Vancouver

Had a great day yesterday. Met with some people about my thesis and made great progress. Then because it was 20+ and the wind was blowing 14 knots I went windsurfing. Unfortunately, I chose to practice so grabbed a small sail. This meant that I was planing across the water at 30km/h like everyone else, but chugging along and falling in. I'm suprised by this. At the middle of August I was super confident, but when it got cold I stopped sailing. Now, I'm confident, but I can't seem to make things work as well. I blame it on the fact that I'm practising these new techniques, but I spose it just the overall lack of practice.

It's quite the sport. A lot of balance required. Balance the sail, the board, yourself. It's a lot to think about. The nice part is that in a lot of wind balance is a little easier when you're moving. Unfortunately we don't get that much wind. 15+ knot days are rare and tricky to be ready at a moments notice to head down to go sailing. One of the more famous places to go is the Columbia River, specifically the town of Hood River. Now the trick is for me to get a kit down there and then we can visit Dori's grandma in The Dalles (20 min away) and go windsurfing!

Dori and I finished our first climb together! IT was fantastic! We went to Mt. Erie and climbed the "New Millinium wall" with great success. We set up a top rope and both rappelled down to the bottom -- not with out some intrepidation! Neither one of us was to comfortable stepping off a cliff and relying on a rope to hold us. But, we did it, and went back for more! After one more rappel, we began climbing. I haven't been able to find the route on the climbing book we bought, but my guess is low 5th class. Black Hills granite, here we come!

Not climbing DVD's though. No, I went climbing and I helped (a little) Dori author a DVD for her class.

The climbing was fun. Different from what I expected. I thought it would be this sort of exhilirating rush to the top. Rather, it was a personal challenege and a bit scary! I would find myself in a situation, where even though I knew I was protected in case of a fall I felt that hopelessness when you realize that you are probably not going to be able to do it. Combined with being 20 feet off the ground, that translates to: scary! The personal challenege aspect is rewarding though. Even though you feel as if you are going to fall, when you actually complete it you realize that it is about perserverance and hope (NOT hopeless!) which inspires me to continue on and better condition my body. Hopefully Dori and I will be climbing together in a gym for the first time tomorrow. It's abit expensive, $15 for a day pass, plus rentals (we don't have shoes yet).

As for the DVD, that was also cool! Dori worked LONG and hard on this. She is creating a multimedia presentation for here class this morning. She presented slides of ceramic work, videos of potters preparing clay, throwing and firing and finally some expressions of cermaics in out lives. It turned out nice! Everything is set to music and there are these wonderful transitions inbetween sections. They look like the transition screens in the B&W movies that didn't have voice tracks! I had to help with a couple minor technical issues, like staying up last night until 2AM to burn the DVD... I haven't heard from Dori yet on how it turned out, but I am excited!

I've also been making progress on the thesis. Just for fun, I printed out what I had. Twenty-two pages! It feels good. That many pages seems like a lot when you're holding it. It's just a rough outline, not even that's been finalized, but it's motivation to keep going. The progress is visible! Of course, now I feel bad for wasting trees, and I just set my coffee mug on it, because it's not really a useful draft, but, well, let's just call it my pet SUV. If some people can drive a hummer, I can print out 22 pages to make me feel good inside!

For the record, I actually have no guilt conerning the trees. In fact, I might print out another copy just for fun....

Ok, well, a little guilt for the trees. But not much. Tiny. I'm saving the big guilt for when I print out all 100 pages several times trying to get it revised....

Sometimes you speak before you act. I just finished my application to Telus. On the app, they asked for my webpage. Well, I have one, but it's not really that good. In fact, it's just pictures. So I say yes! Then starts a mad scramble to put together a decent (or close to decent) page.

So here it is - Dustin L. Harrison

You're welcome to give me feedback.

Snowfield below Joffre Peak

I don't know why, but I've pretty much given up coffee for Orange Pekoe tea. I can't explain it. It's not a great tea. Not to mention, I buy the cheapest stuff I can find. It seems like the cheaper the better it tastes.

So I'm sipping on my orange pekoe and notice that it is quite chilly today. So I cruise over to Whistler's website and....snow! Already, I'm dreaming of a season pass, jibbing, powder, maybe halfpipe. Wow. I do like snowboarding. So much so, that I even considered bringing one on my last mountaineering trip. Although, once I sobered up I realized that the pain of hauling a snowboard up the hill, the crevasse danger going down the hill and there was a very small amount of hillside that was rideable (note the above picture), well, I gave it up. But now I'm hoping that snow flies early this year.

Well, there you go. I wake today and there's no rain. However, weather predicts that it will rain this afternoon. D'oh.

My landlord is selling the building. It's kinda wierd to live in a place that you don't own. Then other people trade ownership without your consent. Can I interview my new landlord please? This is a nice segeway into one of my theories of life (of which I have many, ask me sometime about the theory of eight). I'm going to call this one the Theory of Change. People love change, provided it costs little to nothing. For example, take the TV. All sorts of stimulus and things happening, causing the watcher to have a change in emotions. Or a softly changing skyscape, clouds drifting by making little cloud animals. However, if the change requires energy. No way. Slow down buster. A change in political or religious belief? Not going to thappen. A change in the amount of work it takes to do something? (provided it's not significantly less with no learning curve.) These kinds of changes are upsetting and enough to send protestors out to the streets.

