Posted by Jason Lancaster on August 25, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Over the weekend I did something that I have been meaning to do for a while which is to meet a friend from the other side of the globe. Gemma and I have known each other for a couple of years but only formally met in Montreal when our paths crossed recently. A couple of years ago I exchanged emails with the a href=”http://www.goldenkey.canterbury.ac.nz/”New Zealand chapter /aof my a href=”http://www.blogger.com/www.goldenkey.org”honor society/a. Gemma was their communications person and put me in touch with some folks that would be attending the Arizona conference that I attended. We connected again through myspace and finally on Facebook. A while back she commented how she had been able to buy a ticket from New York City to Toronto for $12.00. She would then be heading to Quebec City for a World Youth Summit. I could either meet before or after the summit. Getting together before the summit proved hard to schedule so we opted to meet afterwards. On Friday, met in front of a href=”http://www.blogger.com/www.mcgill.ca”McGill University /aand had supper at a nearby Italian restaurant. [The caesar salad and pizza were great.] We went across the street to a href=”http://www.benjerry.com/”Ben amp; Jerry’s /aice cream as even though she has been in the U.S. for six months she hadn’t experienced the marvelous Vermont ice cream. We concluded the evening talking at a local coffee shop. As the clock was striking midnight, I headed back to Ottawa and she departed for Toronto-New York City-Washington, DC.
Posted by Jason Lancaster on August 6, 2008 · Leave a Comment
The first weekend in August we have a holiday that has many names, Civic Holiday, Colonel By day or John Graves Simcoe day. I decided to head to Montreal to see if I could achieve my geocaching goal of 900 finds. On Friday night, I joined a long line of people at the bus station heading to Montreal. In all there were 180 folks in line for the 5 p.m. bus. Security was heightened as they had undercover cops and sniffer dogs checking out everyone’s luggage. Once at the McGill residence, I found that the place was overbooked for the weekend. They have another nearby residence which I checked into and was upgraded to a better room at no additional cost. On Saturday, I joined a line of five people eager to buy the iPhone. I bought a white 16 gigabyte phone. WooT!br /br /Over the next couple of days I did a geocaches marathon finding 26 geocaches putting my finds tally at 902. On Monday, I headed up to the Apple store which is located in the second largest mall in Canada, the le a href=”http://www.carrefourlaval.ca/home/index.ch2?language=1″Carrefour de Laval/a. I was talking one of the specialist (blue shirt) about my challenge in getting the native Yahoo mail on the iPod touch to work and he suggested seeing one of the Genius (black shirt). After an hour the genius couldn’t get the Yahoo Mail app to work. I opted to use some custom IMAP and POP settings to get it to sort of work and not work. All in all it was a great holiday weekend.
Posted by Jason Lancaster on February 12, 2008 · Leave a Comment
p class=”MsoNormal”span lang=”EN-US”Earlier this year, I bought an Apple iPod touch and am still amazed with what I can do with it. The five iPod touch applications Apple released in January made the toy more powerful. On Saturday, the home button stopped working. I would select the Safari icon and do some surfing and hit the home button expecting it to return to the home screen but nothing happened. It would stubbornly stay on the safari screen. The only way to return to the home screen was to turn it off and then on. I checked the a href=”http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa”discussion groups on the Apple site /aand didn’t find any hints as what to do. I had two choice drive to a href=”http://www.apple.com/ca/retail/”st1:city st=”on”st1:place st=”on”Montreal/st1:place/st1:City /a(2 hours) or head down to a href=”http://www.apple.com/ca/retail/”st1:city st=”on”st1:place st=”on”Toronto/st1:place/st1:City /a(5 hours). I signed up for a st1:time minute=”0″ hour=”15″ st=”on”3:00 pm/st1:time appointment at the a href=”http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/”Genius bar /aon Monday in st1:place st=”on”st1:city st=”on”Laval/st1:City, st1:state st=”on”Quebec/st1:State/st1:place. The web interface for the Genius bar is fun to use. I headed to st1:city st=”on”st1:place st=”on”Montreal/st1:place/st1:City on Monday morning and took the subway north and tried to follow the directions on the Apple retail store web page but made an attempt to speak in broken French to the subway conductor who said to keep heading north. I jumped on the subway again and headed underneath the st1:place st=”on”St. Lawrence River/st1:place and took the a href=”http://www.stm.info/English/metro/a-mapmet.htm”subway/metro/a to the last stop on the line known as Montmorency. I was now in a different city with a different bus system and rules. There were a couple of buses that would take you to La Carrefour shopping center. I caught the first bus apparently destined for the mall and ended in north st1:city st=”on”st1:place st=”on”Laval/st1:place/st1:City miles from anywhere. After talking to the driver in broken French he suggested an express bus and I headed back to the bus hub. The second bus took me to the shopping center. /span/p p class=”MsoNormal”span lang=”EN-US”The Apple store was a hive of activity with a lot of people receiving 1-on-1 Apple training. I spoke to one of the “blue” shirts girls would confirmed that my appointment was still good. In the meantime, I explored the fun on display and imagined what it would be like to use a Macbook. It was sort of like being in a toy store for adult with all this neat gear. A little while later I met with the genius “black” shirt and we tried to do an iPod restore which didn’t work. The iPod was sicker than we thought. Apple replaced the iPod touch as it was still on warranty (Thanks Apple). It was a fun experience and my first visit to an Apple store and hopefully not my last as it was a fun place./span/p
My long weekend in Montreal, Quebec is quickly coming to a close and it is time to get back to normal stuff. Over the weekend, I located ten geocaches and moved my tally up to 704 finds. It felt good to finally surprass 700 finds. The Body World exhibit was really good and I’ll check it out again next time I’m in Montreal. The exhibit runs until early September, so I’ll see if it is better the second time around. It was interesting learning about our bodies and its various components. At the same time, it was like being at a funeral as most folks spoke with hushed tones and moved around very somberly. The exhibit allowed me to review some of the material that I am learning in my podcast-Nutrition Science class being taught by a U. Cal Berkeley professor.br /br /When I’m in Montreal I usually stay at a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGill_University”McGill/a as it is convenient and affordable. One thing that suprised me is that I am getting better at taking the a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Subway”STM/a, the subway. After getting into town, I implicity knew which of the three lines to take, which direction to go and where to get off.br /br /I picked up a new book by C. J. Box, “a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Free-Fire-C-J-Box/dp/0399154272/”Free Fire/a.” It is mystery about a series of murders that were committed in Yellowstone National Park and because it is a federal park, for jurisdiction reasons the criminal can’t be brought to justice. (IBSN 0399154272)
This weekend I am heading to Montreal, Quebec for a long weekend of span class=”blsp-spelling-error” id=”SPELLING_ERROR_0″geocaching/span, exploring and RR. We get Monday off as a holiday for something called a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Day”Victoria Day/a, so I thought it was time to head east and see what is new in the city. One of the things that I am looking forward to is the a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_World”Body World/a exhibit at the science museum. I missed the exhibit when it was at the science center in Toronto. I think Jason saw the exhibit when it was in span class=”blsp-spelling-corrected” id=”SPELLING_ERROR_1″Philadelphia/span. It was just opening when I was in Phoenix, AZ. After missing the exhibit so many times and being intrigued by the web site it will be one of the highlights of the weekend. In keeping with tradition, I will run up a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Royal”Mont Royal/a on Sunday morning.
