tough lately, and it has gotten me down. I seem to have fallen into going with the current instead of trying to stear myself a bit better in the direction I would like to go. We all have hardships, and sometimes it takes quite a long time to bounce back, or reach what we want in life. I have to keep reminding myself, sometime you get pushed down, but if you hang in there, things work out. It might not be immediate, but it will come. I am hoping I can try and keep myself a bit more focused on work, and not allow myself to get swept away with apathy for the job and company. Those are both only temporary, and just one chapter in my life. I just need to tap into some resilient spirit that I know I have.

Tags: Brawn GP, Dave, Formula 1, Honda F1, Jensen Button, Ruebens Barichello, Tao tao, Yard Work

This weekend I did not much, past sit in my house for most of it. A bit cold outside, and some things have come up, which will probably make me stick close to home for the next few months. But I digress, this weekend there were a couple of races on TV. On Saturday evening I watched the IRL race from Texas. I will be honest it is not a race that I look forward to, given the high banks, the full throttle racing and the complete Nascar bias by the track administration does more then enough to turn me off. Anyways, I watched it, the few Champ car drivers left in the series were pretty much uncompetitive, highlighted by a second lap accident of Graham Rahal. The race ended with Helio Castroneves winning the race. On Sunday was the Formula 1 Turkish Grand Prix. Brawn GP continues their dominance of the season, with Jensen Button grabbing another Victory. This race was tough on the past World Champions as all 3 of them in the field could not get into the points. I guess my biggest complaint about both races was team orders, this is where teams dictate how their cars are to race ( or more correctly not race) In the IRL race, I was upset that Ryan Briscoe who was dominant for a good part of the race, ended up coming in second after a suspect yellow flag from the IRL, and then what I felt was favoritism on the part of his own team in terms of Castroneves. After the last pit stops, Castroneves got the front spot based off of where his pit stall was located. Team orders over the radio was for both drivers to not race, and put distance between them and team Target. Well by the time they had made some distance, Briscoe’s chance was pretty much gone, and I am sure he was told to just hold his spot. In the F1 race, not for the win, but for second place, the two Redbull drivers were told not to race as well. After some bad pit strategy, Sebastian Vettel was behind his team mate Mark Webber, at the end of the race, Vettel was coming on, but got the order that Webber was faster and to preserve the car. It was obvious to me that Vettel looked like he had something, but told to back off. I guess I felt frustrated, as in both instances, the faster driver was told to not challenge. I guess the IRL one really upset me the most, but it would be nice to go back to the days when people raced each other regardless of team. I understand not taking team mates out, but it really does take whatever excitement might be in the race, out.

This morning a friend of mine Dale, sent me an email about the next series of Star Wars Kubricks. This series will be based off of Episode III Revenge of the Sith. The series will include Anakin, Tarful, General Grievous, Darth Vader and a Episode 3 Clone Trooper. The chases are Tion Medden, Commander Gree and 4 arm version of General Grievous. Normally I don’t go for the chases, but this time, I really want a Commander Gree, to go with some of the other Gree items I have. It looks pretty cool, all the figures look cool, so I am excited for this to arrive. Dale said they should arrive in the next few weeks, and I am hoping the Canadian Dollar will keep strong.

Tags: Anakin, Commander Gree, Darth Vader, Formula 1, General Grievous, IndyCar, Star Wars Kubricks

The past week has been interesting for me, and a bit of a break from my regular routine

This week I went on training for work. I was enrolled in a Sun LDAP course, and was on training Tuesday to Friday. It was something that was quite different from what I usually do, so it was interesting to learn. First off we learned on Unix systems, and that is something I don’t know a lot about. I did some work on Unix about 6 or 7 years ago when I did Oracle support. I was never very good at it as it involved a lot of typing, and strange commands that I did not understand. This time, over the coarse I got more comfortable with the Unix, but probably more so as we used a lot of the Sun Directory Services GUI, which helped out. I am a bad typer, and it took me time on command line stuff, so hoping I don’t have to do a lot of it in the future. Not sure where I go with this training, but I guess over time I will find out.

The weekend turned out to be fuller then I originally expected. On Saturday, I had to cleanup the house as we had a showing late in the afternoon. Tao tao and I went out for a few hours. We went to the mall, and had dinner, then looked around for a bit. We came home and relaxed for the rest of the day.

Sunday turned out to be a busy day, and still wondering how I fit it all in. I started off the morning by working on my Collecting Podcast. I have the second podcast edited, and will now work on enhancing it. The I watched the Monaco F1 Grand Prix. Not a lot of passing in the race, but it was exciting to see the cars race as they looked so fast, and I really like street circuits.

