Troy's Blog

When bad things happen to good cars

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2010-06-06T23:23:00-05:00

...or what happens when people think red lights are optional. :(

Unfortunately, it looks like my budding autocross career will be temporarily put on hold. I was waiting to turn left at an intersection and was primed accordingly. When the light turned amber, traffic appeared to slow, then it went red and I proceeded. Somebody either thought he could make it through in time or didn't see his red light.

Most important is that everybody walked away from this. Though the parties were obviously shaken, we were calm and civil and there was no animosity. It's a shame we had to meet this way - him and his buddy seem like really nice guys. They were able to drive away (impact point middle of the front of the car), but my car was completely un-driveable (impact point front passenger corner). It was a challenge just to get her off the road onto the shoulder.

Two witnesses gave me their contact information confirming that they saw him run the red light, which is good for me and my record. Sadly, that doesn't help my baby any... I'm glad I got to take her out to autocross school and the Sunday event last month at least! Perhaps you folks will have a better idea, but this looks like an awful lot of damage on a car that's getting up there in years and down there in value. It is the sporty Sentra, but it's still a Sentra. I fear a write-off is in my future. :(

I hope Autopac can save my beloved Spec V. She brought me such joy every time I took her out for a spin. If not, well, I've got something else in mind... ;)

Here are the after pics. The before pics are from the May event with me finishing in last place by time but with a first place grin on my face. :)

The Carnage

A new high revving activity

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2010-05-24T15:27:58-05:00

This past week I finally took part in something I had been curious about for many years but never actually tried - autocross!

There was a Level 1 training session this past week consisting of a classroom session Wednesday and an in-car session Saturday. What a blast! I think everybody there had a great time. I must really thank Jann for telling me about the school session and asking me to go along with him. Autocross in Winnipeg is put on by the WSSC - Winnipeg Sports Car Club. Check out their website for more information.

The training session was very well run and I learned a great deal from it. My first run on the training course was 61.727 seconds, and my fastest lap was 49.125 seconds - over 12.5 seconds faster. What an amazing rush!

Here are some pictures that Jann took of me. Thanks again Jann!

In my next post, I’ll talk about my first race that was held on Sunday, the day after Level 1 school.

Music From A Bonsai

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2010-03-20T14:12:16-05:00

Good afternoon,

Recently, Vimeo has started sending out quasi-daily emails with the three newest videos in my inbox. I’m not sure what my Vimeo inbox is, or how videos get there, but nonetheless there it is. This was one of the videos the other day that I found completely interesting. It combines several of my interests together in one. Music, multi-track video and audio editing, Japanese bonsai, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the MacBook Pro you see at one point. :)

This video is Diego Stocco using a variety of microphones and tools to create music on a bonsai tree. As you can see, the final audio track was created over many takes, one “instrument” at a time. In the description and comments, Diego says that this was neither scripted nor synthesized in any way; each take was improvised and added onto the previous tracks.

Here is Music From A Bonsai by Diego Stocco.

What a great day to be Canadian!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2010-02-28T17:48:49-06:00

Wow! :) :) :)

Today is certainly a great day to be Canadian! What a gold medal men’s hockey game between Canada and the USA!! It was very close, and the Americans wanted it very badly, but we wanted it just a little bit more.

With this gold, Canada has set some great Olympic records in 2010. Here are a couple off the top of my head:

The most winter olympic gold medals by the host nation (14, previous was 10)
The most winter olympic gold medals by any nation (14, previous was 13)

Congratulations to all our Canadian athletes, and to all the athletes from every country who participated in these 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, BC!!!

Video from Frost Fire

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2010-01-19T20:59:55-06:00

Good evening,

It was a long time coming, but here is the video from the Frost Fire trip on December 20, 2009. It was recorded in HD (720p), so make sure to go full screen for best results. Enjoy!

Frost Fire December 20, 2009

Removing the door panel on a 2003 Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2010-01-06T20:33:33-06:00

Good evening,

I’ve got a problem with my car. When it gets cold out, my driver’s side door decides that it doesn’t want to close anymore. I’ve discovered the temporary resolution so that I can get home is to power lock the doors. Then when the door closes, the latch will catch, and I can safely get home. Then I’m stuck inside. :( From that point onward, that door will not unlock and I have to crawl over the manual shift stick, e-brake, and centre console to get out the passenger side door. The power lock won’t open it, neither will the latch inside, nor the key outside. Until it thaws out, that lock isn’t going anywhere. In the garage, I’ll aim a small electric space heater at the door lock area, and in a few hours I’ll be able to get back in again as if nothing was ever wrong. It’s not like I can prevent it either - the first time it happened to me this year, it had been almost three weeks since I had previously washed the car! Of course washing it doesn’t help any, but not washing it doesn’t help either.

When this first started happening to me last year, I took it into the dealer (this was before I started seeing a far superior and honest independent mechanic - Vtech Auto) and it had thawed in the meantime, so they couldn’t reproduce the problem. At the time, I hadn’t figured out that thawing solved the problem, so to me it just went away. They lubed up the latch and sent me on my way with no charge, which was very decent of them.

Spring came, and I forgot about it until it happened again several times during this last cold snap. I found some instructions online on how to remove the inside door panel for a 2003 Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V and went at it. The Flickr link below has the pictures I took of the process.

Unfortunately, I reached a point where I couldn’t easily go any further and still hadn’t reached the locking mechanism. The plastic panel came off and revealed a great deal, but my target area was still covered up by another steel panel that doesn’t look like it comes off. This will take more research on how to further take apart the door, and it also looks more involved than I should attempt on a work night. Definitely a weekend task! :) If I wanted to get to the in-door speaker, though, this is far enough. In fact, the passenger door speaker vibrates and rattles some, so now I know how to gain access to it.

Putting the door back together again was a simple process of reversing the steps.

Flickr Page - Door Panel Removal

This weekend, I’ve got a date with my door panel. I’m going to see if I can find more instructions on how to get deeper into the door. Wish me luck! :)

Avatar 3D

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2010-01-03T12:38:09-06:00

Good afternoon!

Last night, Shannon and I finally went to see Avatar in 3D. All I can say is WOW! This was my first 3D movie experience, and it was incredible. Unfortunately, Shannon didn’t have the same experience as I did — she ended up getting nauseous for most of the movie. If you haven’t seen a 3D movie yet, be aware that you may end up feeling nauseous. I found that my eyes were sore for the first 10 minutes or so until I got used to it, and when the movie was over I found that I had one of those right-behind-the-eyes headaches. Seeing a movie in 3D is definitely an experience that you’ll have to adjust to.

Physical discomforts aside, I thought it was implemented quite well. It was really cool to be able to choose what object and depth of focus I want to turn my attention to. That said, sometimes it felt like they had some 3D scenes that were there just for the sake of being 3D and didn’t have anything at all to do with the movie. That’s okay, though — if I was a filmmaker and had this great new technology to play with, I’m sure I’d go a little overboard too. :) There were also some occasions where the 3D objects looked very flat. One scene in particular had the colonel’s body in front of some people and other objects in the background, but the colonel himself seemed very flat, almost like a cardboard cutout placed in front of something else. For the most part, though, I found it quite well done. I found myself turning my head to the side and tilting it trying to get a better view of a sign on the side of a wall. I also jumped back and to the left at one point when an object seemed to come right out of the screen just to the right of me. There were a lot of scenes that really implemented the 3D very well.

That’s a lot of discussion on the “gimmicks” of Avatar. How was the movie itself? I really enjoyed it! It was a long movie at 2 hours and 40 minutes, but that was fine. We originally went to see the 9:00pm show at Polo Park, but when we got there an hour early it was already sold out. We then ventured to St. Vital for the 10:15pm show and were third in line. I am very much a morning person, not at all a night owl, and so I was mildly concerned about being able to stay awake until 1:30am or so (after 30 minutes of commercials and previews — sheesh!). There was no chance of that. I was captivated from the first scene right to the closing credits. I don’t want to give any plot details other than to say that was one tough colonel!

Overall, I found Avatar to be a great movie, and the 3D effects were quite spectacular. I strongly recommend you go and see it in a 3D theatre instead of waiting for it to hit Movie Central or your local rental store.

Avatar 3D: :) :) :) :) / 5

Goal Tracker 2009 archive

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2010-01-01T16:25:42-06:00

Here is the final Goal Tracker page for 2009. Since there is a new set of goals for 2010, the Goal Tracker page needs to change, but I don’t want to lose the 2009 information. This seems like a good place to archive the information.

Welcome to my goal tracker for 2009. Take the following snippet from the January 1, 2009 entry in my blog:

With this in mind, here are some of my goals for 2009. My focus this year is health and fitness. My legs have always been pretty strong thanks to several years of martial arts, but my upper body has always been weak and my spare tire ever present. This year, I’m going to remedy both of those problems.

1 pullup by the end of January
3 pullups by the end of February
Continuing on until 23 consecutive pullups by the end of December
10 pushups by the end of January
20 pushups by the end of February
Continuing on until 120 consecutive pushups by the end of December
Today (January 1st), my waist size (relaxed) around my belly button is 39”; 38” by the end of February
37” by the end of April
Continuing on 1” every two months until 33” at the end of December (ideal healthy waist line for a 6” tall male; Tiger Woods is 6’2” and has a waist of 28” - source: http://www.collectivewizdom.com/NormalWaistforaManpage2.html)

This is not to say that all I’m going to do are pullups and pushups! I definitely have balanced workout plans (i.e. all muscle groups), but I didn’t feel like planning and spelling out my entire workout schedule for the year right now, either. :)

On this page, I will be tracking my progress along the way.

