Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Pearson International Airport
Things have been very busy for me since the cruise. The week after the cruise I was in Montreal visiting my current customer. This was followed by a week of preparing for another prototype review for that customer. This week, I am in the Toronto area at another office for the same customer. However, I hope to find more time for blogging again.
Since it has been a while, this post will cover a lot of ground.
Andrew has been playing with a couple of bands and starting to make some money here and there. He is a lead singer and plays guitar and bass guitar. His band has had a couple of out-of-town trips with the most recent to Arizona where they played at a bar and Utah where they played at a wedding. Celeste had a chance to see him play at a local bar/restaurant near home while I stayed home with the girls.
Bethany has started the SAT/ACT testing process. You can definitely tell a motivated teenager when they are willing to PAY to get up early on a weekend and take a grueling test! She is especially looking forward to getting out of school. The day after her last final, Beth is off to Norway to visit Ina and her family for three weeks!
Hayley has continued playing volleyball. She moved up a level and has real coaching instead of just me now. Her skills have definitely improved with her specialties being serving and setting. Hayley is about to graduate from 8th grade and become a freshman at the high school.
Hayley and I went to see the latest Shrek movie last weekend while Bethany was taking her SAT Subject Tests. It was fair, but not as good as the first one IMHO.
Hayley continues to be my last hope for playing my board games. Bethany is not into them at all, Andrew will play some when he is around, and Celeste will only play a few. Hayley has really enjoyed quite a few of them and occasionally I pull out an old classic. The most recent classic was Battle Masters. This is close to minatures, but still on a game board. Granted the game board is around 4' by 5' and with lots of cool plastic pieces to move around (knights, orcs, archers, beastmen, etc.). We pulled aside the dining room table to have room to play and kept it around for the weekend. Lots of fun pulling out the old stuff!
As I write this, I am in the Toronto area for work. I am outside of town without a car since my hotel is across the parking lot from my customer. I can see downtown Toronto in the distance from my hotel room, but no time on this trip to visit. I've posted some pictures from there. Also, when I checked in they were out of regular non-smoking rooms. Rather than moving me to smoking (Yuck!), they upgraded me to a suite with a Jacuzzi and Sauna. Despite all of my trips to Finland, I have never tried a sauna. I did try out the Jacuzzi, so maybe I have to give the Sauna a try tonight. Maybe. I posted some pictures of that too.
I did take a nice walk last night and found a local geocache. I was disappointed to see the the geocoins that were supposed to be there were not. However, when I read the log today I see that a new geocoin was dropped off. If the rain stays away, I may go get that one.
My hotel is very near Pearson International Airport, so I can see planes in the final approach to landing from my room. The hotel is soundproofed nicely, so it is cool to watch. This is obviously a very international destination. Here are some of the airlines that I can remember seeing from my hotel this week:
* Air Canada
* Jazz
* Continental
* United
* American
* Korean Air
* LOT (Polish Flag Air Carrier)
* AlItalia
* Lufthansa
OK, that is enough for now. I'll try to post shorter blurbs more often for a while!
Here is the Toronto skyline as seen from my hotel window:
This is the jacuzzi and sauna in my hotel room:
Here is the jacuzzi in my room when I prepared it for use:
I found a geocache in that small tree behind me:
Since it has been a while, this post will cover a lot of ground.
Andrew has been playing with a couple of bands and starting to make some money here and there. He is a lead singer and plays guitar and bass guitar. His band has had a couple of out-of-town trips with the most recent to Arizona where they played at a bar and Utah where they played at a wedding. Celeste had a chance to see him play at a local bar/restaurant near home while I stayed home with the girls.
Bethany has started the SAT/ACT testing process. You can definitely tell a motivated teenager when they are willing to PAY to get up early on a weekend and take a grueling test! She is especially looking forward to getting out of school. The day after her last final, Beth is off to Norway to visit Ina and her family for three weeks!
Hayley has continued playing volleyball. She moved up a level and has real coaching instead of just me now. Her skills have definitely improved with her specialties being serving and setting. Hayley is about to graduate from 8th grade and become a freshman at the high school.
