Here's a video

Here's a vid of me saying HI!

http://www.strictlyperformance.com/pix/icafe.avi

Time to kill

just stopped off at an internet cafe to upload my pictures, but they don't seem to want to go. So I'm waiting for one of the videos to upload.

It's another dark and dreary day in london. Managed to sleep semi ok last night. Took the tube this morning to see Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey and the Clock Tower. Nice places from the outside. After I'm done here, I'll go check out the Aquarium I think.

Stopped for a bite to eat at some little cafe near the water. Nasty hotdog, but the fries were good.. or Chips they call it. Lots of tourists here. The scenery is pretty cool, the old big buildings and some really nice architecture.

The I Cafe that I'm at is really nice. New computers, nice screens. No complaints here. 2 Pounds an hour, a little pricey, but not too bad. I just hope that the file I upload makes it ok to the server. It's a video of the plane landing at Heathrow.

I bought a bus pass today.. it's called the Oyster card. I don't think it has any aphrodesiac capabilities, usually bus passes have the opposite effect.. :) but I'll try rubbing it on my next date and see if it has any positive effect.

I'm getting tired again... maybe time to go back home and take a nap?

I'll need to extend my hostel stay as well until next week. I was thinking of changing hostels, but this one is nice and will do the trick for now.

Can't Sleep, Can't Stay up....

Geez, Jet lag sucks.

Went to bed at about 8:30 last night, tossed and turned, figured I had a decent nites sleep, then looked at the clock..it was midnite... so back to bed it was. finally got my butt out at about 6:30 am and grabbed the free breakfast in the dining room. This hostel isn't too bad. it's got some nice facilities, seems to be a lot of people as well.
Checked out the South Kensington area today, went to see the Ismailia Centre, the V&A Museum, and the Museum of Natural History... pretty cool places, and FREE entrance to the museums.. they have lots of really nice historic stuff.. pretty neat. walked around, ended up outside Gloucester Road Station and there were sooo many people partying on the streets, it was insane.. buyin beer from the supermarkets and partying!! I found out later that it's a holiday in NZ and all these New Zealanders were celebrating... that would explain the enourmous amounts of people.. I should have taken a picture.. oh well.
So I'm still pretty tired. should have tried to go clubbing tonite, but can't...what a waste of a Saturday nite... maybe if I don't go on that tour next Weekend. The tour that I wanted isn't available so I have 5 extra days to kill. They say there's lots to do and see here, so I'm up for a bit of an adventure. The Toob makes it real easy to get around (but not Cheap by any means).

In London....

So I'm in London now. Nice and bleak and dreary...
Checked into a hostel outside of town. not a bad place, for sure not what I'm used to, 6 person room, bunk beds, common bathroom and showers(with privacy screens). The flight was long... about 9 hours. Watched a couple of movies, slept a little. Didn't get done what I wanted to (read a book) but oh well. BA service was pretty good, the flight was fine, a little turbulence (which was GREAT!) and I didn't get harassed by US or UK customs, despite the fact I got a bit of a beard goin' on.

anyways, internet access is $6 an hour so I better run.

update y'allz soon

f

Updates to Blog

I have no cell phone anymore... waa... it's been since 1998 that I haven't had some form of mobile communications device attached to me... I don't know what I'm gonna do.
Pager
Cell Phone
2-Way Radio
BlackBerry

I've updated the page to include a link on the right to my photo album. I've also added a banner underneath that with the weather of where I am currently. Will try and keep it updated as regularly as I can.

Also added pictures to the existing posts

Welcome to Seattle

Just got into Seattle last night from Victoria. Took the Victoria Clipper, a really nice ship. The trip was a lot smoother than an Airplane. If you are ever going to take the clipper, make sure you book online... at least a day in advance. $60 US online, or $90 CDN at the ticketing office... that sux. At least I know for next time. Victoria was lots of fun, too much partying and late nights. Met a bunch of new people with was great! I really like it out there. Will have to see if there's any good opportunities there when I come back.. can't go wrong with only 3 weeks of winter every year :)

Pictures..Photos...