December 31, 2008
Pullups goal: 0 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 0 (actual: 5)
Waist around navel: 39” (actual: 39”)

January 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 1 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 10 (actual: 10)
Waist around navel: 38.5” (actual: 38.25” )

February 28, 2009
Pullups goal: 3 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 20 (actual: 20)
Waist around navel: 38” (actual: 37.5” )

March 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 5 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 30 (actual: 30)
Waist around navel: 37.5” (actual: 36.75” )

April 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 7 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 40 (actual: 40)
Waist around navel: 37” (actual: 37.5” )

May 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 9 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 50 (actual: 50)
Waist around navel: 36.5” (actual: 36” )

June 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 11 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 60 (actual: 51)
Waist around navel: 36” (actual: 36.5” )

July 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 13 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 70 (actual: 35)
Waist around navel: 35.5” (actual: 36.75” )

August 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 15 (actual: 0)
Lat pull down goal: 2 x 10 @ 80 lbs (actual: 80 lbs)
Pushups goal: 80 (actual: 36)
Waist around navel: 35” (actual: 35.75” )

September 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 17 (actual: 0)
Lat pull down goal: 2 x 10 @ 110 lbs (actual: 105 lbs)
Pushups goal: 90 (actual: 55)
Waist around navel: 34.5” (actual: 36.25" )

October 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 19 (actual: 0)
Lat pull down goal: 2 x 10 @ 130 lbs (actual: 130)
Pushups goal: 100 (actual: 75)
Waist around navel: 34” (actual: 36.25" )

November 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 21 (actual: 0)
Assisted pull ups goal: 2 x 10 @ 55 lbs (actual: 60 lbs)
Pushups goal: 110 (actual: 110)
Waist around navel: 33.5” (actual: 37” )

December 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 23 (actual: 0)
Assisted pull ups goal: 2 x 10 @ 35 lbs (actual: 2 x 7 @ 55 lbs)
Pushups goal: 120 (actual: 90)
Waist around navel: 33” (actual: 36.5” )

Fitness update for 2009 & 2010

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2010-01-01T17:28:59-06:00

Good evening,

Here it is, the last workout update for 2009. What a year it's been! Did I get all my fitness goals accomplished? Nope - not even close. That's okay, though, because I still came a very long way and learned a lot about how my body responds to varying types of exercise.

Let me just quickly insert the final tally here before discussing next year's progress:

December 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 23 (actual: 0)
Assisted pull ups goal: 2 x 10 @ 35 lbs (actual: 2 x 7 @ 55 lbs)
Pushups goal: 120 (actual: 90)
Waist around navel: 33” (actual: 36.5” )

A few things to note here — the muscle pull from the November 30th test ended up actually being quite severe, much more than I first realized. It's been a month and I still can't push myself to the level I was without feeling my neck muscles starting to pull again, so that's why I only peaked at 90 pushups. It's so frustrating because after last month's 110, I absolutely would have made 120 this month! In fact, I probably could have done it last month too, I just stopped at 110 because that was the target for the month. This was so very frustrating and disappointing. Same thing with the pull ups; not that I would have completed a real one, but I had to go from subtracting 55 lbs to 85 lbs. I am pleased with the waistline, though. Making an improvement in that department during all the holiday season feasting was certainly an accomplishment. :)

Despite coming up far short of the final target for 2009, I learned plenty about how I felt versus the focus and exercises I was doing at the time. For example, when I strayed away from working strictly towards the 2009 goal items (pushups, pull ups, waist) and worked more on high intensity full body training, I was losing weight and trimming up quite nicely. Then, when I realized how far off course I was for the specific pull up and push up exercises, I reworked my focus for those items, and my waistline took a hit. I found I felt better and healthier overall during the high intensity full body training when I was slimming down as opposed to when I was cranking out 100+ pushups. At the end of the day, this is all about being healthy and feeling good. Though it will feel great when I do finally get that first pull up, my overall sense of health was better when that wasn’t the sole focus.

This year's fitness goals are taking last year's results and lessons learned into account. There is an expression: if you can't measure it, you can't track it. 2009 has shown to me the great benefits from tracking my progress and reporting on it here. It has kept me motivated to continue because with other people reading this and following along I'm accountable to more than just myself. This has been a great motivator all year long! Even though I couldn't keep up, I still kept going, and that is the most important thing of all.

Coming back to the expression, what metric will I use to measure and track 2010's progress? This year I'll be looking at body fat percentage (BF%). My research has shown that a healthy BF% for an early 30's male is about 15%, the very athletic are around 10%, and 3 - 4% is the minimum safe level. Using the skin-fold method, I've determined my BF% rounded to the nearest 0.5% to be 25.5%. Therefore, I'm tracking two goals for December 31, 2010. The most important goal is to reach a healthy 15%. However, I'll also be shooting for a very nice 10% and the six-pack that goes along with it! :)

Date	Current	Target 1	Target 2
01-Jan-10	25.5%	25.5%	25.5%

Date

Weight

Fat

Lean Mass

01-Jan-10

202

150

Once again, the number on the scale is only a guide for informational purposes. Maybe I'll end up weighing 175lbs (at 10% BF = 17.5lbs fat, 157.5lbs lean), or maybe I'll still be at 200lbs (20lbs fat, 180lbs lean). That doesn't matter. What matters is burning the fat while keeping and even increasing the muscle.

2009 was a great year! I went from ten pushups to one hundred and ten, trimmed my waistline by 2.5", and figured out how to work towards my first pull up (albeit far too late in the year). I'm really looking forward to the progress that will be made in 2010!

Happy New Year!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2010-01-01T12:44:46-06:00

Wishing everybody all the best in 2010! I hope this year finds you all safe and brings you health, love, and prosperity.

Merry Christmas!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-12-25T08:52:16-06:00

Good morning everybody,

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas! To all my friends who don’t celebrate Christmas, I wish you all Happy Holidays!

I hope everybody has a safe and enjoyable holiday season spent with those closest to them. Eat, drink (but don’t drive), and be merry!

Taking a spill at Frost Fire

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-12-22T06:14:33-06:00

Good morning!

Last night going through the footage taken from the snow day at Frost Fire, I decided to put together a very brief snippet of my spectacular fall. :) Looking at it now on camera, it doesn’t look that spectacular, but it trust me - it was! I still feel like I got hit by a bus even today. Rolling into and out of a fall is easy - I learned that in Kung Fu. The hard part is getting the snowboard (which extends a good distance past you on either side of your feet) to roll along with you.

Anyway, here it is. It’s okay to laugh - I still laugh every time I see it! :) If you click on the HD button in the video, you’ll be presented with an option to watch the video on Vimeo’s site in HD; they don’t allow HD embedding with the free account.

Stay tuned for the full video. There’s almost an hour of footage to go through! I’ve never had to go through that much raw film before - this will be great.

First snow trip a success!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-12-20T19:56:28-06:00

Helloooooo! :)

I’m very pleased to say that our inaugural snow outing was a complete success. Ryan and I went down to Frost Fire in Walhalla, North Dakota for a great day of skiing and snowboarding. I only took one video and no still pictures. Ryan, however, made a nice little acquisition this week. He picked up an HD helmet cam! I haven’t seen the footage on it yet, but apparently it’s really good. I look forward to seeing it. It’s very convenient to have the camera filming all the way down the hill instead of somebody having to go ahead and park somewhere to catch everyone going by. Halfway through the day we mounted the camera on my head for some variety. Nobody wants to see video of me all day long. Although, Ryan did catch me making a spectacular fall that I can’t wait to see! :)

Stay tuned for the video.

Watch me learn the guitar!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-12-15T21:07:01-06:00

Good evening,

Now, you’re probably thinking “Why on Earth would I want to watch you learn the guitar?” — and that’s certainly a great question! I’m not sure why you would want to watch me learn the guitar either, but that’s okay. I’m not doing this for you; I’m doing this for me.

Hmmm... thinking about that last line, you may *still* be getting the wrong idea. I am certainly not one to think that everything I do is interesting to everybody else, and I’m not doing it because I want my 15 minutes of fame on the Internet. No, I’m doing it for the same reason that I am posting my workout goals and progress.

You see, for many years I had been working out off and on, mostly off. When I started posting it on my blog December 31, 2008, though, I all of a sudden became accountable to somebody other than myself. It’s much easier to give up on something when you’re the only one who knows about it. Well, 2009 was the best year I’ve ever had in terms of workout consistency. I’m hoping to have the same effect on my guitar playing.

I really want to learn to play, I just often don’t think to take the time to sit down and practice. It’s also much harder because I am teaching myself with video instruction. If I had a real instructor, then I’d have somebody checking on me and making sure that I’m practicing. Well, now I have you to do that for me, and the best part is you guys are free! :)

I’ve just started studying using the lessons included in Garage Band ’09, included with iLife ’09 on my new MacBook Pro. The lessons look quite good for a beginner, and it’s nice because Garage Band has a backing band. At the end of the lesson, you get to play along with the instructor. You can also turn on or off individual tracks, like the instructor’s voice, his guitar, or the backing band. What I can do for these videos is have only the backing track play, and then I play along with it. This will help me to keep a tempo as well as make it more interesting than just banging out chords all by myself.

Also, in cutting this first video, I saw that recording myself and then watching it again is a fantastic way to see where I can improve. Boy, is there an awful lot of room for improvement! I always thought that I could keep a decent rhythm. When I was in band class in high school, I certainly could. Apparently, it’s gotten much worse in the 13 years since band class. I also have issues with consistent volume. I think it’s because I feel myself getting rather self conscious. I also don’t want to be too loud because I’m a very quiet person in general, so playing at a clear solid volume feels uncomfortable.

I never would have picked up on these growth points without watching myself play - this is fantastic!

There are nine Garage Band lessons:

Intro to Guitar (and E chord)
Chords: G, C
Chords: A, D
Minor Chords
Single Note Melodies
Power Chords
Major Barre Chords
Minor Barre Chords
Blues Lead

After that, we’ll see how far I’ve progressed, and where I should go next. I don’t have a schedule defined yet, nor do I have goals of where I want to be at a given point in time. That was also key in my workout plan, and so I should make firm goals here too. For the time being, though, I’ll aim to complete and be comfortable with one lesson per week. At the end of the week, I’ll take a video of myself and post it here again.

Standard Aero Christmas party pictures

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-12-13T16:49:41-06:00

Hi!

Here are the pictures I took from the Standard Aero 2009 Christmas party. Click the link below for the Flickr slideshow. Enjoy!

Standard Aero 2009 Christmas Party

Best Christmas decoration ever!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-12-10T20:14:07-06:00

Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever.Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.

Blender tutorial - animated snowman

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-12-09T17:11:00-06:00

Good evening,

This Blender tutorial was quite a bit shorter than the previous ones. All I had to do here was to animate the snowman that I build in the previous tutorial. :)

Next Blender tutorial

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-12-06T21:17:17-06:00

Good evening!