Hayley and I went to see the latest Shrek movie last weekend while Bethany was taking her SAT Subject Tests. It was fair, but not as good as the first one IMHO.
Hayley continues to be my last hope for playing my board games. Bethany is not into them at all, Andrew will play some when he is around, and Celeste will only play a few. Hayley has really enjoyed quite a few of them and occasionally I pull out an old classic. The most recent classic was Battle Masters. This is close to minatures, but still on a game board. Granted the game board is around 4' by 5' and with lots of cool plastic pieces to move around (knights, orcs, archers, beastmen, etc.). We pulled aside the dining room table to have room to play and kept it around for the weekend. Lots of fun pulling out the old stuff!
As I write this, I am in the Toronto area for work. I am outside of town without a car since my hotel is across the parking lot from my customer. I can see downtown Toronto in the distance from my hotel room, but no time on this trip to visit. I've posted some pictures from there. Also, when I checked in they were out of regular non-smoking rooms. Rather than moving me to smoking (Yuck!), they upgraded me to a suite with a Jacuzzi and Sauna. Despite all of my trips to Finland, I have never tried a sauna. I did try out the Jacuzzi, so maybe I have to give the Sauna a try tonight. Maybe. I posted some pictures of that too.
I did take a nice walk last night and found a local geocache. I was disappointed to see the the geocoins that were supposed to be there were not. However, when I read the log today I see that a new geocoin was dropped off. If the rain stays away, I may go get that one.
My hotel is very near Pearson International Airport, so I can see planes in the final approach to landing from my room. The hotel is soundproofed nicely, so it is cool to watch. This is obviously a very international destination. Here are some of the airlines that I can remember seeing from my hotel this week:
* Air Canada
* Jazz
* Continental
* United
* American
* Korean Air
* LOT (Polish Flag Air Carrier)
* AlItalia
* Lufthansa
OK, that is enough for now. I'll try to post shorter blurbs more often for a while!
Here is the Toronto skyline as seen from my hotel window:
This is the jacuzzi and sauna in my hotel room:
Here is the jacuzzi in my room when I prepared it for use:
I found a geocache in that small tree behind me:
Labels: Andrew, Bethany, Blogging, Family, Games, Geocaching, GPS, Hayley, Ina, Movies, Rob, School, Travel, Volleyball, Work
Friday, October 16, 2009
22 Years Ago today...
... shortly after 3am we became parents.
For those that have not seen him for a while, Andrew has become less of a man than he was. What I mean by this is that he has lost a lot of weight via a self-imposed combination of food control and lots and lots of bike riding. Way to go, Drew, and Happy Birthday!
This photo was taken almost three years ago. He and I took a "guys trip" to San Antonio to use up some airline passes that I had that were about to expire. We had some time to play on-line games with the free wireless internet at Phoenix Airport on our way home.
Here we are on the same trip at a webcam geocache in front of the Alamo. The rules were to show either thumbs up for "hook 'em horns" to get credit for the cache. I am on the phone talking to the girls at home who took the screen shot.
For those that have not seen him for a while, Andrew has become less of a man than he was. What I mean by this is that he has lost a lot of weight via a self-imposed combination of food control and lots and lots of bike riding. Way to go, Drew, and Happy Birthday!
This photo was taken almost three years ago. He and I took a "guys trip" to San Antonio to use up some airline passes that I had that were about to expire. We had some time to play on-line games with the free wireless internet at Phoenix Airport on our way home.
Here we are on the same trip at a webcam geocache in front of the Alamo. The rules were to show either thumbs up for "hook 'em horns" to get credit for the cache. I am on the phone talking to the girls at home who took the screen shot.
Labels: Andrew, Birthdays, Geocaching
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Finland Dec 2008
I am officially heading back to Finland again later this month. There was a chance that I would not be going, but the customer and partner were very insistent that I return.
One thing I am looking forward to is placing some Travel Bugs in a geocache that I found the last time I was there. Continuing my theme of caches that could lead to international incidents, this one was located on the door of a power vault at a large fire station in Helsinki. Shoo suggested that I wear a trench coat and dark glasses when I go caching over there. Nice to have helpful friends!
