Archive for September 2006

27
Sep 2006

Yay! Canoe Trip

Wed, 09/27/2006 - 23:43 — Sean Carney

The planned route is from Tulabi lake to Elbow lake. We are heading out of the city on Friday night, staying the night at the Blatz's cottage and then setting in the water first thing in the morning on Saturday. I haven't the foggiest idea what time we will be returning to town on Sunday.

I really should start packing, but I haven't yet. I'll probably start packing sometime on Friday just before leaving. As long as I remember to charge my cameras battery packs, everything else can be done at the last minute.

On Monday you can expect a long post full of pictures from the trip.

24
Sep 2006

The Greatest Warranty Ever

Sun, 09/24/2006 - 22:28 — Sean Carney

Next weekend I am going for a canoe trip on the Bird River. I wanted to take my camera and get some nice nature shots along the way but I don't want to end up with it sleeping with the fish. To solve that problem I bought a Pelican case for my camera last weekend. The warranty reads as follows (yellow highlighting is mine).

I am still trying to figure out which of the three I am more concerned about. A shark in the river would be a truly worrisome experience, probably a first in Manitoba. However; if I lost a case to it I would have a great story to tell. Bear attack is unlikely because I am not using the case to hold a ham and cheese sandwich while I am away from the campsite.

Children under 5... Scary.

19
Sep 2006

I Deliver Things

Tue, 09/19/2006 - 23:36 — Sean Carney

Today I ran a load of dry bags to Pinawa for Outtatown's annual canoe trip. Apparently I saved the day for a few people although I am still waiting for a certificate stating that fact. Some of the dry bags looked like nothing more than sleeping bag stuff sacks, but hey, I just deliver them. I was paid for my trouble with food and conversation with Emily, which is always a good deal.

The thing is the food at Wilderness Edge hasn't changed since 2002. It was actually quite creepy in a way. There was nothing new out, and nothing old was missing. It's as if time had just stood still for four years. If you have ever been to Pinawa you would understand that this is in fact possible. It would have been almost comforting if I had not had some unfortunate experiences with the trifle years before.

On the way home I stopped at some rapids on the Whitemouth river to take some pictures. Most were too dark, but this one turned out nicely.

16
Sep 2006

Some Recent Pictures

Sat, 09/16/2006 - 15:43 — Sean Carney


These are a few pictures that I took last week while hiking with Emily. We hit up the McGilvary falls loop, the Nutimik loop and found a great place for night photography at the Seven Sisters picnic area. It was a really fun day.

15
Sep 2006

The Indian Autorickshaw Challenge

Fri, 09/15/2006 - 23:54 — Sean Carney

A few years ago, watching episodes of MTV's Jackass. I learned about the Gumball 3000 race. The aim of which was to race your vehicle of choice from London to Moscow and back again as fast as possible. This seemed amazing although the entry fees were a bit high for my budget, if my memory serves me right, tens of thousands of British pounds. That's just your entry fee, you have to supply your own vehicle.

A couple weeks ago a blog caught my eye, it talked about team "Curry In A Hurry" competing in the Indian Autorickshaw Challenege. Intrigued, I set out to learn more about this race.

The Indian ARC is a 1,000 kilometer race along the south east of India. Each team is given an autorickshaw to race for the week and there are various checkpoints and riddles to solve along the way.

Adventure can be had for a much lower price, only 600 British pounds. I really want to enter this race. I feel that I have been lacking in good foolish adventures as of late and this would no doubt rectify the situation. Assuming that I can actually pull this off and race, I will need to recruit some team members to race with. Emily has a spot but if anyone else wants some adventure, you're welcome to apply.

I now have something crazy I can do when I graduate from university in a couple years.

14
Sep 2006

Bah! Sickness!

Thu, 09/14/2006 - 18:23 — Sean Carney

I haven't been feeling well as of late and it isn't just "Intermediate Accounting - Assets" which is causing the feeling of general malaise. Nay, it would seem I am getting the flu. It makes sense, I usually get sick once or twice a year and so far I haven't been sick yet. I was due for a bout of sickness.

I'm not in that bad of shape yet, so I am taking the "Spring Staff Elixir"; formerly sold as "Dr. Zethers Zip and Zing Elixir". The elixir is two cans of orange juice concentrate mixed with three cans of water. A nice, thick, strong juice. In my opinion the best orange juice is more of a thick syrup. Mmmm... I need to get another glass.

Also, I just got the easiest mark in a course ever. The previous easiest mark was one percent of the final grade which you got for simply visiting the professor during their office hours. I can thank my mother with inventing that one.