Tonight, I completed the next Blender tutorial. It is a very timely project, since it is a snowman and we’ve finally got snow on the ground! :)

The importance of leptin

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-12-05T12:04:55-06:00

Here is another newsletter from Mike Geary. This one covers a couple of topics. First, it talks about two very healthy vegetables - bok choy and mustard greens. Bok choy is great, but I’ve never had mustard greens before. I’ll have to try it out.

Next, it talks about the hormone leptin and how it impacts fat burning.

Mike’s article is very long, so I don’t want to clog the main page with it. Just click the link below to view the article in its entirety.

Another video comparison

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-12-02T21:29:06-06:00

Good evening,

Not being totally decided on my video hosting choice, I leave it to you. Below are the same video, one in QuickTime format, and the other the same QuickTime file uploaded to Vimeo. Actually, I should really upload another higher quality video to Vimeo to let it work with the highest quality possible (within my 500MB weekly limit, of course). Unfortunately, I don’t have access to my video editing software right now. I’m holding out for Final Cut Express 5 which should hopefully be released any day now!!!

Actually, looking at the recommended settings for Vimeo, the video file wasn’t created in the optimal settings. Vimeo likes 30fps, but it is 29.97fps (the NTSC standard). I also don’t have the keyframes set in their preferred method, and the bit rate is half of what they recommend for an SD source video.

QuickTime:

Vimeo from same source:

What do you think?

Eleven down, one more to go!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-11-30T12:12:34-06:00

Good afternoon!

Here is the report for today’s month-end fitness testing for November. The end of the year is coming up fast!

Good news and bad news. The good news is that I have been able to get back on track in the push ups department!!! Yep - this morning, it was a struggle but I was able to eek out 110 consecutive push ups.

The bad news is that I think this extra strain set me up for failure in the assisted pull ups. In my second set of 10, during the 7th rep I pulled a muscle in the area of the left side of my neck. I’d guess the left trapezius, but then again I’m not trained or well versed in anatomy or musculature. At any rate, I was able to finish that rep, but no more. 10 + 7, so close to 10 + 10, and I think I would have been able to do it. Argh!!! :(

My waistband has been getting a little long lately, too. It’s something I have recently started taking more seriously over the past few days. I’ve been letting my healthy eating fall by the wayside, and it’s showing. Time to buckle down, though. With Christmas on the way, there will be plenty of opportunities for over-indulging, so I need to work extra hard on cranking the healthy dial all the way to eleven! :) Besides, this will pay extra dividends in the pull up department, so it’s a double win.

Here are the results, by the numbers.

November 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 21 (actual: 0)
Assisted pull ups goal: 2 x 10 @ 55 lbs (actual: 60 lbs)
Pushups goal: 110 (actual: 110)
Waist around navel: 33.5” (actual: 37)

As always, the Goal Tracker page has this plus the historical data. I’m starting to think about next year’s goals, too. I don’t want to do 240 consecutive push ups, that’s just silly. :) I’ve got some ideas that I’m working through and will share with you towards the end of December.

The Flu

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-11-28T20:50:20-06:00

THE FLU

Here's my concern:

3 years ago, Chinese calendar year of the cow
. . . Mad Cow disease.

2 years ago, Chinese calendar year of the bird
. . . Avian flu.

This year, Chinese calendar year of the pig
. . . Swine flu.

Next year is the year of the cock. Anybody else worried?

My Wishlist

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-11-16T12:50:20-06:00

Hi!

For all the people who ask me "What do you want for ____?" (Christmas being the next one in line, but birthdays also apply), I've made a wishlist page.

Thank you very much! :)

Dog-O-Lanterns

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-11-15T13:05:40-06:00

This is a couple of weeks late, but here you go anyway. Dog-o-lanterns! :)

Happy Birthday Sean and Andrea!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-11-14T12:32:14-06:00

Today is Sean and Andrea's birthday!

It's cool but challenging at the same time because of the conflicting birthday parties that must be worked around. They are very good at accomodating each other, though, so that certainly makes it easier on Shannon and me. :)

I'm feeling in good voice today, so here we go:

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Sean & Andreaaaaaaaaaaaa
Happy Birthday to you!
And Many Moooooooooore!

Have a great day and a great year guys! Next year it's the big Three-Oh! :)

Lest We Forget

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-11-11T11:46:43-06:00

Today is Remembrance Day, the day when we stop to reflect upon the freedoms we have, and the sacrifices made by those men and women who made it all possible. Many people have today off from work. Enjoy it! But please make sure to remember why you have today off.

I haven't read "In Flanders Fields" for quite a while, so I though it would be appropriate to do so today and share it with you.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

Changing up the pull up strategy

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-11-07T19:43:47-06:00

Good evening,

I've been noticing that the ropes used for my homebrew lat pull down jig are starting to fray. Not a big deal, rope is cheap and I bought lots because I suspected this would happen and would need to be replaced. Those of you following along know that I'm up to 130lbs, which is currently 65lbs per side. The rope is rated for 110lbs, but I'm not sure how much I want to go past the halfway mark; I'd like to leave a large safety margin. This coupled with the fact that I'm now able to lift over half my bodyweight got me thinking about a better way to go forward. You know, I've never thought of it as over half my bodyweight before; that's a big milestone!

At any rate, since I'm past the halfway mark, I need to replace the ropes anyway, and I'd have to buy yet another 25lb plate, I thought I'd take this opportunity to change it up a bit. Instead of sitting stationary and pulling the weight up, I rigged up a harness of sorts and use the weights to counterbalance my own weight. This officially transforms the exercise from a lat pull down to an assisted pull up. It's also nice because instead of 130lbs (2 x 65lbs) on the ropes, I'm only using 70lbs (2 x 35lbs), and that number will decrease instead of increase over time.

As I mentioned above, I've had to gradually buy more weights since building the pull down station. At over a buck a pound and three 25lb plates later, I've made a significant investment in this so far. It was a great investment for sure, still cheaper than a gym membership, and as I progress I'll use the weights on my barbell or even dumbbells, but if I can avoid buying another plate right now then why not? :)

I haven't done my usual sets on the new jig yet, but I did a few reps while adjusting the ropes to the right length. I must admit that even though it's assisted, it sure felt great lifting myself up and moving my entire body through space instead of sitting stationary!

Note that I've edited the Goal Tracker page accordingly. Looking at the goal tracker, I see that at the current rate of 5lbs per week, by my birthday (February 9) I'll be down to 5 lbs of assistance. Although I can still feel a big difference between just 5 lbs (say going from 125lbs to 130lbs on the pull down), that will be great motivation to hurry it up by a week. Yes, I can feel it now - by the time I'm 32, I'll be able to do real unassisted pull ups!

What a great birthday gift to myself that will be! :)

Pistachios - healthy nuts?

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-11-04T19:27:43-06:00

Hi!

I've never really thought of pistachios as healthy nuts before, but it turns out they're pretty good for you! Here is another newsletter from Mike Geary. Enjoy!

============================================================
Today's Fitness Quickie from http://www.TruthAboutAbs.com
============================================================

A lot of people have false beliefs about eating "fatty" foods, but we should all know by now that eating fat does not make you fat, if it's the right fats.

Here's a new article on my site about another example of a high-fat superfood that's also delicious:

http://www.truthaboutabs.com/pistachio-nutrition-benefits.html

I'll be back soon with the next Lean-Body Secrets Ezine.

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
Founder - Truth About Abs .com & http://BusyManFitness.com

http://AvalancheSkiTraining.com

PS - if you liked todays article, feel free to fwd this email on to any of your friends, family, or co-workers that would enjoy it.

Irollie Marketing LLC, 1802 North Carson St, Suite 108, Carson City, Nevada 89701, United States

Workout update for October

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-11-03T19:14:25-06:00

Good evening,

Thanks go to Ryan for pointing out to me that I hadn't posted my workout update for October yet. Oops! I did my workout test on October 31st as scheduled, but because I went out of town for the weekend later that day I ran out of time to update it before I left and forgot to update it when I got back.

Good news! It's not all red this month! :)

My pushups are coming along very nicely. Since getting back to basics and focusing on these goals, I've been increasing my pushups at a rate of about 20 per month (36 to 55 to 75). If I can keep this up in November and eek out 25 in December, then I'll have made it! Also, I think it's worthwhile to note that for the first time since falling so far behind on my pushups I can meet and exceed the goal number over two sets. In fact, my highest two set total in October was 110 (70 + 40)!

Also, for kicks I actually tried doing a pullup (I haven't been bothering since I know that mathematically I still can't). Whereas my previous best was about one centimetre of movement, I can now actually make it about 1/3 of the way up. This is more improvement in this exercise than I've ever seen in my entire life! If only I had built my lat pull down contraption back in January, I would be doing pullups by now. Oh well - it doesn't really matter when I get there as long as I do. Health and fitness is not some target that must be reached by a date on the calendar; it is a lifelong process with both no target date and a target date every single day all at the same time.

October 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 19 (actual: 0)
Lat pull down goal: 2 x 10 @ 130 lbs (actual: 130)
Pushups goal: 100 (actual: 75)
Waist around navel: 34” (actual: 36.25" )

As always, the full results for the year are on the Goal Tracker page.

There are still good people in the world!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-11-02T18:55:10-06:00

Don't let the media fool you folks - there are still good people left in the world! Case in point - the disappearance and return of my wallet.

This weekend, we went to a friend's cabin for Halloween with a stop to go horseback riding at Birds Hill Park on the way out. I know I had it to pay for a snack at Timmy's on the way out, and that evening at the cabin I noticed I didn't have my wallet anymore. This was Saturday. I didn't know if I left it at Tim's or lost it on the trail.

Just under two hours ago, I got a call from my chiropractor's office. I was there for my regular appointment this morning and told them about my lost wallet and how I'd need a new RFID badge (how we sign in to bring up our patient information). They were having computer problems in the morning, so they couldn't create a new card for me that day but would at my next appointment next week. I thought they were calling about this. Nope - they had my wallet.

You see, a man was walking along the trails in Birds Hill Park on the weekend and found a wallet on the ground. He saw my RFID badge with the chiropractor's office address printed on it. The same chiropractor that he goes to! He brought it in with him to his regular appointment today with the wallet and all the contents (including all the cash) intact.