In any case, this cache required unscrewing 4 screws to get in. This was in the area where the fire fighters cars are parked. The cache entry says that they know about it, but it just takes one suspicious person that does not know about it to cause a problem.
In any case, I got it opened, signed the log, and left a Disneyland map. That sounds like a fun thing to leave in Finland. The cache is large enough to take some caches and should be in walking distance of my hotel.
Another discover close to this cache is shown in the picture below.
The owner of this shop is a nice young lady that has dual US/Finnish citizenship. It turns out that she went to school at UC Irvine and learned to surf here. We had a nice chat when she saw me taking this picture. She said that she can always tell the Americans because they are the ones that take the photos!
I also found a possible future Rosetta Stone. This sign includes English and the two official languages of Finland: Finnish and Swedish. The bird in the second photo was sitting on a rock near this sign. I think that he said "Nevermore" in Finnish, but I'm not sure since that word is not on the sign!
It will be dark, cold, and possibly snowy on my next trip. Also, I will only be there for 4 working days. That means that I will probably not be able to take any pictures. However, I still have some from my last trip that I can share if I find some blogging time.
One thing I am looking forward to is placing some Travel Bugs in a geocache that I found the last time I was there. Continuing my theme of caches that could lead to international incidents, this one was located on the door of a power vault at a large fire station in Helsinki. Shoo suggested that I wear a trench coat and dark glasses when I go caching over there. Nice to have helpful friends!
In any case, this cache required unscrewing 4 screws to get in. This was in the area where the fire fighters cars are parked. The cache entry says that they know about it, but it just takes one suspicious person that does not know about it to cause a problem.
In any case, I got it opened, signed the log, and left a Disneyland map. That sounds like a fun thing to leave in Finland. The cache is large enough to take some caches and should be in walking distance of my hotel.
Another discover close to this cache is shown in the picture below.
The owner of this shop is a nice young lady that has dual US/Finnish citizenship. It turns out that she went to school at UC Irvine and learned to surf here. We had a nice chat when she saw me taking this picture. She said that she can always tell the Americans because they are the ones that take the photos!
I also found a possible future Rosetta Stone. This sign includes English and the two official languages of Finland: Finnish and Swedish. The bird in the second photo was sitting on a rock near this sign. I think that he said "Nevermore" in Finnish, but I'm not sure since that word is not on the sign!
It will be dark, cold, and possibly snowy on my next trip. Also, I will only be there for 4 working days. That means that I will probably not be able to take any pictures. However, I still have some from my last trip that I can share if I find some blogging time.
Labels: Geocaching, Rob, Travel, Work
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Geocaching in Finland
I visited a local island fortress as part of my sightseeing last weekend: Soumenlinna. It has a very interesting history and was once considered second only to Gibralter as a powerful sea-side fortress. It has an important enough history that it is considered one of the United Nation's World Heritage Sites.
As part of my visit to the island, I made a list of geocaches that are planted over there. A number of them sounded interesting and not too hard. Boy, was I wrong. I think that the root of my problems was that poking around in a suspicious way in a foreign capital city's World Heritage Site made me pretty nervous. It seemed like it would be hard to explain opening things and moving items of historical interest around to look for hidden treasures.
As the day was ending, I was afraid that I would go 0 for 5 on my searching. I was feeling desperate to find at least one since it is likely I won't have another chance before leaving.
On the way out, I returned to the scene of the first one that I tried for. I carefully re-read the notes and took a seat on the library steps (see the photo below) to think things through. Since it was Sunday, the library was closed. That meant not many people on the street. That was my only hope.
If you check out the right side of the photo, you will see some metal coverings sticking out of the brick wall at an angle. While sitting on the steps, I saw a piece of wire connected to a nail in a brick. That wire was holding down one side of the farthest metal covering. Duh! How did I miss that before? Again, I suggest nervousness at the situation. Anyway, once I loosened that I found the film canister cache.