Today's one percent of my final grade was taking 6 pictures during class. To teach a new accounting system my professor got six classmates to dress up as Cher, a Cher fan, a loan shark, one of the village people, Johnny Depp, and I forget... some girls name that starts with an L. They acted out various accounting transactions involving loans, autographs and picture frames while I took pictures of each one for the class notes.

I would say today';s class was the most entertaining, and perhaps enjoyable university class I have experienced.

11
Sep 2006

Flirt to Convert

Mon, 09/11/2006 - 23:24 — Sean Carney

Now you might have thought that the idea of Christian Linux was kind of odd, and if so, you haven't seen anything yet. I stumbled across the site Flirt To Convert a while ago and recently I decided to revisit the site.

Ah the sketchy-ness abounds.

The idea of dating someone until they accept Christ and then dumping them saying "Jesus will never leave you" seems repulsive at best.

There are many ways to "convert" someone to Christianity so why on earth would someone attempt to achieve this through dating. Adding romance and personal feelings can only complicate matters.

Needless to say I created a profile with the matchmaking service just to see if I get any response. I was severely tempted to be the "ideal" Christian and misrepresent myself by loading my profile with Christianese.

About Me: I was once a backsliding, stumbling, vegetarian sinner until I was slain by the spirit, heard the good news, and washed in the precious blood. Now I feel convicted to fellowship with the unchurched and see them be sanctified and made right with God.

...but I didn't. Emily also prevented me from making several political comments with excessive bad taste. No sense in being misidentified as a character from the movie Saved!.

I can understand dating sites. I can understand Christian dating sites (I know Erin does). I simply cannot understand missionary dating sites.

Due to the fact that the site is pretty much a Internet ghost town, I doubt I will get any response. You can be sure that I will keep you posted though.

8
Sep 2006

LOTR Marathon

Fri, 09/08/2006 - 17:46 — Sean Carney

On Wednesday Emily and I watched all three extended editions of Lord of the Rings. I am asking myself why I did it a second time and I think I did it for the junk food. It only took around 15 hours including a long break to play the game Evil Genius and supper.

I didn't feel as terrible afterward as I did the first time. I think it was a product of watching the movies in a room with natural light, and not eating a pack of beef jerky before noon. Natural light is my friend.

I need to schedule an I.T. Crowd marathon for sometime in the indefinite future.

5
Sep 2006

The Counting Has Stopped

Tue, 09/05/2006 - 22:36 — Sean Carney

Now that I am home from camp I have done a final tally of how many pictures I took this summer. The number I arrived at should be reasonably close, as it is a bit of a challenge to count pictures in a camp context.

Between May 1st and September 1st I have taken: 16,904 pictures.

Emily will be recieving her prize as soon as I determine what it shall be.

5
Sep 2006

Ubuntu Christian Edition

Tue, 09/05/2006 - 22:28 — Sean Carney

As part of my summer-end cleanup I format my computer to clear all the camp stuff off of it and make way for university-related stuff. This year, for a change I decided to try Christian Ubuntu instead of Fedora Core 5 which I normally run.

My first impressions of Christian Ubuntu are good, they made some nice graphics and added "Christian Edition" under all the appropriate logos. One thing that I noticed was that this is a live CD (a version of linux you can run without installing to your hard drive). Either I am blind or this wasn't mentioned on the website. I like the idea of a nice lightweight CD which contains several Bible translations and commentaries.

I installed the operating system from the CD to my hard drive and was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked. Some of the hardware in my laptop like the wireless card is slow to configure in Fedora, but was up and running with no intervention.

The two key features of the distro are Bible study software (gnomesword) and a Internet filter (dansguardian). I won't go into the performance of the Internet filter because I didn't really test it, but it is too sensitive for some of my browsing habits. (Emily we need to talk...)

Gnomesword is the most valuable part of this distro. It is a program that comes with several KJV type bibles (due to copyrights on NIV, NLT, NRSV, etc.) commentaries, and a Bible dictionary. You can view either a chapter at a time in regular view, or a verse from up to five different translations in parallel view. Should the existing Bibles and commentaries not fit your needs you can connect to the Internet and easily download more translations. All in all; it's pretty much what you would expect in a study program.

The only real downfalls are that you can not easily get the NIV, NLT and Message translations for gnomesword. Luckily someone has hacked up a script which downloads a copy of the translation of your choice from biblegateway.com and prepares it so it can be used in gnomesword.

This is a good distribution for Bible study, it is missing some packages needed for day to day use, but those can be easily downloaded. If I were to grade it, it would get an A.