I didn't get to meet him, and I don't know who he is, but THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Sofa - Blender Tutorial

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-10-21T21:13:49-05:00

Good evening,

I've completed the next Blender tutorial. This time it's a still image of a sofa. The full high-res images are hosted in the Blender set of my new Flickr account here, but here are smaller versions for you to enjoy. Both are the same sofa, one with an image texture, and the other with a solid colour.

Murphy's other laws

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-10-17T08:47:36-05:00

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

A day without sunshine is like, well, night.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.

The things that come to those that wait may be the things left by those who got there first.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries.

The shin bone is a device for finding furniture.

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of 12 people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

It looks like it's Vimeo

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-10-14T18:30:43-05:00

Howdy,

I'm pleased to say that my first experience with Vimeo was not typical. I have created and uploaded a video just under 20 minutes and just under 30 minutes, and there was of course some processing time (this is expected) and they didn't take seven hours to process a four second clip! :) I created the videos with a very low quality as proofs of concept, and the concept worked great! It really looks like Vimeo will allow you to have any length as long as the file size comes within the restrictions.

I've deleted the videos since they were only for me to test, so don't go looking for them. :)

My Vimeo page is here: http://www.vimeo.com/troydolyniuk

Test of video hosting sites

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-10-12T14:13:05-05:00

* Updated! *

Hi folks,

This post is just me testing different video hosting sites - nothing new to see here. If you like, send me an email with which one you think looks best. Also, please tell me what OS and browser you're using.

Thanks!

Facebook:

YouTube:

Vimeo:
(video uploaded, waiting for encoding...)
Update - it's been just under six hours since uploading the video and I'm still waiting in line for it to be converted. Really?!?
Update 2 - It took almost SEVEN HOURS before Vimeo had my video up. That's insane!

My first Blender animation - Yellow Submarine from Troy Dolyniuk on Vimeo.

Okay, now that all three are up, it looks like they are all about the same quality. This is good, because YouTube used to be much worse than the others, but it's really come a long way. I guess I should fill you in on the background - the reason I'm even considering another provider than YouTube is because of YouTube's ridiculous 10 minute limit for mere mortals like you and me. I haven't bumped into the 10 minute limit with any of my videos yet, but I just put one together for some friends of mine from their baby's baptism and it ran just under 15 minutes. If that was for my event, I'd want to put it up on the web, but YouTube would reject it.

Facebook has a 20 minute limit which is much better, and I'd jump there in a heartbeat except that the player window is only 400 pixels wide, not configurable. Sure, I can edit the code to make it 480 pixels wide (and I did but then undid), but the video is scaled up from 400 to the new size and fuzzy, not scaled down and crisp from the 1280 pixels wide I uploaded to the service in the first place.

Vimeo's free service lets me upload 500MB per week, but no word on length. My next test will be to use some or all of my remaining 498.3MB in this week's quota to upload a low quality but long video. I'll try for 20 minutes first, and if I still have room in my quota I'll try a 30 minute video too.

That's it for updates to this post. Any new information will go on a new post.

My first animation with Blender

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-10-09T12:27:15-05:00

Hello!

A long time ago, I tried my hand at raytracing. What does this mean? I could explain it, or I could let this blurb from Wikipedia do it for me.

In computer graphics, ray tracing is a technique for generating an image by tracing the path of light through pixels in an image plane. The technique is capable of producing a very high degree of photorealism; usually higher than that of typical scanline rendering methods, but at a greater computational cost. This makes ray tracing best suited for applications where the image can be rendered slowly ahead of time, such as in still images and film and television special effects, and more poorly suited for real-time applications like computer games where speed is critical. Ray tracing is capable of simulating a wide variety of optical effects, such as reflection and refraction, scattering, and chromatic aberration.

Simple, right? :) I've dabbled in it here and there over the past several years, and now it looks like I'm back into it again. This time around, I'm using an excellent free 3D modeller and renderer called Blender. I'm also using the excellent Blender tutorial by Neal Hirsig that is available here. This is the result of my "homework" project at the end of learning unit 1. It is to make an animated submarine based on the cover art from The Beatles' Yellow Submarine.

Here is my video. Note that I decided to store it on YouTube instead of hosting the QuickTime file myself. This is because lately I've been disappointed by the bandwidth speed from my web hosting provider. It used to be blazingly fast, but now they offer unlimited storage and bandwidth for an amazing price and I guess had to dial back the speed accordingly. But I digress. Here is my video.

Stay tuned for the next one!

Aircraft maintenance complaints

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-10-04T18:54:29-05:00

I share with you an oldie but a goodie. :)

--
After every flight, Qantas pilots fill out a form called a “gripe sheet” which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics correct the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight. Never let it be said that ground crews lack a sense of humour.

Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by Qantas pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by the maintenance engineers.

P:   Left, inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S:   Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P:   Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S:   Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P:   Something loose in cockpit.
S:   Something tightened in cockpit.

P:   Dead bugs on windshield.
S:   Live bugs on back-order.

P:   Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200-feet-per-minute descent.
S:   Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P:   Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S:   Evidence removed.

P:   DME volume unbelievably loud.
S:   DME volume set to more believable level.

P:   Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S:   That’s what they’re for.

P:   IFF inoperative.
S:   IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P:   Suspected crack in windshield.
S:   Suspect you’re right.

P:   Number 3 engine missing.
S:   Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P:   Aircraft handles funny.
S:   Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and to be serious.

P:   Target radar hums.
S:   Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P:   Mouse in cockpit.
S:   Cat installed.

P:   Noise coming from under instrument panel sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S:   Took hammer away from midget.

Fitness goal update

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-10-01T20:39:02-05:00

Good evening,

Yesterday was the last day of the month, which is of course the day of my latest fitness test. I'm pleased to say that I've made a lot of progress this month, even though all the indicators are red.

September 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 17 (actual: 0)
Lat pull down goal: 2 x 10 @ 110 lbs (actual: 105 lbs)
Pushups goal: 90 (actual: 55)
Waist around navel: 34.5” (actual: 36.25" )

I've really brought the pushups back from the slump they were in and had my best month yet there. Lat pulls progressed a lot, although I think increasing the weight 30lbs per month is too steep. I couldn't quite make 2x10 at 110lbs, but 105lbs was okay. Besides, I've been finding myself with some shoulder and neck discomfort in the last week or so from straining by bumping up the weight too quickly. If you look at the goal tracker page, you'll see that I've relaxed from 30lbs a month to about 20lbs a month; more specifically, 5lbs a week. I know that at this rate I likely won't get a pull up in this year unless I drop 25lbs, but that's okay because I have still made a great deal of measurable progress and that's really what this is all about.

Why canola oil isn't healthy

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-09-20T07:36:02-05:00

Good morning!

It's a beautiful Sunday morning outside (possibly the last one of the year), so make sure to get outside and enjoy it!

Here is another email newsletter I received from Mike Geary that I'd like to share with you. It's about why canola oil is not healthy. You should stick with oils like olive and coconut. It's rather long, so please click the link below for the full article.

Thanks, and have a great Sunday!

Apple Store opened in Winnipeg today

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-09-19T19:34:44-05:00

Hi,

Today was the grand opening of Winnipeg's first Apple Store in Polo Park. Yes, I went down early and stood in line... But, the first 1000 people (I figure I was somewhere between 200 and 250) got a free T-shirt, and a Winnipegger will do just about *anything* for a freebie. :) It is a very nice store. I've only been to an Apple store once before; it was on our trip to Las Vegas. The Winnipeg store is bigger than I thought it would be, comparable to the one in Vegas.

If you go to YouTube and search for "apple store winnipeg", you'll see some videos of what the lineup was like. I won't link to them all here, but you can see me in this video below. I'm just to the left of the pillar to the left of the Virgin Mobile kiosk. You can see my head pretty clearly around the 0:32 mark and again when he pans back later on.

And here is a funny clip from The Simpsons about Lisa's first trip to the Mapple store. :)

Now to figure out how I can justify picking up a 13" MacBook Pro... yummy! :)

Followup to Snow Leopard & Boot Camp 3.0

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-09-17T20:35:46-05:00

Good evening,

I just wanted to do a quick follow-up on my last blog posting with some new information. Since the last post was a novel, this one will be brief.

Battery life
Under Windows 7 and Boot Camp 3.0, battery life is now on par with what I am seeing under the Mac OS. In my testing, I was on track for about 4.5 hours. Drastically improved from Boot Camp 2.1 (almost double).

Horizontal scrolling
I tried opening one of my wide spreadsheets in Excel 2007, but alas no horizontal scrolling. As I mentioned, IE8 didn't either, and neither does anything else with a horizontal scroll bar.

Final verdict
After using Windows 7 exclusively for a few days, I must say it is definitely the best version of Windows ever made. It is fast, stable, and slick, and if I wasn't a Mac guy, I'd be in love. Please don't take that to mean that I've imbibed of the Apple Kool-Aid and am a Mac fanboy, because I'm not. I was very much prepared to make the switch back to Windows if that turned out to be the best operating system for me. However, it still isn't.

Features like the new task bar and how Aero Peek has been integrated make finding the window you want to get to very convenient. I was quite enamoured with it, but it's still no Exposé. Yes, even though Exposé is all chunky now, it's still the fastest and most efficient way of all to navigate to my desired open (and now minimized) window. How can it get any better than seeing *all* of your open windows scaled down and spread out to pick the one you like?

There are other things too, little things that don't seem significant, but when you get used to them find they really make a difference in your productivity. One such thing in particular that comes to mind is that I had gotten used to the fact that if I want to scroll something, I'd put my mouse pointer over it and then scroll. It didn't matter if its window was in focus or not, it just worked. In Windows 7, I found I still had to click inside the scrolling component before that would scroll, and then it would scroll no matter where my mouse pointer was. This really aggravated me when I was tweaking the power settings. The default focus was on a drop down that switched between the power modes (Best performance, best battery life, balanced [or something to that effect]), and right below that was a long scrollable list with the details of that profile. Well, I wanted to scroll down to see what was down there, but scrolling down just caused the profiles to flip through the drop down list items above, not the list I was pointing at. Whereas now, I can scroll up to review earlier parts of this post, go to the pane above to scroll the list of all my blog posts, and point to my email program in another window that is still visible but not in focus and scroll through an open email message (suppose I was referring to it while writing a post) all by pointing at it and scrolling but not having to click to change focus.