They're finally up. There's more to come of course, but here's a good starter.

http://justfez.smugmug.com/

I still have to rotate some of them and put captions on them, and link them to the various articles in the blog

Enjoy...

The Magic Touch...aka...Homeboy...aka... Romeo....

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: (a request from Sofonda Cox to put my location in the message)

Hey everybody... how's it going?

it's been a while since I updated this thing, been pretty hectic and crazy, but at times nice and relaxing as well (just wasn't near a computer so I couldn't update ya)

What a busy day today was, first of all I'd like to pass a message on to all you BC drivers that couldn't handle the snow last week....."suck it up princess" what a crybaby city this is, they get 5-10cm....yes CENTIMETRES of snow, and waaa... bring out the kleenex. LEARN HOW TO DRIVE! i tell ya, they're spoiled out here.... come live in Calgary for a while, maybe then you'll understand what a SNOWSTORM is, or what a real SNOWFALL warning is. Geez.... I remember the big st. pattys day storm a few years back.. what was it 36 INCHES of snow in like 12-16 hours? I WENT TO WORK THE NEXT DAY, and so did a lot of other people... /end rant

ok now that I'm done, can I say that BC roads SUCK. people that can't drive, don't understand the meaning of green means go, and think that a yellow light means stop...(ok maybe it does, but still, I say try and go through the damn intersection if you can) it ain't red yet... :)

I'll fill you in on the adventure today..... and what a day it was....

Start off by heading to drop my cute little cousins off at school, in the rain (which hasn't stopped yet) got to relearn my 2 times table (I was having issues, so the refresher was welcomed) Traffic in BC sucks, nothing makes sense (ok neither does Calgary's road system, but that's another story) so after the adventure of getting the kids to school, I had a really good Strawberry Cinnamon bun from a little bakery in town, then began the adventure to get downtown which wasn't too bad. I think all that sugar that early in the AM wasn't the best idea for little old me... but at least I didn't eat the vegan chocolate cookie that they had at the store...looked like poop, literally.

Ok so for those of you that are still with me, who haven't changed the channel or fallen asleep. I made it downtown. Went into the good old business centre at the hotel and proceeded to check my email and reply to a bunch of pending stuff, did some more research on hostels and hotels etc... umm if anybody knows anybody in Dubai... I need a hookup on a place cheaper than $50 US per night... oh did I mention that thats at a HOSTEL....k, so after this and some other mindless crap, like trying to decipher the bcferries site and its evil twin, the bctransit website, I ventured over, in the rain, to the Vancouver Aquarium (Thanks Hafeez and Derek for the hookup). I'm glad I didn't have to pay for this "tourist attraction" because it's only really worth about $5-$8 not the $16 they charge ($16 is enough to pick up at outlaws.. $5 for cover, 2 drinks and enough change for bus far so she gets home in style) . It is a nice setup, they have 1 (one) dolphin on display, a couple of sea otters (one that looks like a football with whiskers) and these humping turtles, some pink flamingos, big ass fishies, and these really cool snakes that look like underwater twigs... until and unsuspecting fishy comes their way.. and BOOYA... fishy go bye bye. and they had some other stuff nothing too exciting.

