The Path or the Destination?

One of the things that has always struck me as interesting is whether someone gets excited about the process of working on something or the final product. The process can be anything from a trip to the corner store, a trip across the country, building a piece of furniture, working in the garden, or writing a blog post. Everyone has a different view on these things. Where the joy comes from is partially related to whether you like a particular task, but it isn’t just that. Some people really aren’t all that keen about the trip at all. They just want to be there. The logical types I guess. Other people are the complete opposite and revel in the drive. Those are the artistic folks I guess.

The funny thing is that I think I fall into the group that enjoys the drive, even though most people would classify me as the nerdy computer guy. Then again, maybe logic has nothing to do with whether you find the path or destination exciting. I don’t think there’s a right answer here – maybe I fall into both camps depending on the task at hand. Actually in some cases, I bounce back and forth, for some tasks. In the case of gardening, you’re probably never done. Especially if you go at the pace I have this summer of not really quite keeping up with the weeds. In the case of furniture, if it’s a really big project like the mission-style bed I built a few years ago, it starts out fun, but by the time you’re doing the sanding, you just want it to be over with.

mission-style bed

In the case of my recent trip to Alaska, it was the opposite. I started out pretty antsy about lounging around on deck reading a book. By the end, I would have been quite happy to have a few more days of doing pretty much nothing :).

I’ve had some really pleasurable times these last few weeks where I really was in no rush for the event to end. Last night I was watching some river otters play in the Alouette River in Pitt Meadows. If the sun hadn’t gone down, I could’ve watched them for another hour.

It was a beautiful night. Even with my lo-res camera phone, it hopefully shows just how nice it was on the dikes.

Just east of here – maybe a few hundred feet – is a small pond behind the pond in this picture where you can watch turtles sunning themselves on some logs. There are blue herons patiently waiting for fish, still as statues, and there are crawfish in the river. There’s a bald eagle on a tree just to the west and every couple weeks I’ll see a falcon. Hm. Not sure how I went from philosophy to nature there, but anyways… I’ll leave it. Hope you enjoy my ruminations.

Gale Force Winds

Yesterday the Captain informed us that today, the last full day on the sea, we would experience gale force winds. Conceptually I knew what that meant, but I’ve never been on the ocean with a big wind. My longest journey on the water before this trip was from the mainland to Vancouver Island, and the weather had never been all that rough. He gave a little more information. On the way through Hecate Straight, the waves would be 5 or 6 metres.
5 or 6 metres doesn’t sound that bad. Single digit anything doesn’t sound all that bad generally, but then I looked out at the waves that were already making the ship bounce a bit. They were maybe 2 metres.
Morning has arrived and things are picking up. I went up on deck with my coffee. Not smart. The wind whipped the coffee out of the mug in short order. After dispencing with the cup, I went back out. I never did get to the front of the ship. It took all my strength to just stand in place half way up the starboard side. That was cool. Definitely felt like Leonardo DiCaprio (20 years older, fifty pounds heavier, and we won’t talk about the looks, ok?)

I’ve retreated to the solarium where I can watch the waves in peace. They are still only up to 3 metres maxiumum, but the day is young.
A few hours have passed and the wind has picked up a bit. Steeling myself against the buffetting wind, I’ve advanced to the front of the ship. It’s actually windiest on the sides where it funnels through. The wind is whipping the drawstrings of my hoodie against my face. The first few times, it is novel, but soon it’s stinging and I head in. Some of the bigger waves I would guess are 4 metres.
The Captain has just informed us that the wind is 45 knots. I’ll have to figure out what that is in landlubber speeds when I get home.
Pictures are pretty useless, but I’ll add one in anyways.

The Guided Tour of Davidson Glacier

The locals kept telling us how lucky we were. The weather was perfect. As we had heard the night before, we could expect the temperature to hit 80 (forty in the morning and forty in the afternoon). It was well past that with the temperature up to the mid seventies (low twenties for the Canadians reading this). We were to canoe up to the Davidson Glacier – within a hundred feet of the ice and snow. The run off from the glacier had created the river we paddled up, which was amazing. The view behind us of the coastal mountains was amazing. And the glacier itself? Well – it was amazing too.

Because it was so warm, there was a strong wind coming off the glacier as the hot air from the sun collided with the frigid air rising from the snow and ice. What we initially thought was mist blowing down the river was actually very fine dust, ground up through the years by the relentless advance of the ice. Within minutes, we all had grit in our teeth. The glacier itself had retreated several miles over the past few decades. It used to flow out to Lynn Canal when John Muir wrote about it in the late 19th century, but now it was at the head of it’s own river that ran a few miles to the sea. It was exciting to think this body of water did not exist at all just a century ago.
The tour consisted of the sixty of us trundling from boat to bus to canoe. A short hike was also thrown in for good measure. With our very affable tour guide straight from Texas shepherding us along, it was very enjoyable.

The Hubbard Glacier

I woke this morning to see ice chunks drifting past my window. That’s a bit odd I thought. I looked out the porthole a little closer and realized we were maybe 10 miles from the Hubbard Glacier, on the Alaskan coast.