To wrap this up, Windows 7 is a fantastic operating system, and by far the best Redmond has ever put out. I definitely encourage all Windows users to upgrade - it is a significant step forward. Boot Camp 3.0 is probably the best thing to come out of Snow Leopard, at least today. In the future, as application programmers write their applications to take full advantage of the vast new power and features that Snow Leopard provides, then we'll finally get to see Snow Leopard shine. But overall, I must say that while it came close (very close), it wasn't enough to sway me from Mac OS X, and I still encourage everybody to research and at least consider it when it comes time to upgrade to a new computer.

So much for a brief post. :)

My thoughts on Snow Leopard & Boot Camp 3.0

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-09-13T07:43:59-05:00

Today's blog posting talks about my experiences with the updated Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade as well as the updated Boot Camp 3.0 drivers under Windows 7 64-bit RTM. It ended up being quite long, so instead of clogging up the front page with the entire article, please click the link below to see the full post.

Changing up the workout goals

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-08-31T07:39:38-05:00

Good morning,

Good news and bad news with today’s workout test day. Good news is all areas have improved from last month, but all are still below target. So if all levels are improved, does that mean that I’ve done my first pull up? No, if I had there would be much fanfare! :) However I built a lat pull down pulley system to train the muscles in the correct form with a full range of movement after last month’s test, and I’m able to pull more weight today than I did a month ago, so I can legitimately say that I’m closer to 1 rep than I was a month ago. Also, my waist measurement is currently at its lowest so far this year!

Pullups goal: 15 (actual: 0)
Lat pull down goal: 2 x 10 @ 80 lbs (actual: 80 lbs)
Pushups goal: 80 (actual: 36)
Waist around navel: 35” (actual: 35.75” )

What’s up with the push ups though? I peaked in June at 51 and haven’t been able to get back there since. I think the focus of my workouts has shifted, though, trying always to get that elusive first pull up. This morning, when I couldn’t do another push up, I found that it was my triceps that were burning the most and gave out on me. This again makes sense because lat pulls don’t work the triceps, so they’ve gotten weaker. I think my workout plan for the month of September will have to focus on getting back to the basics - push ups, squats, lat pulls, and crunches (stability ball crunches FTW) - and lots of them.

The lat pull down goal progression is 30 lbs per month. This will see the end of the year at 200 lbs. Since that is more than I currently weigh (by a whopping 5 lbs), if I can do that then I can do a pull up. Heh, that last line reminds me of a classic line from the movie Dodgeball. “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.” :)

Goal tracker page for the progression.

The Most Interesting Man In The World, post 2

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-08-30T13:55:48-05:00

I don’t always watch commercials, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis.
Keep laughing my friends.

He's been known to cure narcolepsy just by walking into a room.
His organ donor card also lists his beard.
He’s a lover, not a fighter, but he's also a fighter so don't get any ideas.
He is... the most interesting man in the world.

"I don't always drink beer, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis.
Stay thirsty my friends."

It's official - Snow Leopard on Friday!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-08-24T12:10:59-05:00

Woo hoo! The rumours were true!! Apple has officially announced today that the next version of the Mac OS X operating system, version 10.6 Snow Leopard, will be released Friday August 28, 2009. This is a little ahead of schedule, since the official release date set by Apple before this was "September 2009". No date, no indication of early, mid, or late September either. However, the rumour mill recently pegged August 28th as a likely date.

I’ve already pre-ordered the software on Apple’s site. $35CDN plus taxes for the upgrade from Leopard (i.e. Mac OS X 10.5) with free shipping. I’m really looking forward to it getting here; not sure when that will be though.

Why am I so excited when I posted on the 14th how stoked I was over Windows 7? Well, it quickly became apparent to me that I was excited over it because it was new. My opinion of it hasn’t changed - it still is a terrific upgrade to Windows and a MAJOR improvement from my Vista experience, but once the newness started to wear off I could see that it wasn’t enough to keep me from my Mac. That and the Apple touchpad drivers for Windows are really sub-par which makes interacting with Windows frustrating without an external mouse. :)

Sunshower

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-08-19T21:02:00-05:00

While the rain won’t seem to go away completely, at least now we’re getting sun with our rain. From the time I left work today until this evening when the sun set, there were sunshowers. Sometimes they were light, others (like when I left work and was walking to the bus stop) they were heavier. I took this photo and video this evening from the upstairs bedroom window at home.

Questionable Employees

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-08-18T21:54:44-05:00

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 300 employees and has the following statistics?

30 have been accused of spousal abuse.
9 have been arrested for fraud.
14 have been accused of writing bad cheques.
95 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses.
4 have done time for assault.
55 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit.
12 have been arrested on drug related charges.
4 have been arrested for shoplifting.
16 are currently defendants in lawsuits.
62 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year!

Can you guess which organization this is?

It is the 301 MP's in the Canadian Parliament! The same group that cranks out hundreds of new laws designed to keep the rest of us in line!

Which one did you vote for?

Happy Birthday Lynn!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-08-16T09:18:47-05:00

Happy Birthday Lynn! Though I’m posting this today, her actual birthday was yesterday. We had a great celebration hosted by Sean & Karen at their place, and I think a great time and great food were had by all.

I forgot to bring my camera with me, so all I have to show are these pictures taken from my cell phone. Not great, but still better than nothing. :)

Have you tried Windows 7 yet?

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-08-14T18:25:07-05:00

Some of you know that after a life of being a Mac hater, I became a Mac switcher in February 2008. For some of you, this will be news even today. :) I have to tell you, coming out of the Mac closet was very hard because of the reputation I’d built over the last 20 years of using computers. But at any rate, when I made the switch to my MacBook thanks in very large part to a problematic HP laptop and Windows Vista (pre SP1), one very important security blanket was there for me - Macs for the last few years have been built on an Intel platform and can be configured to dual boot into Windows. This means that if the Mac experiment failed (which it didn’t), I could still go back to Windows and not have the whole thing a waste of money. I could also dual boot to Windows XP to play Age of Empires III (which I haven’t actually played in quite a while - I should pick it up again).

With that background aside, have any of you tried Windows 7 yet? In May, Microsoft started offering the release candidate (i.e. still a beta version but feature complete) for Windows 7 (also referred to as RC1) for free. The catch is that March 1, 2010 it will start shutting down on you every 2 hours, and June 1, 2010 it will expire altogether. (in unison: “It will expire” ) :)

I downloaded and installed the 64-bit version for two reasons. I have 4GB of RAM in my laptop, and I believe that the world needs to make the jump to 64-bit computing. It’s going to happen sooner or later, so we might as well do it now and get the pain over with. It ran very well on my MacBook, very fast, and I really liked the improvements in Windows 7 from Windows Vista. Then I thought I should actually install something. Of course the first thing to do on a Windows computer is install anti-virus. Once I did that, all that glorious speed disappeared in a puff of smoke. I tried the free AVG Anti-Virus, then uninstalled that and tried Avast. Neither gave me a good result. I didn’t know if it was because of Windows 7 itself, being on a 64-bit platform and not fully supported, or because I was running Windows on a Mac. Either way, my user experience was going downhill. I then tried to see if Age of Empires III would run. It wouldn’t, although this again could have been because of the 64-bit environment (although it is supposed to support most 32-bit apps too). Things weren’t looking good. It went further downhill when the included Internet Explorer 8 started causing the OS to blue screen on me. Huh? Really?!? I could reproduce it, too. After a few minutes of surfing, it would blue screen. That was really lame. The Windows partition was promptly deleted and back to Mac OS X I went!

Fast forward now to a week ago. August 6 was my Dad’s birthday (Happy Birthday Dad!), and it was also the birthday of the final Windows 7 release to manufacturer (RTM). Fortunately, I have legitimate access to the RTM. The whole world wanted to get at it though, so downloading was a pain. It finally completed downloading on Friday the 7th, and because of a weekend at the cabin I didn’t get to start trying it until late Sunday the 9th. After repartitioning my MacBook using Boot Camp, I was ready to give Windows 7 (this time the final release) another go. Once again I opted for the 64-bit version for the same reasons as above. After installation (and it is more of a headache to get it installed on a Mac due to changes to the bootable DVD and some driver issues), the first thing I noticed was the wallpaper had changed from RC1. Other than that, it looked about the same.

It was fast, very fast, although I hadn’t installed anything yet at this point. However, a lot more software has been updated with Windows 7 and even 64-bit support between the time RC1 and RTM were released. With this in mind, I gave the free Avast anti-virus a whirl. Wow, this time the computer didn’t slow down at all. As visitors to my site can obviously see, I like to work on video editing. How will that go here?

I’ve been using Final Cut Express 4 (FCE) for Mac, but Adobe has Premiere Elements 7 (PE7) for the Windows environment with a free 30 day trial that I downloaded to take for a spin. I haven’t put anything up on my website here from PE7 (Sean and Karen’s wedding video was in FCE on the Mac), but over the past week I took some of the raw footage and put something together. Very nice! I had some output quality issues at first, but it was just a matter of the settings being a little different than I was used to in Final Cut.

FCE on the Mac doesn’t have Blu-Ray support, which isn’t a big deal for me now but could be nice down the road. Also, exporting to DVD on the Mac means using a separate program, iDVD, which has some very nice menus but very limited video compression settings, low and high. What this means is that the output DVD doesn’t always look as good as it could. If your video is too long for the high quality setting to fit on a DVD, then you go to the low quality setting, potentially leaving up to 2GB free on the disc and compressing your movie way more than it needs to be thus reducing the quality significantly. That is silly - why not use a more dynamic compression setting such that your video is compressed only as much as it needs to be in order to fill the entire disc?

PE7 has DVD and Blu-Ray support built-in and appears to have dynamic compression (i.e. compress only as much as necessary to fill the entire disc to get the best result possible). PE7 also fully utilizes the Intel Core 2 Duo processor when rendering whereas Final Cut Express doesn’t, thus significantly speeding up render times in my observations. There are other things about Premiere Elements 7 that I find myself liking over Final Cut Express 4, but that’s not really the point of this post. The point is that I have found a very capable equivalent for my video projects.