So I head out from the Aquarium and it's pouring rain, get to the wonderful bus loop and there is a bus there... but alas.. no bus driver. so I wait, thank goodness there was a little gazebo that I could stand under. After a while the bus driver shows up, opens the door of the bus and gets in, so I start walking towards the bus and he motions me to go stand at the bus stop itself, about ummm lets say 10 steps in front of where he's parked... did I mention that this was now a torrential downpour... so I move up and wait... he takes his sweet time taking the jacket off, sitting down, starting the bus, pause... then drives the bus up to the stop and opens the door for me... at this point I smell like a wet sock, I get on, drop the money in the meter (they don't even trust these idiots to be able to count, and computer does it for ya) and I ask for a transfer and he doesn't say anything, doesn't even look at me. so I ask again, and he replies in a stern and commanding voice " you got one right there" ummm.. no... so look around, and at the meter box, sticking straight up is a little card... so I grab my little card and try to strike up a conversation with the nice bus driver, but I guess he didn't like to talk much. Anyways, get to my stop, get the hell off and wait for the next bus, which had an extremely nice bus driver, who helped me find the right stop, and even signalled to me through the rearview mirror of his that I was about to get off at the wrong stop... poor guy, had to stop the bus earlier to boot a drunk off the bus, even the semi blind guy at the front of the bus had to shake his head, I mean this drunk was passed out across the courtesy seats at the front, so the blind guy had to sit elsewhere. so the drunk goes to get off the bus and the driver is like, "don't you want your stuff?" .. duh..."oh yeah" and the drunk tries to muster the brain cells to figure out how to pick up a bag and depart the bus. Thank you to the nice woman on the bus that gave him an extra plastic bag for his stuff.

and the novel continues....

so meet up with Imraan to see the shop he's got going at the hospital, and I must say, our tax dollars are hard at work. They have some excellent equipment and really good, smart people behind it. I was impressed, blade servers, fiber channel drive arrays, StorageTek tape filers, even a server with 300GB drives, like 3.5TB of Disk!!! I took a pic for those of my fellow geeks. got to see the server that stores and displays the digital diagnostic images (didn't get to see any pics... just a pretty black box that made a whirrrrr sound)... pretty cool stuff.. oh and Earthquake rack stands.. these are so cool, if there is an Earthquake, the ground will move, but the racks will stay in place. Ubercool.

checked out events in London for when I'm there, Green Day is playing in Manchester, so Ima gonna try and get tix and get out there for it, but I don't think it'll be cheap. Got my Aussie Visa took all of 10 seconds to approve (gotta love technology, it was an internet application form and the verification of the visa was faster than the Credit Card processing for the application fee)

Then got stuck in traffic ... left the hospital at 5:45pm, drove into downtown (oh and it's still raining at this point) and then off to PoCo ... got so tired of sitting in traffic, we ate at Nando's for dinner at 8:00 and got into the house at 9:45pm almost 4 hours to get back to the house. We could have driven to Edmonton to Calgary AND back in that amount of time (ok, breaking a few laws as far as speeding goes, but I'm allowed to imbelish a little).

It was good to sit on the couch and watch the Amazing Race... now I'm writing to you all, as I prepare for bed. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll catch you later. I'm off to Sechelt tomorrow and then Victoria on Thursday. And on that note, there is NO SHUTTLE BUS or FERRY from one of the glorious Ferry Terminals to the other...so I'll be on a bus for like umm...2 hours.. umm...like...okay...grrr

J hope you feel better. E Congrats, and to all those former co workers that have found new challenges and adventures in the last few weeks, Good Luck and I know that you will excel at the challenges and adventures that lie ahead!

time to go La La

f

Waay Too Early

Ok, so it's 6:47 am in Toronto, and I am shortly departing for Vancouver with a stop in Calgary. Can the weather forecast be terrible all across Canada...yep...hopefully I'm not delayed too long leaving TO, I'm looking forward to my stopover in Calgary (even if it is only 3 hours)

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year to everybody.. it's a tough time to celebrate with all the horror that has occurred in the last week on the other side of the world. I'm glad it's getting the coverage that it deserves.

http://www.google.com/tsunami_relief.html

I'm recovering from getting back at 4am from partying with a wild bunch, but it was well worth it. This is the first time I'm using a real computer since I left Calgary so I'm going to try and upload the pics that I have been promising for a while now.



I hope all of you are doing well and getting into lots of trouble... I'm sure trying to ;)