Recent Keyword Activity

I continue to be fascinated by how people find this blog. It's a personal blog for personal stuff, but for the last year I've allowed search engines to index it and direct random people here. Here's a sample of search queries that apparently bring people here:

• illustation of pupil size
• mismatched pupil size
• sesame street ao
• thrown off a seadoo
• canadian tire rifles prices

Some make sense. For example, this blog is ranked 9th for "thrown off a seadoo". And I'm fully expecting my eyeballs to end up in a medical textbook. But rifle prices at Canadian Tire? Weird people.

Camping in Jasper

This summer has seen a number of road and camping trips. Emily and I have camped in the south of the Okanagon, and taken a day trip up to Harrison Lake. There was a trip to Seattle earlier this year, and we've just come back from Edmonton. This most recent trip was particularly special as Emily got to visit her family for the first time in 4 months, and I finally got to visit Jasper...

A few of the funnier highlights from our trip...

• Emily getting a complete pat-down search from Vancouver airport security.
• Stella preparing an enormous list of activities (of which we only did three).
• Timothy had a lot of fun climbing over rocks on our walk to the glacier. :)
• Campfire! Again! Though there was no campfire in the morning, much to the "kids" disappointment.
• Constructing an enormous screen house (as big as a van!) to have our dinner in.
• Eating only a fraction of the food that we brought, and yet still being stuffed.

However, these "highlights" remain secondary to the main point of our trip: to see Emily, her mum and brother spend time together. And, of course, to check out the fantastic scenery in Jasper. I've uploaded selected photos as usual, so have a look. :)

Tendonosis

So I went to see a foot doctor about the pain I've been getting in my left heel. He struggled to diagnose the problem because I simply did not fit into any textbook definitions. It seems I have multiple competing issues, and that makes it harder to determine what the true problem is. He even considered Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (nasty stuff) which is a very small possibility if you are hypermobile. Luckily I have no other symptoms, and am quite sure I am EDS-free.

In the end, he believes I have tendonosis; small tears in the tendon connecting to my left ankle. The probable causes are:

• Calf muscles are way too tight
• The tendon was abused by a pair of shoes I bought 6 months ago
• General misalignment of foot joints

He's going to schedule the creation of some orthotics for me to try and sort things out. I also need to look at getting shoes with higher heels as that will reduce the angle between my foot and my leg and so reduce the strain on my tendon. At a later stage I will have to look at stretching my calf muscles, but nothing can be done about that now. Stretching them in the short-term will just make matters worse.

Calming Down

The last month or two have seen increasing stress levels for me. I've been getting teeth pain again because I spend so much time grinding them (literally). However, that seems to be coming to an end now. I finally woke up this morning and felt refreshed and relaxed. We'll see how long it lasts, but I'm trying to making changes that will reduce my stress in the long run.

For example, I know most of the stress comes from work. A common problem is that many developers are working independently - they fail to get buy-in and reviews from the other developers, and so their hard work ends up unused and wasted. This is frustrating and sad, but it's also stressful for me as I'm meant to maintain and encourage the development of a reusable codebase. I'm thinking to offer "a free lunch to anyone who writes more than 300 lines of code, and that code is used happily by 2 other developers".

I'm hoping it will change the way people write their code. They'll still perform their tasks as required, but with just a little more effort they'll score themselves a free lunch as well. Some have already started down this path by asking others for reviews, but we need to get from "asking to reviews" to "producing reusable code".

Sea-Doops: The Relationship Ultimate Test

Emily and I went to Harrison Lake for our August public holiday (British Columbia Day). Most of the afternoon was spent lazing around the beach and checking out a local waterfall. We decided to end the day with a 1 hour Sea-Doo rental, riding together. The "driver" sits in front, while the "passenger" sits behind and holds onto a little strap attached to the seat for dear life.

The first 45 minutes went great. Emily was the first in control, and immediately pushed the Sea-Doo to top-speed, skipping across the lake as fast as possible. I got my turn after about 10 minutes and did much the same, though I kept braking suddenly making Emily crash into my back a number of times. Towards the end of our rental I was trying out other moves, like spinning in circles or weaving left-then-right. And that's where things came a little loose. Literally.

As she tells it:

To stay on the sea-doo, I had to lean left or right depending on which way we were turning. If I leaned the wrong way by accident, I would actually get extra swing from centripetal force and wouldn't be able to stay on properly. This got kinda tricky when P went crazy doing his little circles. He would spin one way and then, without warning, start turning in the other direction. In one of his longer circles, I was leaning in the right direction (possibly too much) and he turned in the other direction. The fact that I was leaning one way and then all of a sudden flung in the same direction I was leaning, I went *whoop* and felt myself flying. I saw the sky and thought "CRAP! HOLD BREATH NOW!" and plunge! I went straight into the icy cold water. I open my eyes and thought "light! swim that way!" Head popped out of the water, could breathe and not sink thanks to my little PFD (Personal Floating Device). I always thought they were tacky.. but boy I was glad I had mines on tight!

In the signed agreements it says "don't turn your seadoo on until all the riders are aboard." So P is sitting there waiting patiently for me to swim over to him. I attempt to swim... against the waves and make absolutely *no* progress. I give up and just float as he slowly putt putt putts the sea-doo closer to me. I try climbing on but can't without losing my flip flops so I take them off carefully and hand them to P. (I don't know why I was so scared of losing them..) Anyways, I finally clamber back on board and we slowly drive back to the dock.

So I went on this day trip thinking I wouldn't get too wet so I didn't have to worry about bringing another set of clothes... BAD idea when it's around water. After that splash, I was wet from head to toe. Everything down to the "unmentionables". Luckily, P had a (clean) set of unmentionables! Well, the bottom bit.... So I had no other choice but to suck it up and try it out.

As he tells it:

I was weaving left-then-right, and hitting the throttle at the same time. After a particular hard turn, I sensed something was wrong behind me, like the jetski was a little lighter. I glanced down to my right, and just see a thong, a leg, and a head disappearing into the water. Oops.

Emily came back to the surface thanks to her life-jacket. I killed the engine as we'd been instructed and waited for her to swim over. Unfortunately, Harrison Lake is glacier-fed so it's quite cold. She'd also just been thrown off a Sea-Doo at high speed, and was swimming against the current, so didn't seem that eager to swim the entire distance back. I powered the engine back up and slowly putted over so that (a shivering) Emily could clamber back on board.

After a few checks for injuries and shock, we started making our way back to shore. We maintained a cruising speed on our home journey; nothing excessive, and definitely no turns. The wind managed to dry Emily off a bit, which was fortunate. About halfway back she realised she'd been wearing sunglasses and they were now "lost at sea". All things considered, we're lucky there wasn't more lost! She was certainly worried about her thongs. :)

That night, we had Red Robin for dinner. My shout. We've already established that Emily likes Freckled Lemonades from there. I think there's still a bit of making up to do. :)

Positive thing from all this: Emily can now work away her raccoon tan without those sunglasses!