Back on the steps, I filled out the log sheet and left a few US coins for a future cacher (a penny, a nickel, a dime, and, in honor of our friends to the North, a US State Quarter featuring Oregon). I got a few funny looks from passers by as I sat there, but no one stopped to say anything. Somewhat ironically, it turns out that two other cachers signed the log earlier in the day!
It still felt a bit like vandalizing a historical site when I was lifting and returning that metal cover. However, I managed to get it taken care of without causing an international incident.
Beyond the geocaching issue, the island visit was great. I'll write more about that later.
As part of my visit to the island, I made a list of geocaches that are planted over there. A number of them sounded interesting and not too hard. Boy, was I wrong. I think that the root of my problems was that poking around in a suspicious way in a foreign capital city's World Heritage Site made me pretty nervous. It seemed like it would be hard to explain opening things and moving items of historical interest around to look for hidden treasures.
As the day was ending, I was afraid that I would go 0 for 5 on my searching. I was feeling desperate to find at least one since it is likely I won't have another chance before leaving.
On the way out, I returned to the scene of the first one that I tried for. I carefully re-read the notes and took a seat on the library steps (see the photo below) to think things through. Since it was Sunday, the library was closed. That meant not many people on the street. That was my only hope.
If you check out the right side of the photo, you will see some metal coverings sticking out of the brick wall at an angle. While sitting on the steps, I saw a piece of wire connected to a nail in a brick. That wire was holding down one side of the farthest metal covering. Duh! How did I miss that before? Again, I suggest nervousness at the situation. Anyway, once I loosened that I found the film canister cache.
Back on the steps, I filled out the log sheet and left a few US coins for a future cacher (a penny, a nickel, a dime, and, in honor of our friends to the North, a US State Quarter featuring Oregon). I got a few funny looks from passers by as I sat there, but no one stopped to say anything. Somewhat ironically, it turns out that two other cachers signed the log earlier in the day!
It still felt a bit like vandalizing a historical site when I was lifting and returning that metal cover. However, I managed to get it taken care of without causing an international incident.
Beyond the geocaching issue, the island visit was great. I'll write more about that later.
Labels: Geocaching, Rob, Travel
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Cuyamaca Rocky
Over Father's Day weekend last month, we went down to Lake Cuyamaca to help FlyingVan prepare for the upcoming reunion and for a nice family visit. We worked together to prepare a geocache called Cuyamaca Rocky that we can share for next month's reunion. It is at the corner of his guest cabin property. The construction was very clever -- I have not seen one like it before. Props to FlyingVan on the design!
As of today, the cache has been found by 6 groups. The first person to find it was less than a week after it was published. It has received some nice, positive comments.
I have included a photo of Bethany (on the left) and Mckenna (on the right) helping finish the placement of the cache. I purposely obscured the view of the cache itself to avoid ruining the fun of discovery for anyone that will be down to find it next month. Follow the link on this page if you want a preview of the cache. The geocache page has a picture of the lake as seen from the cache site.
As of today, the cache has been found by 6 groups. The first person to find it was less than a week after it was published. It has received some nice, positive comments.
I have included a photo of Bethany (on the left) and Mckenna (on the right) helping finish the placement of the cache. I purposely obscured the view of the cache itself to avoid ruining the fun of discovery for anyone that will be down to find it next month. Follow the link on this page if you want a preview of the cache. The geocache page has a picture of the lake as seen from the cache site.
Labels: Bethany, Family, Geocaching
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Bridging Ceremony
In Girl Scouts, the process of moving from one level to another is called "bridging". The Girl Scout Council in San Francisco hosts a neat "bridging ceremony" for girls at the end of Junior Girl Scouts where the girls walk across the Golden Gate Bridge and have a ceremony on the other side.
Hayley got to participate in this ceremony last weekend. She rode a bus up with some other local troops and they had a fun weekend in the city. Bethany, Celeste, and I went along as backup support as needed, but it turned out that we got to spend a lot of family time together.
For us, the highlights were a visit to Muir Woods and a "Green Thumb" geocache in a community garden (very neat concept) that overlooked the Golden Gate Bridge.