After that Tao tao and I went to see the new Terminator Salvation movie. I must say that I really enjoyed this movie. It was a lot of action and explosions, and not really a dull moment the entire movie. I had been looking forward to this movie, as I had been watching the TV series closely. The story did not really tie in with the TV series, but that was cool. I thought Christian Bale did a great job as John Connor, and brought a different element to the character that we haven’t seen before. He was so intense, I could see where he had the outburst well filming, if he was channeling that intensity to his performance. The guy who played Kyle Reese did a great job, he reminded me a lot of the original Kyle Reese, he was also in the new Trek movie. I am hoping after his role in the Terminator movie, they give him more to do in the next Trek movie.

When I got home, I did an Interview with my friend Rick for the Take him with You podcast. We talked about some of my experiences growing up, and the different schools I had attended and how they relate to God. It was a lot of fun to talk to Rick, and he did a great job with the Interview. Rick also told me some other cool things, and played some cool music for me that he had. I am happy to have met Rick and made a new friend, as He and I share a lot of things in common.

After the Interview was over, I watched the Indy 500 I had taped earlier. The race was alright, though there was some scary accidents, which I did not like to see. For an Oval race, I thought it was alright, and there was some nice racing and intrigue to it. After watching this race, I have come to the conclusion that it is more the length of the race then the track itself that makes it unique. For the most part, it is all about setup, and a max throttle track, but once they get past half distance, then the uniqueness comes in. Most of the Indycar races are a few hours or a couple hundred miles, so after they get past a certain distance, bad luck and problems come to play, and it is interesting to see who has them, and how they deal with it. The track is pretty basic, and not as challenging as some other tracks, it is the length that makes this race different to me.

I finished off the night with this Blog. I would say that was a full day

Tags: Formula 1, IndyCar, LDAP, Rick Moyer, Take Him With You, Terminator 4, UNIX, What's in Jeffs Basement

Here in Canada it is the May (Victoria Day) Long weekend. So far for me it has been pretty full, and still have one more day to go.

On Friday, Tao Tao and I went to the bank after I was done work to send some money to her sister in China. Her sister will buy her Moms plane ticket to come to Canada this summer. Her Mom is looking forward to the trip, but we feel a little sad in that her niece was going to come, but did not get approved. After we went over to Zellers, as I really wanted to get the new Starship Enterprise from the New Star Trek movie. It had been on my mind for the whole week, so after going back and forth in my head, I decided to pick it up. It looks pretty cool, and I will review it for my Collecting Podcast at some point. I was a little upset though, when I got home, I was making room for it, and accidentally broke the stand for one of my other Enterprises. I am usually pretty careful, but I guess this time I was not.

On Saturday, Tao Tao and I went out to my parents cabin at Pigeon Lake. My sister and her husband were out, along with my niece and nephew. my brother and his son, and my parents were also out as well, so it was nice to see the whole family. It was my nephew Ethans belated 5th birthday from last month, so we had a little party. AlsoI helped with moving some logs from the front of the cabin to the back. My parents had some tree’s cut down as they were dead, and we had to move the logs. It was a lot of work, and my arms are feeling a bite tired today.

On Sunday, I woke up, and worked on my computer a bit. The day was not very nice, so a bit of an indoors day. Jason and I recorded our delayed podcast for the Spain F1 race. Hopefully we should have the podcast ready in the next few days, we also talked a bit about the Indy 500 next weekend, Jason DVD Pegwarmers and a bit of Star Trek. Even though it is a racing Podcast, we thought it was alright to break away a bit. After I went over to Dave’s house and he helped me fix my Stand for my Enterprise I had broke earlier in the weekend. Dave had picked up the Star Trek movies on Blu-Ray, and I watched the last half of Star Trek IV, it looked very clear, but you could see the matte lines around the spaceships, but considering the age of the movie, it looked very good.  After I came back and did some work on my podcast collecting site. Also, my friend Dan from Boston showed me some pictures of a base he made for his Enterprise, so it gives me an Idea of making my own base as I have never been happy with the stands that come with them.

I will probably stay up late and watch some more Enterprise on DVD. Ever since I have seen the new Star Trek movie, I have been wanting to watch Trek. My friend Jason sent me a link to a cool Map of the United Federation of Planets. I saved it, as I think it will be cool to reference. I would love to get a maps for Star Trek and Star Wars to hang on the wall, as would be great to reference.

Tags: Champodcast, Dan from Boston, Dave, Enterprise, Ethan, Formula 1, Jason, Long Weekend, Pigeon Lake, Star Trek, Tao tao, United Federation of Planets Map