Internet Explorer 8 doesn’t blue screen on me anymore, which is very nice. Neither do Firefox or Google Chrome. The next thing on my list was Age of Empires III. I pretty much wrote it off as incompatible with 64-bit operating systems based on some research I had done at the time, but since everything else was so much improved since the beta version of Windows 7 I gave it a try last night. I still got the warnings when I tried to install that the game has a known incompatibility with Windows 7, but I pushed on anyway. I downloaded and installed the latest patch for the game as I had done before, but this time there was a newer patch available. I downloaded 1.12 when I was testing the beta OS in May, but now they are up to 1.13 released June 10th. This is a good sign. After the patch updating was complete, I then nervously started the game. Hey, the intro screen showed up. Okay, let’s click Play. Here are the intro videos... and I’m in! Woo hoo! I spent a bit of time tweaking the graphics settings for the best results, and it looks great on my MacBook! Okay, let’s actually play a game instead of looking at the main menu screen. I just played the short beginner’s tutorial game, but it all worked great. Yipee! :) :)

So now I can get the best of both worlds, which is great. But I have to admit that I’m really impressed with Microsoft - they really made Windows 7 a lot better than Vista was. I was so happy to get away from Vista, and Mac welcomed me with open arms. But now that Windows has improved so drastically, I’m finding myself wondering if I should switch back. Dual booting does tend to be a pain, which is likely why I eventually stopped playing Age of Empires. I’m in Mac OS X right now as I’m writing this because my website is built using Rapid Weaver (a Mac program), but when I’m done here I might just go back into Windows, play a round of Age of Empires, and not rush back into Mac OS X like I used to do in the past. Fortunately the next Mac OS X upgrade (version 10.6, called Snow Leopard) is due out in September, so I won’t have too long to wait before I can (pardon the pun) compare apples to apples and then decide. :)

Video from Sean and Karen's wedding is up

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-08-10T22:05:39-05:00

Hello,

It took longer than anticipated, but I have completed and posted the video from Sean and Karen’s wedding. Please note that because I was in the wedding party I wasn’t able to capture any video of the ceremony, only the reception and the family gathering the next day.

I hope you enjoy it. Please click here for the video, or here for the page with all videos including this one.

All fenced in

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-08-06T12:02:49-05:00

Well, we’re all fenced in now. Yesterday evening, my East neighbour and I finished up the back yard fence that we started on Monday. My West neighbour and I put up that fence a couple of months ago. Looking out the window to the yard, it sure seems smaller now. Just because it seems smaller from the window, though, doesn’t mean that it takes any less time to mow the lawn! :)

One more project checked off the massive list. Nobody ever said home ownership would be easy. It sure is rewarding, though!

Hal Anderson is leaving Power 97

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-07-31T07:58:21-05:00

Wow, this is huge news in the Winnipeg radio industry. Hal Anderson, after 14 years with Power 97, is leaving the morning show to do the morning show upstairs with CJOB, the Super Duper Station. He’s still with Corus Entertainment (Power and CJOB are part of the same company).

All the best to you Hal! I’ve never been a CJOB listener (although I do like the CJOB staff that step in on Power such as Brian Barkley for traffic and Bob “Knuckles” Irving for sports), but I’ll definitely have to check it out to see how Hal does.

MTS Allstream Announces Strategic Wireless Agreement with Rogers

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-07-28T22:22:53-05:00

It’s official - this morning we officially and publicly announced that MTS will be working with Rogers Wireless to build up our HSPA network. I still can’t speak to anything that wasn’t in the press release, but at least I can say this much. :)

Yes, we are making the move from CDMA to HSPA (i.e. the next revision of GSM). We’re still keeping CDMA around; we’ve got a great CDMA network with almost half a million customers, and we’re not going to drop them or make them all switch. I believe it will be more of a gradual phasing over from CDMA to HSPA as people’s contracts are over and they go in for hardware upgrades. The time will come when we stop selling CDMA phones and everybody will get HSPA hardware. When will that be? When will we start the cutover? Sorry folks - I don’t have all the details, and even if I did I can’t tell. :)

Here is the news release as publicly presented on the MTS website here.

MTS Allstream Announces Strategic Wireless Agreement with Rogers

Agreement Allows Cost Effective Deployment of HSPA Wireless Network; Allstream Gains Access to National Wireless Business Offering

Highlights of the agreements include:

MTS Allstream and Rogers to share costs for deployment and operation of regional HSPA network
Company gains access to Rogers' purchasing power for HSPA handsets and network equipment
Joins the most extensive GSM/HSPA roaming coverage offered in Canada and extensive roaming relationships internationally
Ability to add national Allstream-branded wireless service to business product portfolio

WINNIPEG, MB, July 28, 2009 - Manitoba Telecom Services Inc., including its principal operating subsidiary, MTS Allstream Inc. ("MTS Allstream") today announced an innovative agreement with Rogers Wireless Partnership ("Rogers") that will see both companies share the cost to deploy a Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems/High Speed Packet Access ("HSPA") wireless network across the existing MTS Allstream regional wireless footprint. The agreement also allows MTS Allstream to leverage Rogers' purchasing scope and scale to gain cost effective access to new network technology and HSPA handsets. MTS Allstream's HSPA customers will have access to the best national and international roaming capabilities as a Rogers roaming partner. The agreement also provides MTS Allstream with the opportunity to launch a national wireless business offering under the Allstream brand through a competitive wholesale arrangement.
"This announcement is a win for wireless customers in Manitoba, who will benefit from this innovative approach to investment in next generation wireless services and access to the best available national and international roaming ," said Pierre Blouin, Chief Executive Officer, MTS Allstream. "This plan was developed following a careful evaluation of our different options. Our agreement with Rogers will allow us to deploy the HSPA network in Manitoba in a cost effective manner, allowing us to maximize the effectiveness of our capital spending and accelerate plans to launch a new integrated billing platform."
Once complete the HSPA network will provide the widest available coverage in Manitoba and deliver next-generation broadband mobile services to 97% of the population. We expect the majority of the population to be covered by the end of 2010. MTS Allstream HSPA customers will roam on Rogers' national GSM/HSPA network outside of Manitoba, and have access to Rogers' international roaming arrangements. The cost to MTS Allstream for this extensive and unmatched regional HSPA network build will be up to $70 million ending in early 2011, a portion of which will be funded by our existing capital program.
In conjunction with the HSPA rollout, MTS Allstream will implement a new integrated billing platform with capability for multiple services, creating the opportunity for significant future cost savings. Wireless customers will be the first to be served over this new platform, and the cost to bring wireless customers to this platform will be approximately $40 million over the next three years.
"Wireless has been a strong growth engine for MTS Allstream, and this plan will reinforce our strength by providing our customers in Manitoba with access to enhanced wireless services in an environment where we will continue to compete vigorously with all market participants, including Rogers," said Mr. Blouin. "We are excited to be in a position to add a national wireless business service to Allstream's robust product offering in a very disciplined manner. We will be providing more details to stakeholders as we finalize our plans."
MTS Allstream plans to continue to operate its existing CDMA wireless network in Manitoba to support existing CDMA services and roaming traffic.
We believe the agreement with Rogers preserves the Company's flexibility to pursue strategic options in the future.
The agreement is subject to approval by the appropriate regulatory authorities. A Material Change Report describing all material details of the agreement has been filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators. This report will be available at www.sedar.com today
Conference Call with Investment Community MTS Allstream will be holding a conference call with the investment community to discuss its agreement with Rogers on July 28, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Investors are invited to listen to the conference call. The dial-in number is 1-800-732-0232. A live audio Webcast of the investor conference call can be accessed by visiting the Investors section of the MTS Allstream Web site (www.mtsallstream.com). A replay of the conference call will be available until midnight (Eastern time) on August 7, 2009 and can be accessed by dialing 1-877-289-8525 and enter the pass code 21312065#.
About MTS Allstream MTS Allstream is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. As one of Canada's leading national communication solutions companies, MTS Allstream provides innovative communications for the way Canadians want to live and work today. The Company has more than 100 years of experience, with 6,000 employees across Canada dedicated to a mission of delivering true value as seen through the eyes of our customers. In 2008, MTS Allstream had nearly two million total customer connections spanning business customers across Canada and residential consumers throughout the province of Manitoba. The Company's extensive national broadband and fibre optic network spans almost 30,000 kilometres. MTS Allstream is a proud sponsor of Cindy Klassen, 2006 World Champion and Canada's greatest Olympian, and a proud contributor to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Manitoba Telecom Services Inc.'s common shares are listed on The Toronto Stock Exchange (trading symbol: MBT). Customers, stakeholders and investors who want to learn more about MTS Allstream services, markets, community commitments and record of creating shareholder value are encouraged to visit: www.mtsallstream.com.
Forward-looking Statements Disclaimer This news release includes forward-looking statements and information (collectively, the "statements") about the transactions announced herein that are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions and importantly regulatory approvals. As a consequence, actual results in the future may differ materially from any conclusion, forecast or projection in such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements reflect our expectations as at July 28, 2009. Examples of statements that constitute forward-looking information may be identified by words such as "believe", "expect", "project", "should", "anticipate", "could", "target", "forecast", "intend", "plan", "outlook", "see", "set", "pending", and other similar terms. Many factors could cause anticipated opportunities and actual results to differ materially from those expected, and several material factors and assumptions were applied in drawing conclusions or making a forecast or projection set out in such forward looking statements. Except as required by law, we disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
For more information, please contact:
Media:
Greg Burch
MTS Allstream Corporate Communications
(204) 941-8576
media.relations@mtsallstream.com
Investors:
Paul Peters
MTS Allstream Investor Relations
(204) 941-6178
investor.relations@mtsallstream.com

The Most Interesting Man In The World, post 1

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-07-26T21:38:42-05:00

I’m sure you’ve seen the Dos Equis beer commercials on TV by now. They are fantastic! In fact, I like them so much that I want to try Dos Equis beer even though I hate beer. :)

Have you ever heard any of the Chuck Norris facts before? For example,

When the boogeyman goes to sleep he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.
Chuck Norris has already been to Mars; that’s why there are no signs of life there.
There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard; there is only another fist.
When Chuck Norris had surgery, the anesthesia was applied to the doctors.

These commercials follow the same idea minus the violence. This one is my personal favourite, but I will post others that I also enjoy over the next while for your enjoyment. The transcript is below.

His reputation is expanding faster than the universe.
He once had an awkward moment just to see how it feels.
He lives vicariously through himself.
He is... the most interesting man in the world.

