Brian Hampson - Life and Other Things

FOC has released their estimate for the upcoming salmon season.  As usual, a bit “safe”.  We’ll have to wait and see what comes of the year as it progresses.

Thanks to Fishing with Rod for the lead.

All the lovable characters - and their oddities.  Here’s a page of Berkley Breathed favourite strips

Now, Opus, that cute little penguin is back!  Not online yet, but at least in print. 

2004-11-05 Unfortunately the site has changed since I originally posted this.  Not much there any more.

Milo!  Opus!  Bill!  Oliver! Come back!  Please… please….

We headed up to the west side of Harrison Lake to “Camp Cove” on Friday night in two trucks,  with 7 scouts, and two leaders.  We made the obligatory stop at “Rotten Ronnie’s” at Harris Rd.  After that, it was straight through to camp.  This was a competition camp, at which our Scouts would be competing to see if they can be the best patrol among 9 other patrols, in things such as camping skills, organisation, cooking, spirit, and cleanliness - all challenges for the average 11-14 yr old

We arrived at Cove around 2030, and by random draw, the kids got their site assigned.  Nice view, but on a bit of knoll, so also a bit windy when the wind blew.  All the kids were busy setting up tents, building tables, and generally camping, while we, the adults, stood to the side, and let them work.  It was good seeing what they could do without adult intervention.  Everything finally settled around 2330, and the final inspection of the day happened while they were all in there tents, to check if they’d left food out, or a messy site.  The fun part was waking them up, and telling them to come out and fix it (Bwahahahahah!).

Saturday Morning came, and with it, an opportunity to go drown some worms.  I whipped out the ultralight, and had a go for some cutties, which I figured would be cruising around for the chum fry.  Apparently, not in the area I fished :(  Oh well.  I also determined that my old hiking shoes MUST go in the garbage, I twisted an ankle once, and later slipped, and came down on a rock with my elbow.  I always find it fascinating that you can cut yourself THROUGH a jacket

After Lunch, the scouts had activities to complete, and I ran an activity in which a patrol had to carry a member over and under ropes, while never losing contact with him.  It was quite challenging, and the real thing I was watching for, was how the team worked under adversity.  It was nice to see some patrols coming together, however some fell apart.  As they say, adversity brings out the best AND the worst in some.

Dinner!  Dinner is always exciting, because a patrol invites you to have it with them.  This can be a frightening experience that can turn you off food for life, or can be a wonderful experience that makes you wish you camped with that patrol ALL the time.  Mine was a mixed bag.  It was supposed to be an Italian meal.  The spaghetti was coagulated ball of pasta that kind of made me gag, but the Ragu sauce helped to choke it down :)  It did come with garlic bread, and ceasar salad, along with a nice sparkling apple juice to top it off.  Other than the spaghetti, quite nice.  The spaghetti really dragged the marks down.

At this point things start blurring a bit…campfire, singing skits, late night, sleeping, breakfast, rain, rain, hard rain, rain, pack up, rain, closing.

The memorable part about the closing, of course is that OUR Scouts, the 40th Marpole WON!  Our scouts were like a well oiled machine.  They smiled through the tough stuff, and worked like a team through the WHOLE weekend.  Wow!

So, not much fishing, (or sleep) but a lot of fun, activity, and seeing the business men and women of tomorrow test their growing wings of independance.  Now - Time to sleep for me!

p.s. I’d appreciate some comments or feeback here - let me know what you think!  Thanks!

Going to be camping for the weekend.  Out with my Scouts.

From the 40’s! How to Make Friends by Telephone

Thanks to Metafilter for the link

Remember the guy who donated his cell phone and got stuck with a $1200 bill?  Verizon says “tough nuts”  Your phone - you pay!

Niiiiice…way to reward kindness

Personally - I say a bit of email to Verizon might help change their minds

Thanks to Engadget for the link.

Seems that I may have forgotten to fully close our door when I left home this morning.  When I got home at 2200, Taffy was poking in and out of the door.  This was SO WRONG.  My cats are indoor cats.  They have NEVER been outside unsupervised.  I’m glad Taffy was close to home still  - he’s diabetic  A day with improper diet could simply kill him.  When I saw that the door was open and nobody was home, I grabbed my Truck Club, and went into the house, fearing the worst. (hey - you use what you can)  It didn’t take long to realize that we had NOT been burgled (Thank God!)  PC, however was missing.  Panic set in.  We live in a suburban forested mountain area, coyotes are not uncommon.  She’s not an outdoor cat, and I was worried if she’d be able to defend herself, or escape if she needed to.  I called, and called - no answer, no cat.  My heart raced even faster. I zipped back inside, and got some food in her dish to see if she’d come when she heard the sound of her dish.  No answer.  Back inside, and get the flashlight.  I started going house to house to see if I could catch a reflection off of her eyes from in a bush, or under a car.  Two doors down - luck!  She was hiding under a neighbour’s car.  With a little food coaxing I got her to come to me, and then I carried her back inside.  Trauma averted. My cats are my kids.  They just have more fur than most human kids.  I’ve lost a pet to old age before and it tore me up.  I didn’t want to lose a cat because a door was left open.  I felt horrible.  