It was a very quick trip - drove up after school on Thursday and drove home on Sunday. However, definitely memorable and worth the visit.
P.S. BobV (if you get to read this) - we thought about looking you up while we were in the area, but simply ran out of time. For what it's worth, we did a little wave towards Oakland to say hello as we drove towards it on the Bay Bridge (not sure what part of Oakland you are in, so we generically greeted the city!).
Hayley got to participate in this ceremony last weekend. She rode a bus up with some other local troops and they had a fun weekend in the city. Bethany, Celeste, and I went along as backup support as needed, but it turned out that we got to spend a lot of family time together.
For us, the highlights were a visit to Muir Woods and a "Green Thumb" geocache in a community garden (very neat concept) that overlooked the Golden Gate Bridge.
It was a very quick trip - drove up after school on Thursday and drove home on Sunday. However, definitely memorable and worth the visit.
P.S. BobV (if you get to read this) - we thought about looking you up while we were in the area, but simply ran out of time. For what it's worth, we did a little wave towards Oakland to say hello as we drove towards it on the Bay Bridge (not sure what part of Oakland you are in, so we generically greeted the city!).
Labels: Family, Geocaching, Hayley, Scouts
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Hello Kitty Came Home
In geocaching, there is an item called a Travel Bug. A travel bug is basically a dog tag with a serial number on it and a web page associated with it. The owner attaches some sort of object to the dog tag, gives it a mission on the web site, then sends it into the world via geocache sites.
Hayley created a travel bug called Hello Kitty Come Home. This is a soft Hello Kitty doll on a keychain that we attached to the dog tag. The mission of this travel bug was to return to a cache near our home.
When I went to New Zealand in December, I dropped this travel bug off in a cache called Mapbox (Wellington) - a cache which is sadly gone now.
When you own a Travel Bug, you get email updates when it moves. We were able to watch Hello Kitty quickly return to the East Coast of the US and start to move westward.
My business travels took me to Texas this past week. The project manager booked a hotel in Abilene, Texas for the team of consultants to stay for the week. In a major stoke of coincidence, Hayley's Hello Kitty travel bug was in a cache about 3 miles from the hotel. More importantly, it was a cache that would be easy to find after work in the dark.
Last week, I visited the TB Train Station and picked up Hello Kitty. She returned to Hayley last Friday.
Hello Kitty came home - and much faster than we would have thought possible!
Hayley created a travel bug called Hello Kitty Come Home. This is a soft Hello Kitty doll on a keychain that we attached to the dog tag. The mission of this travel bug was to return to a cache near our home.
When I went to New Zealand in December, I dropped this travel bug off in a cache called Mapbox (Wellington) - a cache which is sadly gone now.
When you own a Travel Bug, you get email updates when it moves. We were able to watch Hello Kitty quickly return to the East Coast of the US and start to move westward.
My business travels took me to Texas this past week. The project manager booked a hotel in Abilene, Texas for the team of consultants to stay for the week. In a major stoke of coincidence, Hayley's Hello Kitty travel bug was in a cache about 3 miles from the hotel. More importantly, it was a cache that would be easy to find after work in the dark.
Last week, I visited the TB Train Station and picked up Hello Kitty. She returned to Hayley last Friday.
Hello Kitty came home - and much faster than we would have thought possible!
Labels: Geocaching, Hayley, Rob, Travel
Friday, April 11, 2008
Heading Out Again
I'm off to Texas for the next two weeks (returning home for the weekend in the middle). Not as exotic as some of my recent trips, but still a lot of travel. The town where the customer is located is more then a 2 hour drive from Dallas-Fort Worth airport. The town is very small, so it is another 50 miles or so to the hotel where I will stay.
Looks like I have some driving time coming my way for the next two weeks. On the bright side, it looks like there are a bunch of Geocaches to check out while I am there!
Looks like I have some driving time coming my way for the next two weeks. On the bright side, it looks like there are a bunch of Geocaches to check out while I am there!