"I don't always drink beer, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis.
Stay thirsty my friends.”

Sean & Karen's wedding pics

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-07-24T19:00:32-05:00

Hi everybody,

It took almost a week, but I’ve gone through the nearly 600 photos that Shannon and I took at Sean and Karen’s rehearsal, wedding, reception, and day-after family gathering. I’ve fixed most of the red eyes, cleared up the facial blemishes, and pared the similar shots down to leave a total of just under 400 pictures to present here. Phew!

Please enjoy! There was some video taken too, so I’ll make a montage of that footage and post it up here soon. Until then, please click here for the pics. You can also find the picture page under the Photo & Video Gallery link in the sidebar.

Follow me on Twitter

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-07-22T21:09:20-05:00

Good evening,

A couple of days ago I decided to sign up for a Twitter account. It’s not that I feel the world wants to follow my every move, not by any means! However, I needed to create an account for work because we need to start testing Twitter on the cell phones. Since it’s best if there is some activity on the account to make it more realistic I need to use it and even update it once in a while. I’m following two other Twitterers (Tweeters, Twits?) right now - Tony Robbins and Power 97 (the Winnipeg radio station). If you’d like to follow me, you can reach me at http://twitter.com/TroyDolyniuk.

Congratulations Sean and Karen!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-07-19T09:42:38-05:00

I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate my brother Sean and his new wife Karen on their beautiful wedding yesterday! We’re all so proud of and happy for you both, and we all love you both very much.

Congratulations!

Workout FAIL

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-06-30T07:26:42-05:00

Ugh, this was my worst workout test yet. 0 for 3 this time around. :( June was a month of vacation, travel, celebration, and gluttony so it’s no big surprise. July will be better!

On the weekend, I built a lat pull down station to help me build up to my first pull up. I figure this is probably the best way to go about this (doing the actual movements with the right muscles in the proper orientation). If I hadn’t kept trying to cheap out of it and just done it in January, I’d be doing pull ups by now.

Here are the results, and don’t forget to track my progress for the year on the Goal Tracker page.

June 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 11 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 60 (actual: 51)
Waist around navel: 36” (actual: 36.5” )

Canadian, eh?

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-06-29T21:00:35-05:00

CANADIAN.... Eh !

So, What Do We Canadians Have To Be Proud Of ?

1. Smarties
2. Crispy Crunch, Coffee Crisp
3. The size of our footballs fields, one less down, and bigger balls.
4. Baseball is Canadian - First game June 4, 1838 - Ingersoll , ON
5. Lacrosse is Canadian
6. Hockey is Canadian
7. Basketball is Canadian
8. Apple pie is Canadian
9. Mr. Dress-up beats Mr. Rogers
10. Tim Hortons beats Dunkin' Donuts
11. In the war of 1812, started by America , Canadians pushed the Americans back past their White House. Then we burned it, and most of Washington .. We got bored because they ran away. Then, we came home and partied........ Go figure.
12. Canada has the largest French population that never surrendered to Germany.
13. We have the largest English population that never ever surrendered or withdrew during any war to anyone, anywhere. EVER. (We got clobbered in the odd battle but prevailed in ALL the wars)
14. Our civil war was fought in a bar and lasted a little over an hour.
15. The only person who was arrested in our civil war was an American mercenary, he slept in and missed the whole thing. He showed up just in time to get caught.
16. A Canadian invented Standard Time.
17. The Hudsons Bay Company once owned over 10% of the earth's surface and is still around as the world's oldest company.
18. The average dog sled team can kill and devour a full grown human in under 3 minutes. (That's more information than I need!)
19. We know what to do with the parts of a buffalo.
20. We don't marry our kin-folk (except maybe for Riders fans :) ).
21. We invented ski-doos, jet-skis, Velcro, zippers, insulin, penicillin, zambonis and the telephone. Also short wave radios that save countless lives each year.
22. We ALL have frozen our tongues to something metal and lived to tell about it.
23. A Canadian invented Superman.
24. We have coloured money.
25. Our beer advertisements kick ass {Incidently...so does our beer}

BUT MOST IMPORTANT !

The handles on our beer cases are big enough to fit your hands with mitts on.

OOOoohhhhh.... Canada !!

Oh yeah... And our elections only take one day.

There is no such thing as a genetic epidemic

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-06-11T15:30:08-05:00

Here is a handout I picked up from my Chiropractor’s office (Dr. Dan Timmerman at Lindenwoods Chiropractic) a while ago. I found it interesting and thought I’d share it with you.

There is no such thing as a genetic epidemic

Epidemiologists (scientists who study the incidence and occurrences of disease) agree on one thing - there is no such thing as a genetic epidemic.

An epidemic is when a certain disease rate within a population surges above normal rates. The most famous examples are the plagues of the dark ages or the flu of 1918.

What epidemiologists have found is that disorders with a true genetic cause such as Down Syndrome, Tay-Sachs, etc... have a common rate over history. In other words, the rates at which people are stricken stays within a normal, narrow range.

So why are we to believe that diseases whose rates are skyrocketing in the new millennium are due to genetics? Autism, cancer, heart disease, even diabetes and obesity are being blamed on our parents! Not sure why you have cancer? Must be bad genes. Depressed? Bad genes. Heart disease? Bad genes. Diabetes? It wasn’t your lifestyle; it must have been bad genes. The reality is that whenever the medical community has no answers, it blames your genes.

The real answers are coming out. The Canadian Cancer Society admits that a vast majority of cancers is caused by lifestyle. Smoking, bad fats, even the known carcinogens in our water and personal care products are causing tumours to grow. A report released by the Breast Cancer Fund (http://www.breastcancerfund.org) found that there is strong evidence that the chemicals in our lotions, soaps, and shampoos are causing the increased cancer rates in men, women, and children.

There is plenty you can do to avoid lifestyle diseases. Here’s a list:

Change bad fats to good fats in your diet
Cut out sugar and white flour
Quit smoking
Exercise! Do something - anything!
Change to personal care products that are chemical free (http://www.chooseorganics.com)
Get adjusted to boost your immune system and overall level of health

Getting better, still not on track yet

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-05-31T09:35:22-05:00

Good morning!

I just completed my fitness test today, and I must say that all things considered, I’m happy with the results.

May 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 9 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 50 (actual: 50)
Waist around navel: 36.5” (actual: 36” )

Pull ups are of course a big fat zero, but I barely managed to squeeze out 50 pushups (wow, that was HARD!!!) and have been able to catch up and get ahead of the curve again in my waist measurement. The reason I’m happy about this is because I only actually worked out for the first half of the month and then stopped because of spreading of soil and laying sod for a few days. I was so sore (and sunburned) that I physically couldn’t work out for those days and then a few days after. That was fine and a good reason, but of course not working out for a week makes it really hard to get back on the wagon again. :( So, that’s why I’m happy - I was able to get back on track (pull ups excluded) despite not having worked out for half of this month.

I like the new workout plan. It’s a big step up in terms of intensity, and when I was doing it I saw some significant gains in a short period of time, so I think June has some real potential. June will see me travelling on vacation for 8 days so there will still be a period of no workouts, but if I’m disciplined for the remaining 22 days and can fit in some basic bodyweight exercises in the hotel room each morning then I should be good for June 30th.

As always, the Goal Tracker page is where you can see my progress from the beginning and my goals for the rest of the year.

Time to change up the workout routine

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-04-30T06:00:55-05:00

Well, this was a disappointing end of month test. The push ups were a real struggle, the pull ups are still of course a disaster, and I missed the goal for the first time on my waistline measurement.

I’ve got big things in store for May, though. I’m really going to clean up my diet a lot by removing all the processed foods and simple sugars, and replace them with lots of healthy veggies, nuts, seeds, and meats. The SAD (Standard [North] American Diet) turns our bodies into sugar burners. That is to say that our bodies don’t know how to burn fat for energy because we don’t have to - we’re inundated with sugars to burn. That leads to all sorts badness. Removing the processed foods and simple sugars will cause our bodies to become more sensitized to the hormones in our bodies and then burn fat for energy like we’re supposed to. It will be an interesting 30 day experiment. If the results are good, I’ll let you know. If the results aren’t so good, I’ll still stick it out for the 30 days to give it a fair shake.

Here are my dismal numbers for April. Remember to check the Goal Tracker page to see my progress from the beginning.

April 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 7 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 40 (actual: 40)
Waist around navel: 37” (actual: 37.5” )

What a way to find out!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-04-20T21:28:24-05:00

Here is an excerpt from a news article. I’m not sure if it is true, but it’s an amusing read!

Paid to do it, but fails to make his friend’s wife pregnant after 72 attempts

In Stuttgart, Germany, a court judge must decide on a case of honourable intentions in a situation where a man hired his neighbour to get his wife pregnant. It seems that Demetrius Soupolos, 29, and his former beauty queen wife, Traute, wanted a child badly, but Demetrius was told by a doctor that he was sterile.

So Soupolos, after calming his wife’s protests, hired his neighbour, Frank Maus, 34, to impregnate her. Since Maus was already married and the father of two children, plus looked very much like Soupolos to boot, the plan seemed good.

Soupolos paid Maus $2500 for the job and for three evenings a week for the next six months, Maus tried desperately, a total of 72 different times, to impregnate Traute. When his own wife objected, he explained, “I don’t like this any more than you. I’m simply doing it for the money. Try and understand.”

When Traute failed to get pregnant after six months, however, Soupolos was not understanding and insisted that Maus have a medical examination, which he did. The doctor’s announcement that Maus was also sterile shocked everyone except his wife, who was forced to confess that Maus was not the real father of their two children.

Now Soupolos is suing Maus for breach of contract in an effort to get his money back, but Maus refuses to give it up because he said he did not guarantee conception, but only that he would give an honest effort.

The Box Office

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-04-07T20:01:53-05:00

While the C-5 was turning over its engines, a female crewman gave the G.I.s on board the usual information regarding seat belts, emergency exits, etc.

Finally, she said, 'Now sit back and enjoy your trip while your captain, Judith Campbell, and crew take you safely to Afghanistan.'

An old MSgt. sitting in the eighth row thought to himself, 'Did I hear her right? Is the captain a woman?'

When the attendant came by he said 'Did I understand you right? Is the captain a woman?'

'Yes,'! said the attendant, 'In fact, this entire crew is female.'