Aggh…what am I going to do when they actually pass on of old age….  Can’t pets stay young forever?

I came across these the other day…

Have you ever thought “Hey - I know a guy that fits that description to to a tee!”

excerpt:

1. Got into the gene pool while the lifeguard wasn’t watching.
2. A room temperature IQ.
3. Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thingy to hold it all together.

Many funny ones.  Thanks to this page on the ‘Net

Scott Hanselman has got a great read on his blog about the difference between “It Just works”, and “You can make it work”.   A small excerpt:

For me, BlueTooth is about as useful as my IR port. why is that my IR port will suddenly tell me that… (insert IR six-million-dollar-man sound here) … “Some dude you don’t know is nearby” when I’m alone at Starbucks, but when Ben is sitting next to me we have to engage our IR ports in Cinemax-level soft core porn to get a signal?

Made me laugh.  Thanks Scott!

From the description of the news article:

The stick fires blank bullets or turns into a deadly Ninja fighting stick with two retractable blades that spring out of the end at the touch of a button.

As much as the article states that it’s designed to scare rather than kill, I’m sure a little hacking can make this quite the formidable walking stick

The article appears to have been first carried by Annanova

We had my Aunt, Uncle and cousin over for dinner last night.  It was probably only the 3rd time in the last 4 years of marriage that I got to break out the good crystal!   We had Wild Sockeye fillets, steamed with lemon and onion slices, along with sauteed mushrooms, green and red peppers, and snow peas.  A Gray Monk Pinot Blanc went with the meal, and the whole thing was topped off with bumbleberry pie, and coffee with Baileys. 

I really DO enjoy living out here in Vancouver.

Comments always welcome.

MSN is running a bit about News Aggregators.  Why don’t more people figure this stuff out?

Thanks to Dave Winer for the link

And you thought OUR rush hour was bad?

Check this out.

Thanks to Metafilter

Got out of the house around 830/0900 :(  Mrs DragonSpeed was pretty tired, and so slept in a bit.  Oh well.  We got out, and it was a pleasure cruising up the highway in the new Tundra - Smooth, and quiet for a change!  We almost hit the last turn for the lake (and Sasquatch Provincial Park)and realized we had forgotten the worms.  Quick pit stop.  Lucky us, they had them.  Not the liveliest critters, but better than nothing Got on the lake at 1030/1100.  My luck the wind was blowing towards the launch.

Row, row, row. paddle, paddle paddle.  Whew… 2/3’s down the lake, we rig up along the right shore (looking from launch - sorry not sure of direction) and start casting, and let the wind blow us back to the launch.  Well, after about 20 minutes of drifting, Mrs Dragonspeed nails a little cuttie!  Cute, pic (film ) and back into the lake.

Another 10 minutes of drifting, and we’re back at shore - a good thing, since I had been a bit under enthusiastic pumping up the boat, and it needed a couple more shots, to bring it back to full oomph.

So, boat repumped, we headed up lake again.

Row, row, row…..you get the idea.  Finally we got to the end and beached near a creek flowing in to the lake towards the left of the end.  We got out and enjoyed the classic Subway food for lunch.  The sub seemed so big when we got it, but it dissappeared in seconds :(   We did quite a bit of beach casting for the next couple of hours, and between us had about 10 fish to hand, ranging from 2” to 16”+ and about as many not brought in.  We only kept the one big one, since we figured the others might have a chance to grow up and become real fish one day

After that, it was back in the boat, and let the wind blow us down lake again, casting, drifting, hanging out.  Perfect.  A little short sunshower was all that interupted a beautiful day out, with the temperatures in the low 20’s and variable sun and cloud.

We got back to the truck at around 1645 and headed back to Vancouver.  That trout smells mighty fine cooking now. 

The whole slide show available thanks to George at http://www.slacker.ca/brian/Webpics/Showpix.aspx?20040523Fish

addendum (2004/06/02):  The Mrs. DragonSpeed and her fish:

Via Endgadget:

Some poor senior donated his old phone to charity, and ended up with a $1200 bill!  Ouch!

Check out Robomower This little critter is like the Roomba Vacuum cleaner - but with Blades!  Tim Taylor would be proud.

From the site:

It features a battery powered three blade, 56 cm (21 inch) powerful cutting system equivalent to a 5.5 HP gas mower. RoboMower^® is a dedicated mulching mower that mulches better than a traditional mower thanks to its Triple-Chamber-Mulching system and the 5800-RPM blade speed, double that of a typical gas mower. Grass is cut into very small clippings that are buried in the roots of the lawn, where they decompose and act like a natural fertilizer. This results in a healthier and better-looking lawn, and eliminates the need to collect and remove the clippings.

This guy lived in Portland’s “Forest Park” for 4 years, raised his daughter and nobody noticed!  Wow!

via KATU in Portland

From the Cool Tools Blog:  Tracking Mammals.

Don Box has posted a link to a very interesting little online security book for .NET development.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Microsoft EVERYONE coded with security AND functionality in mind?