As anyone within about 100 miles of burns bog could tell you, it's damn
smokey. Depending on the wind direction the smokiness comes and goes, but
I seem to have had a perma-sore throat since Monday.

On a semi-but-not-really-related note, I was just reading an article on
the CBC, Montreal bar owners to challenge
Quebec smoking ban. From the article:

Two bar owners in Montreal are launching a legal battle against
Quebec's anti-smoking legislation. They say the law will cause job
losses because more patrons will stay home.

Talk about Deja Vu. Do these people honestly think it will hurt their
business? There are plenty of real world examples proving just the opposite. If
someone wants to smoke, they don't go to a restaurant or bar to do it. They
go to restaurants or bars when they want to eat or drink, and that ain't about
to change.

It is semi-late.
I am semi-tired. Here's
my semi-haiku.

A haiku written
in python. My invention.
It is a "pyku".

if (self._blah and
    time.localtime() is late):
    self.go_to_bed()

That was pretty fun
plenty more of those to come
now I'm really done

Well, something actually funny to write about for once. This past Saturday a bunch of us went downtown to go to the Yaletown car show for the afternoon and to the fireworks ("celebration of light" or something like) later that evening. Those two events, however, were the least interesting of the day.

After a few drinks at Parv's place (on the 14th floor) we headed out for the fireworks. The elevator said max 9 people (or 1500 lbs), we had 10 smaller people, so what the hey. We all piled in and made our way down. Some of us figured that jumping would be fun. Apparently it was just enough increase in weight to push us over the 1500lb limit (our total weight, which we added while waiting was 1485 lbs).

Anyway, long story short, after much crazyness, trying to pry the outer door to the second floor open, having a lady on the outside tell us that we were jerks, and the repairman having to come from Burnaby (which would take him >1h), we managed to make it out in 35 minutes (I guess the elevator had a timeout and started moving again) and catch the start of the firewords. We also had to split so the people who were "helping" us (by calling us jerks), wouldn't get Parveen evicted.

Be sure to check out the stuck in the elevator album.

Oh, and if you're one of those people who thinks you can get away without checking out the album... think again! Here's a sample of the goodness you'll find:

So I think I'm finally about ready to get an mp3 player. Right now I'm looking
the iriver and the ipod. I'd probably get the iriver 799 or an ipod mini, as I
want something that's not going to be too clunky when I go running or to the
gym.

The iriver is $229 and 1GB, the ipod mini starts at $249 and has 4GB. Right
now I'd say I'm leaning towards the iriver as I can just strap it to my arm
or whatever. And it can play ogg vorbis
files :-)! Oh yeah, the iriver also plays FM radio and lasts approx. 40 hrs. I
think you have to pay extra to get radio on an ipod (if possible) and it only
lasts up to 18 hours.

Anyone got any recommendations? Perhaps other mp3 players that are good?

Anyone??

Oh yeah, and some links:
http://www.iriveramerica.com/prod/ultra/700/ifp_799.aspx
http://www.apple.com/ca/ipodmini/

We started our short trek into the Kootneys on Tuesday after deciding to spend an extra night in Vernon Monday night. We ended up driving for about 5 hours to Ainsworth. The highway there was absolutely beautiful and there was next to no traffic. I think we were fortunate that I decided to take this week off, as summer vacation begins next week for high school and elementary school, so things are still pretty quiet. There was a neat little ferry that we had to take across Arrow lakes to get to Nakusp.

Nakusp is known for it's hot springs. It has two developed ones, which are pretty much just hot/warm pools and there's about 6 or so known, but undeveloped, hot springs only a short hike off the road. Unfortunately, due to our extra night in Vernon we didn't have time to check any out. It might be nice to check out some of the undeveloped hot springs in that area sometime.

Our next stop was Kaslo. A fairly small town with some nice beaches along Kootney Lake. There wasn't much there, but the main street downtown was really nice, many shops with the backdrop of mountains. There was one wicked little takeout place with like dogs/burgers/fries that also baked a lot of their own bread, some yeast free bread too, so Ariane was able to get some.

We stayed in Ainsworth that night. Meh... nothing in Ainsworth but the hotel and hot springs, we stayed in the hotel. The cool thing about these hot springs was that they're developed around a natural cave that you can walk right into. It's sort of like a combination steam bath/hottub at the very back of the cave... really relaxing once you get over the not being able to breath stuff.

We drove to Nelson the next morning. Nelson is really cool... surrounded by steep mountains and the Kootney Lake, it's very scenic. Though it was raining when we first arrived (yesterday), today is awesome weather. I went riding on one of their mountains today, it was a lot of climbing but also some wicked rides back down. I only did intermediate rides and they were slightly above my skill level, with a ton of ladder rides and jumps Nelson's tracks are definately on par with the Vancouver north shore.

The main street in Nelson is about 8 blocks long with a ton of shops and pubs and even a few places where Ariane can get food. We tried to do a tour of the NBC (Nelson Brewing Company), but they only run tours on Fridays, so we'll have to skip that one unfortunatly. Though I've sampled a few of their beers since we've been here and I must say, it's quite nice.

I can't believe how much live music they have here. Tonight we're going to see Luther Wright at a club across the street. Hopefully it won't be too country.

So I think I'm going to come back from my blogging hiatus as Ariane and I are
heading to the Kootneys next week, and I'm sure you all want to know what
I'll be eating for breakfast. Besides, it's time I rejoined the
sorority of spam
that is blogging.

My comment system has become bombarded with asshat spammers, so the other day
I finally got it together and wrote a script to help me manage my comments and
remove the odd 1500 spam comments that were so graciously placed on my blog,
most of them completely blank entries (wtf?).

I'll also hopefully be throwing some more pics up on my
photoblog so that all
can bask in my poor photography skills :-).

If you've ever played Crib before, you probably won't believe this, but don't
worry, I still don't believe it myself. Ariane and I were playing Crib
tonight and the game ended with her getting a 28 hand! That's right, a 28
hand!

Maybe I'm not emphasizing this quite enough... but it's not as if we play crib
all the time, in fact, we rarely play. For a quick background overview of the
game, in two player crib each person is dealt 6 cards, two of which go into
the dealers "crib", an extra hand that gets counted at the end of the hand.

So each person is holding 4 cards, at this point the deck is cut, and a fifth
card is flipped over, both players can use this card to add to their hand.
Points are obtained by adding cards to 15 (i.e. 7 and 8 will give you 2
points), making pairs, runs, or flushes. When a person goes to count their
cards, they have five cards to work with, their four and the flipped card.

If you've forgotten MACM 101 already, the total possible number of different
hands you can have with this is (52 choose 4) * 48 = 12,994,800. To get a
28 hand you have to have four 5's and a face card (or ten). Only 78 possible
hands will get you that, which means that the probability of getting a 28 hand
is just over 1 in 170,984. Now that's ridiculous!

I think we might have to go buy some lotto tickets...

btw, Ariane had the Jack of clubs, 5 of clubs, 5 of spades, 5 of diamonds,
and the cut card was the 5 of hearts.