So the theory can be summed up by:
Ease of change is inversely proportional to the inertia of what is being changed.

So change happens easier, if it's something that's easy to change. That may seem obvious, but how is it that around the world married couples are having knockdown arguements over simple changes, just because one partner has been doing it for years that way? In a way that invalidates my theory. That makes the "inertia of change" a subjective value. I'm willing to change what I eat, but not what I wear. Why is that? Ultimately, I think that inertia equals fear. This may be stretching the definition of fear, but take what I wear. I could change, but I'm worried that if I change it I'll look even worse. Fear. What about a work? People have a major fear of work. If I do something different I may have to work harder. No way man. You keep your change to yourself! I'm not working harder.

So now the theory is:
Ease of change is inversely proportional to fear.

Think about that the next time your presented an oppurtunity to change. Are you afraid to change?

I don't know why I title a blog entry - more rain. I mean I'm living in Vancouver, that could potentially be the title of every entry. I think Duane told me that it rained for 70+ consecutive days here. That's not full on rain, that just means that at least once for 70 days it rained. I think we're up to day 5, or is it 7? Hmm.

Dori and I finished playing an adventure game called Syberia last night. This is "The adventure game of the year" according to the publishers review. I don't think so. I mean it was good, graphics and sounds were superb, idea was original and well thought out. But. The acting and story were, well missing at times. Not to mention the puzzles. Dori and I love these games because you have to solve sometimes quite complicated puzzles. It gives us something to team up on and really challeneges us sometimes. These puzzles we suited to challenge a grade 6 student. As a comparison, one game we played had a puzzle that required conversion from base 10 to base 12 and some geometry problems. This game inolved finding the instructions to the puzzle, reading carefully and solving. No creativity needed. Well, maybe we're just hardened adventure game people now, I don't know. But my recommendation is against Syberia. If you're looking for adventure games start with the Myst Trilogy, consider Dark Fall and if you want a reall challenge, Schism.

Don't.

This has been taking me a long time. Not the content. I had the lab done three days ago. Polishing. Readability. All of these things take so much time. I'm using LaTeX (pronounced - Lay-tek) to do the layout, which is cool. Formatting and fonts and spacing are a breeze as the compiler takes care of it all. However, learning it. Well, not only am I trying to learn LaTeX, but I decided, hey! Why not learn two things instead of just one? So I'm also learning VIm. Neither of these are too diffcult to learn, but coupled together (I write the LaTeX code in VIm) it feels like somebody installed a different OS on my computer. I don't know how to do anything. Everytime I have a question I have to go to the internet. HOWEVER! Here in lies the beauty of VIm and LaTeX. When you do a search for saving files vim or equations latex in google, you don't get microsofts crummy help, nor a bunch of links to people selling stuff or selling services for stuff. No. You get lots and lots of pages packed with help and information. So learning becomes fun and exciting. The lesson? Somethings are worth doing, and learning these two packages are definitely one of them. (If you don't want to learn VIM, consider Emacs still free.)

The other good news is that I plan on writing my thesis in these two programs. So this is like warm-up exercises for thesis marathons!

Well, Mondy morning starts with chilly temperatures and rain. Fall is here, but it shouldn't be! Well, I guess fall has the right to show whenever fall wants, but still. I miss the 22 degree temps with full sun.... (and maube just a little wind for some windsurfing...)

Dori's trunk o' stuff finally arrived from Germany. We have to go down and pick it up from Mom's. She bought a set of panniers that I'm excited to see/try out and about five pairs of shoes.... Well, I'll skip trying on the shoes.

Diane called this weekend. She's got a tile project for Dori. Some consignment job for a house Doug and her are working on. Don't know all the details yet.

I have a self-set deadline of getting my outline done by Friday. Uff-da. A little pressure. Well, a good start today means a good week, right?!

Joffre

So Dori and I are planning our menu... Can't afford to be eating out for lunchs. So we've got some Chole Chaat and Calazones in the making... Mmmm.

The day after a double header.... Dori and I went to seperate events on Friday night. Dori listened to a talk by a famous Ceramic artist and I listened to the sounds of Jabulani, a Vancouver based, high school aged Marimba band. Oh my. This band was not your average band. These kids really knew what they were doing. Not only could they play Marimba, they could get a high school auditorium of adults up and dancing! It was fantastic. Then Dori and I along with several other friends met up for a night of conversation and beers. This was to be followed up by an early morning hike to Hollyburn Peak. It is a pleasant hike, only gaining 320 meters to get some spetacular views of Vancouver and Howe Sound. Afterwards we attended swarm, which is an artist run, gallery awareness event. Several gallerys hold show openings and invite the public and (espeically) Emily Carr students out to see the shows. The main event on Saturday night is the Mercury Theatre. This is a temporary venue, setup in Cathedral park where video is projected onto large screens and live music (and sometimes video) is mixed for an hour and a half. This year's theme was Barbarianism. There were interesting parts, including scenes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and decapitation football.

So here I am Sunday with a bit of culture and a lot less sleep.

Monday is back to work day. On the platter is a little thesis outline, some lab assignment touch-up and possibly windsurfing. (Well I'll focus on the first two, and hope to do the second.)

Mt. Rainier - Ascending the disappointment cleaver route just after dawn.