I went up to the solarium and let Alicia sleep for a bit while I had a coffee then went down and brought her up on deck.
Wow. What an amazing sight. The glacier kept getting bigger and bigger until we were looking up at it, from the top deck. The glacier must have been 500 feet high. We were very lucky that when the ship was at it’s closest, we saw huge chunks of ice fall into the sea – the glacier was calving. A truly amazing experience.

The Decadence of Cruising

Alicia and I have been sailing on the Serenade of the Seas for a few days now. I had never been on a cruise ship before and there have been several things that have amazed me. The volumes of people, food, garbage are truly amazing, but I had expected that. What I hadn’t envisioned was the spinoff jobs created by the cruiselines.
There is the art auctioneer, the craft shops at the tiny ports we pull into, there are the dancers and singers in the nightly entertainment, not to mention the hundreds of support staff on the boat to run the place. And I am on day 3.

Just to put everyone at ease, we had a fire drill before we left shore

It’s a bizarre environment. I overheard one lady say she was not going to take the whale watch tour because there was no guarantee they would see a whale. Pardon? They don’t just come when you call them… They serve you unlimited food, but a drink of pop will set you back $1.50 unless you get the ‘deal’ and buy unlimited pop for $28 for the week. Want 3 deserts? No problem. A glass of wine will be $8 though.
I guess it makes sense, because you’ll buy the drinks. Now that I think about it, I guess it is kind of like the movies. You order a burger for the regular cost but that diet coke is going to cost you your left leg.

Ah, but the scenery has been amazing and the fitness centre is quite nice, since it looks over the bow. Yesterday, I saw a whale leaping straight up for probably 10 times as we slowly went past. I guess it must have been coming up under the fish and was feeding. It was truly an incredible sight. Of course since I was running, I didn’t have my camera, so you will just have to believe that I am telling the truth.
We just got back from Icy Straight where we did the tourist thing and went into ‘town’. I tell ya, it makes my hometown of Quesnel look huge, weighing in at 854 people. Our shuttle driver informed us that 16 people graduated from high school last year and 5 of them joined the army. An interesting statistic.

I am in the solarium right now, roughly 200 feet above the water. The view is amazing and it’s very tranquil.

Work-Life Balance

The term ‘work-life’ balance gets thrown around a lot at IBM where I work. It’s not too surprising since it is too easy to read e-mail at night, or do something even more toxic to the soul.

I work out of my house, which eliminates the commute, but creates it’s own set of problems because the obvious physical separation from the office just doesn’t happen. Sure, I have a separate ‘study’ for work, but it’s a pretty flimsy distinction. I work with folks in the UK and India as well as Toronto and Ottawa, so managing my time can be tricky.

I missed a few personal and work appointments recently and it really got to me. How do others manage? Other people may not have the same scenario as me ( I expect most don’t) but it can’t be uncommon to have multiple groups of people to get together with. IBM mandates that I use the lotus notes calendar for work stuff. How do I remember my India meetings at 8 pm at night without constantly being attached to my laptop? Where do I put personal stuff? If I try to use the laptop, I’m back to the same problem – it seems very wrong to fire up my computer to see where to go for drinks with the boys, and if I booked the night out a few weeks ago, I won’t remember the details.

My hope is that I will be able to use a new lotus notes web interface soon om my iphone but what would be better is if someone wrote some nice software to show a blended calendar of work/personal calendars from various places.

Same goes for addresses of people and email, although those aren’t as big a deal because they are typically not time critical.

It’s a mess.

The World of Tiling, or ‘Why My Back Hurts’

My daughter recently got an ‘upgrade’ and moved into the basement bedroom in our house. I remember getting a similar luxury when I was a teenager: a little more distance from the parents, the ability to play the music a little louder, and a little more freedom to crank the tunes to maybe ‘7’ instead of ‘6’ before the acients started to yell (that was my parents, and now that is me).

The pathetic closet-like area beside her bedroom laughingly referred to as the basement bathroom was sorely in need of an overhaul. It theoretically had a ‘shower’ but there was no way to mount a shower rod over the tub and the guy had these ridiculous insets that pretty much guaranteed rot within one or two uses, if anyone had actually used it. Here’s some pictures to show you what I mean:

Note the ledges on the left and right

After getting the walls fixed (ok – I hired someone to do that – I don’t get that much vacation), I put the tiles on. Hey – how hard could that be? Actually, it isn’t that hard. But it takes a lot longer than you’d think with all the steps – and I haven’t even got the grout in or the sealer on. Anyways, here’s how it looks:

Tiles Up!

Now, as is required by any before/after picture, you will note there is crap all over the place in the ‘before’ picture and the after picture has had said crap removed from the photo first. Nonetheless, I think it’s an improvement. Also – please note the whisper quiet fan (it’s combined with that light at the top). Can’t here a thing, can you? That fan was actually kind of fun to install. My brother the ‘electronics technician’, which you can truncate to ‘electrician’ if you want to get him excited, helped me with the installation and, even though we had to run about 24 feet of duct work to get the venting outside, went without a hitch.

With all the kneeling on the ground to split a gazillion tiles, my back is a touch annoyed at me, but it’s a good start.

Next, floor tiles, a new sink, new cabinets (behind the door), make-up lights (did I mention she was a teenage girl), primer and paint, mirrors, and probably a few other things and I’ll have the 2008 renovations done (well – maybe not – she’s already mentioning she would like her room painted white. White? Well – better than the black I wanted as a kid…)