Andrew Underwood

Long Weekend Post

So the other day I was going for a mountain bike ride with a guy from work. We headed out of town, into the coolies east of Riverstone. It was a pretty challenging ride with all the hills and valleys. We saw a bunch of deer and cacti… However the next day I came down the stairs to my place to see my bike with both tyres flat. I reckon I ran over a cactus, there were lots…

I am in the Crowsnest Pass for the long weekend, the weather is great and I have been having a good time. Yesterday my Dad and I were riding our bikes up a private road to Allison Lake with our dog Cleo. We were going slowly as we approached the dam because we were waiting for Cleo to catch up. All of a sudden, in a calm voice my Dad says “Stop, grizzly bear”, much like if he were to say “Stop, hammer time.” I looked up and there it was about 30m from us. We think it was about 3 years old, but it didn’t notice us or didn’t pay us any attention because it just kept on eating the whole time. Cleo didn’t notice it though, which is probably a good thing. We slowly turned around and retreated down the road a bit more into the shadows and watched it for a bit longer. We went home, my Mum called Fish and Wildlife, turned out both officers were up in Canmore or something. Keep in mind this area is right beside a campsite that had no vacancy thanks to the long weekend. After this we took our bikes up to the lake again along a different route. We swam from the beach over to the dam. The bear was still there and we had quite the show as it was about 45m away as we stood on the other side of the lake and watched it. It went into the water a couple of times up to it’s head. It was really cool. Right now we are going up to the lake to swim again so I have to run.

Damn shoddy power supplies

So yesterday I was in the middle of a time trail in Colin McRae Rally 2005 and my computer shut off with a loud click. I quickly determined that it was the power supply. It came with my case and was just a 350W one. So I went to a computer store and bought a new 400W power supply, it cost more than the case itself. After installing the new PSU I couldn’t get my hard drive to be recognized during POST. I fear it might be fried… So today after work I went and got a new 160 GB drive. I just finished installing Red Hat Fedora Core 4 Linux. I usually install Windows first but I couldn’t find my disk. Anyway, sweet sweet Internet has been restored. I haven’t been having good luck with hard drives lately. Perhaps I will consider a redundant RAID array.

Commonly Confused Words Test

I don’t think I’ve posted results of an on-line test on this blog before because they are usually pretty bogus or immature. This test is different, be prepared to spend a few mins doing it. Try it out

My score: You scored 92% Beginner, 92% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 86% Expert

To Open Mindedness

We’re all taught that it’s important to keep an open mind when we go through high school social studies. It’s important to maintain an open mind so that we can change, develop, and make decisions knowing the whole story. To be open minded is to be fair. People who stand by an ideal without opening up to new ideas are not open minded. To an extent, one can believe that they are open minded but really, many angles have not been looked at because they are hidden. For example, most of what we learn in school is accepted without a doubt. The learning that is going on, the creation of links from one idea to the next, can make a story complete. Yet quite a different take on the matter can be gained by doing your own research, making sure the facts you believe aren’t supported by dodgy logic. Open mindedness is a primary requirement for major advances in science. The spherical Earth and the current model for the atom are just two advances that come to mind off hand. Don’t cry witchcraft every time something comes up that challenges your beloved ideals. Maybe you won’t like this new idea, maybe it just doesn’t sit right with you. So you decide to research around the topic yourself. You might find facts that support your side, and some against. You might even find that the truth you were looking to reclaim is actually in the other court.

Enough lecturing, this blog’s about me! ME! I consider myself to be very open minded. Music is my best example of this. Metal, Classical, both somewhat fringe genres are what I listen to the most. These don’t usually go to the ball together but they get along. In my mind’s musical front end, these two genres are the most similar. They are both complex, non-repetitive, intelligent, and not on MTV.

I have much more to write about this topic but alas, it’s my bed time. Aaron phoned to tell me that Cold Lake now has high def on Google maps and to talk about the existence of centripetal momentum. So you can blame him if I left you on the edge of your seat.

Happy Canada Day!

Today had very nice weather and I went for a bike ride around the city and on the very hilly trails in the river valley. I packed a lunch too, which is rare for me, I usually try to plan my trips so I am at home for a meal. Later, in my backyard I laid in the grass with my PDA and read ebooks. I also spent time writing some fiction with my pda + keyboard. That was actually my first portable keyboard experience as I’ve never had a laptop or pda that I could just take anywhere I wanted and type on it.