Spare Change
June 2, 2010
Just thought I would list a few highlights from the eternity since my last post. The biggest change was that I started a new job in North Bay back in November. The company is called Nasittuq and they are tasked with operating and maintaining the North Warning System radars, which means I get to tell my niece and nephews that I help track Santa Claus. I moved the same weekend of a weightlifting club meet held in Lachute, QC, where I lifted a competition best in the Clean & Jerk (105kg).
I’ve adjusted well to North Bay so far. I was able to keep up with my weightlifting at the local YMCA with the North Bay Norseman/Valkaryies. I’ve been travelling back and forth between Ottawa most weekends to see Laura, and getting in to lift with the Capital Weightlifting Club most Saturdays.
I took a nice break over Christmas to fly home and see the family. Laura flew from Ottawa and we were able to meet up in Fredericton. I played in the Dwayne Williams Memorial hockey game once again and had a great time seeing everybody.
Laura and I celebrated our 6th anniversary with a day at Spa Nordik in Old Chelsea. It was a real treat, and one of the more relaxing experiences that I’ve had.
Capital Weightlifting had a small club meet in Ottawa in February, which I lifted as a 62kg for the first time and posted a provincial qualifying total. I had to eat a little healthier after “enjoying” myself over the Christmas holidays (that box of Toffifee disappeared pretty fast…) to get down in weight, but I made it with a pound to spare.
Snatching at the club meet in Ottawa
Since I fared ok as a 62kg at the club meet, I decided to lift as a 62kg at the Ontario Senior Provincial Championships at the end of March. I was hoping to qualify for Nationals. Alas, it wasn’t in the cards this year. I needed to make my final attempt at a Clean and Jerk of 110kg to make the qualifying total. I was able to rack the clean, but just couldn’t stand up straight with it. I still managed to finish first in the province in the 62kg category, so now I can say I’m a provincial champion! Next year however, I won’t be satisfied with anything less than a National total.
For the second time in less than half a year, I moved right after a weightlifting meet. After provincials, I moved in with some mutual friends from my 1 bedroom apartment. It was a pretty easy move though, as I don’t have much stuff with me here, and the place I moved to was just a few blocks down the road. I think I increased my drive to work by about 30 seconds.
In a few short weeks, I’ll be moving again. The people I moved in with bought a new house. They weren’t planning on it when we initially made arrangements for me to stay with them, but the right opportunity came up and they jumped on it. I had a couple other friends that bought houses in this time. They all got to become a part of the statistic of those buying houses while interest rates were at record lows.
Lucky for me though, they’re letting me move with them, so I didn’t have to try and find a new place. Staying mobile has its advantages. I’ve managed to cut down on some of my stuff to try and simplify my life. Of course, after getting rid of some things to de-clutter, I did manage to get an iPad, but that’s another story…
“The iPad went on sale this week, ushering in a new era of thousands of people buying something just to find out what it does.” - Seth Meyers, SNL
Joomla!
March 27, 2009
So I’ve managed to jump on a Joomla! project in the local community on a volunteer basis as part of a website redesign for the Ottawa Talent Initiative, an organization that I’ve joined to help me in my current job search. As I mentioned before, I’ve built a lot of bad websites in my day, so here’s a chance to be part of a team that might actually make a nice one.
What exactly is Joomla!? Joomla! is a content management system for building websites and developing online applications. It’s open source, fully extendable, and has a lot of people out there using it. This means there’s a lot of fully functional extensions already written that you can just download, install, activate, and see on your page in minutes.
When I first joined up on the project, I was hoping to brush up on some of my php and MySQL skills, getting right in and doing some coding. After playing around with Joomla!, it looks like the power of the extensions makes a lot of that unnecessary. It’s going to be much more of an exercise in the software development process. Coding afterall, is just one piece of the puzzle, an ends to a mean, a set of instructions to get something to do what you want it to do.