Labels: Geocaching, Rob, Travel, Work
Monday, July 02, 2007
Camping
We went camping last weekend. We took the tents and sleeping bags and such and headed out to a campground that I remember going to a lot as a kid. The place is called Vail Lake Resort (it was called Butterfield Country when I was a kid) and it is a few miles east of Temecula. We went a few years ago over a long February weekend and it was great. The site was still being re-built after years of neglect, but they had done a good job on what was done. Based on that, we decided to head out there again with some friends of ours.
The kids had fun this past weekend, although it was less so for us parents. There were a lot of cool things going on including live music on Friday and Saturday night, a BBQ and fireworks on Saturday, lots of places to ride bikes, and we added 3 new geocaches to our finds.
However, on the negative side it was hot, dusty, and loud. Hot was annoying, dusty was manageable, but the loud part was very unacceptable. It was like the campsites around us were having a stereo volume war and everyone lost. On top of that, we were dealing with kids screaming until well past midnight.
Wow, I feel old complaining like this -- but on the other hand I have rarely experienced such an utter lack of courtesy by so many different people in what should have been a relaxing atmosphere. The campsite had rules, they just didn't enforce them. I asked the nearest group to turn it down around 11pm, but I just didn't have the time or energy to deal with all of the others. Unfortunately, we don't plan to return anytime soon (and definitely not in the summertime).
The kids had fun this past weekend, although it was less so for us parents. There were a lot of cool things going on including live music on Friday and Saturday night, a BBQ and fireworks on Saturday, lots of places to ride bikes, and we added 3 new geocaches to our finds.
However, on the negative side it was hot, dusty, and loud. Hot was annoying, dusty was manageable, but the loud part was very unacceptable. It was like the campsites around us were having a stereo volume war and everyone lost. On top of that, we were dealing with kids screaming until well past midnight.
Wow, I feel old complaining like this -- but on the other hand I have rarely experienced such an utter lack of courtesy by so many different people in what should have been a relaxing atmosphere. The campsite had rules, they just didn't enforce them. I asked the nearest group to turn it down around 11pm, but I just didn't have the time or energy to deal with all of the others. Unfortunately, we don't plan to return anytime soon (and definitely not in the summertime).
Labels: Camping, Geocaching, GPS, Rant
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Geocaching
We have discovered a new hobby: geocaching. Some friends mentioned this to us a while ago, but we never got around to trying it until last weekend. The girls are now hooked!
Geocaching is basically a GPS treasure hunt. Find a cache that is near you (we use www.geocaching.com), enter the coordinates in your portable GPS, take along any clues of where the cache is hidden, and go. When you find it, at a minimum you sign the log book. Most caches have prizes within where the rule is to take something out and put something in.
We have only found 3 so far, but they have been fun to hunt down. Some people out there get VERY creative in how they hide those things! Last night the girls and I figured out a puzzle for the next one that we are going to find. That's one cool thing about this activity -- it combines computer work, puzzle solving, and outdoor activity.
I'm looking forward to it as something new to do outside with the kids. For example, our local Aliso Creek Bike Trail has a bunch of them hidden along the route. We can go for a bike ride and track down caches as we go. The caches are literally hidden all over the world. Bethany's Girl Scout troop wants to create a cache of their own and publish it. There are enough people with this desire that there are many places to practice this hobby.
Geocaching is basically a GPS treasure hunt. Find a cache that is near you (we use www.geocaching.com), enter the coordinates in your portable GPS, take along any clues of where the cache is hidden, and go. When you find it, at a minimum you sign the log book. Most caches have prizes within where the rule is to take something out and put something in.
We have only found 3 so far, but they have been fun to hunt down. Some people out there get VERY creative in how they hide those things! Last night the girls and I figured out a puzzle for the next one that we are going to find. That's one cool thing about this activity -- it combines computer work, puzzle solving, and outdoor activity.
I'm looking forward to it as something new to do outside with the kids. For example, our local Aliso Creek Bike Trail has a bunch of them hidden along the route. We can go for a bike ride and track down caches as we go. The caches are literally hidden all over the world. Bethany's Girl Scout troop wants to create a cache of their own and publish it. There are enough people with this desire that there are many places to practice this hobby.
Labels: Family, Geocaching, GPS