'My God,' he said, 'I wish I had two double scotch and sodas. I don't know what to think with only women up there in the cockpit.'

'That's another thing, Sergeant,' said the crew member, 'We No Longer Call It The Cockpit'

'It's The Box Office.'

Holiday Mountain video!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-04-05T17:19:15-05:00

Hi everybody,

On March 29th, a bunch of us took advantage of the unexpected dump of snow and went out to Holiday Mountain for one last trip out on the hills. As I mentioned previously, I rented ski boards (aka snow blades) and I really had a blast! I think I’m converted from snowboarding to skiboarding, or at least have both of them in my arsenal. The learning curve was very brief, I had a lot of fun, they are so much more convenient than snowboards, and I didn’t suffer my usual injuries whenever I head out to the snow hills! :)

It is so convenient to be able to move around at the top and bottom of the hill without having to take one foot out of the binding, then strap back up again, then back out, etc. for the day. Moving around is like ice skating. It’s a bit awkward at first (my rentals from Gord’s were probably about 80cm long - Ryan’s are 99.9cm long), but I quickly adapted.

We didn’t have many regulars out, but that’s okay because Dan brought his friend Luke, Adrian brought his friends Mike, Armando, and Lucas, and we met Salar and Yashar on the hill and hung out all day and even had lunch together too. Salar is the guy with the light coloured jacket on the snowboard getting crazy height on jumps in the video!

Anyway, here is the video page - enjoy!

March fitness update

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-03-31T06:11:55-05:00

Wow, I’ve got to admit I’m pretty surprised with this month’s workout test results. For one reason or another, I ended up missing almost the entire second half of March’s workouts. I still felt okay going into the pushups, but I thought I’d go over on the waist measurement and was really banking on the fact that I had built up some extra breathing room in January and February. Well, not only did my waistline not expand, I still managed to keep the 3/4” loss per month trend alive! :)

Obviously, the pull ups were a complete bust. :( I’ve got yet some other new ideas to get the pullups going, though. Sheesh, this is taking way too long, but I’m sure that once I get one the others will come along nicely. Fortunately Ryan is still at 4, so if I can get it going he’s still not completely out of striking range. :)

See the Goal Tracker page for the details on the March results.

Why I'm happy about the blizzard

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-03-25T19:55:14-05:00

Woo hoo!!! Although I thought that my perfectly melted driveway and temps well above zero meant that I was done shovelling for the year, it also had the sad distinction of me thinking the snow hills were also done for the year. But alas, I was wrong! Yay snow! Yay one more trip to Holiday Mountain on Sunday! :)

I’m also excited because I’m going to try something different. I’m going to rent a pair of skiboards (also referred to as Snow Blades - Snow Blades is to skiboards what Kleenex is to facial tissue) and try that instead of snowboarding this weekend. My friend Ryan has a pair and absolutely loves them, so it’s a good opportunity for me to try it out. Plus, the vast majority of my snowboarding injuries this year (actually, every year) stem from having to take one foot out of the binding to navigate the chair lift and therefore not being completely stable when getting off the lift. I can handle pretty much anything going down the hill without injury (that’s not to say that I’m good at it, just that I can keep it under control and not get hurt), but it’s that chair lift that gets me every time. Not having to worry about that will be nice and allow for an injury free end to the season. This is nice, because I thought my end to the season was with that nasty freak knee injury where I couldn’t even drive my car home after Asessippi.

Three cheers for the snow! :) :) :)

Alas, not all the snow today was good. To the idiot who rear ended my brother’s car while he was stopped at a stop sign waiting for a pedestrian to cross safely - WHAT THE @#$% WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?! Fortunately nobody got hurt, but please, people, don’t follow so closely when the intersections are all polished and/or snow covered sheets of ice!!!

It's Spring!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-03-20T15:31:02-05:00

Happy Spring everybody!!! For your enjoyment, I present the classic spring poem:

Spring has sprung, the grass has riz,
I wonder where the birdie is.

There he is up in the sky,
He dropped some whitewash in my eye!

I’m alright, I won’t cry,
I’m just glad that cows can’t fly!

In love with my cell phone?

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-03-17T19:51:48-05:00

Dilbert has fallen in love with his cell phone.

Weight workouts increase bone density

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-03-15T15:43:36-05:00

Hello,

Here is another newsletter from Mike Geary from TruthAboutAbs.com. I can vouch that bone density is a great benefit. Mike’s example is rather similar to my own from the Asessippi trip. After a poor dismount from the chairlift, I fell and landed with a lot of weight on my free leg which in turn caused my shin to meet the metal edge of my board head on. Ouch! While not as severe an impact as Mike’s impact, it was still a bad one and proves that bone density is very important.

Make sure to click the link to read more, and enjoy!

...and good-bye Daddy

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-03-10T18:49:06-05:00

A father put his 3 year old daughter to bed, told her a story & listened to her prayers which ended by saying: "God bless Mommy, God bless Daddy, God bless Grandma & good-bye Grandpa."

The father asked, "Why did you say good-bye grandpa?" The little girl said, "I don't know daddy, it just seemed like the thing to do." The next day grandpa died. The father thought it was a strange coincidence.

A few months later the father put the girl to bed & listened to her prayers which went like this: "God bless Mommy, God Bless Daddy & good-bye Grandma" The next day the grandmother died. Oh my gosh thought the father, this kid is in contact with the other side. Several weeks later when the girl was going to bed the dad heard Her say: "God bless Mommy & good-bye Daddy."

He practically went into shock. He couldn't sleep all night & got up at the crack of dawn to go to his office. He was nervous as a cat all day, had lunch & watched the clock. He figured if he could get by until midnight he would be okay. He felt safe in the office, so instead of going home at the end of the day he stayed there, drinking coffee, looking at his watch & jumping at every sound. Finally midnight arrived, he breathed a sigh of relief & went home.

When he got home his wife said, "I've never seen you work so late, what's the matter?"

He said, "I don't want to talk about it, I've just spent the worst day of my life."

She said, "You think you had a bad day, you'll never believe what happened to me. This morning, Ben, my golf pro of four years dropped dead in the middle of my lesson!"

My dilemma

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-03-07T22:15:02-06:00

What, you may ask, is my dilemma? Well, it’s pretty simple actually. How can I make more of a difference?

I have a great career with MTS right now. My work is interesting, I get to play with new toys, I work with great people, and the pay is great. When I worked in computer sales, though, I got to interact with lots of new people every day. Although it terrified me at first when I started at Compucentre 13 years ago, I find I’m missing that now. Furthermore, I don’t really go home at the end of the day and feel like I really made a contribution to society or a difference in people’s lives.

Okay, thinking how that sounds, let me make this clear. I’m not looking for a career change! :) What I am thinking about is a way to supplement it through some sort of extra-curricular activity. I guess that is why people volunteer. Well, this brings me to my dilemma...

What do I do?

There are countless possibilities, and that’s part of the problem. I hope you stay with me on this journey as I try to answer the question.

February fitness update

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-02-28T11:30:08-06:00

Good morning,

Here is my February health update. Again, I’m only two out of three. :( I really need to step up my game on the pull ups, especially since my friend Ryan and I are in friendly competition and he’s already at four. To be fair, he started off already able to do two at the beginning of January and I’m still struggling for my first one, but that’s no excuse. I need to catch up and beat him to 23 on December 31st! :)

I found this YouTube video which shows you how to build up to pull ups. The methods I was using are on the right track, but this is a little more structured and graduated to help build up strength. I’m going to follow this for the month of March to get my first pull up. Ryan - you’re not allowed to watch. In fact, I think there’s a fresh batch of doughnuts at Tim Horton’s with your name on it... :)

A very positive thing, though, is that part of my goal is to lose 1/2” around my waist at the navel every month. So far, January and February have both been 3/4” drops, which is fantastic! I’m very happy about that, and the push ups are coming along well too going down to a 90 degree bend at the elbows.

Check the goal tracker log for the details. Have a great weekend!

Asessippi 2009 video

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-02-15T16:42:54-06:00

It’s finally here! The Asessippi 2009 video you’ve all been waiting for. :)

I actually had the video finished yesterday morning, but since then I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to deliver it to you. I set the video to music rather than the whooshing on the snow which makes it much more engaging and enjoyable. However, I’ve noticed quite a few videos on YouTube lately that have had the entire audio track stripped from the video because of copyright violations. I do legally own the music I used in the video, but I didn’t want to chance any problems from YouTube with my video here so I’m hosting it on my site. This also gives me the ability to put it in QuickTime format which I find to be better quality than YouTube.

The video is 7:01 long. I hope you enjoy it! --> Asessippi 2009 video <--

Asessippi update & pics

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-02-10T18:35:41-06:00

First, an injury update. It turns out that Lynn also had her legs pinched under the chairlift while mounting, also skied into the trees, and fell on her hip in the parking lot in regular boots but fortunately while still wearing her helmet. I think we may have a new winner in the most-beat-up department. :)

I’ve got the photos page up here. It’s also accessible from the Photo & Video Gallery to have easy access any time you come back, not just from this particular blog entry. Check back for the videos. To make a proper montage will take a bit of time, but I hope it won’t be too long.

Until then, enjoy the pics! :)

Weekend at Asessippi

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-02-09T12:00:37-06:00

Wow, Asessippi was a blast!

Eleven of us went out to Asessippi for the weekend for some great snowboarding, skiing, and tubing. Most even got away injury free! :) There was nothing serious, fortunately. You have to expect bumps and bruises on such a trip. In terms of physical injury, I think I had it the worst with a bad dismount off the chair lift causing a massive encounter of my shin and the metal edge of my snowboard on Saturday followed by a knee injury on Sunday 30 minutes before it was time to get off the hill to return to Winnipeg. I couldn’t even drive my car home - Paul had to drive for me (thanks Paul!) because it was my clutch knee. Fortunately both were on the same leg so I can still hobble around on my right leg. I’m also glad I booked today off of work to recover! Despite the ouchies, I’d do it again in a second. Well, okay, after I heal then I’d do it in a second. :)

I wasn’t alone, though. Shannon and Andrea both ended up in the trees, Shannon and Karen had their legs pinched under the chair lift while getting on, and Ryan had a nasty fall on his hip while also landing on a clasp or something on his jacket making the hard hip landing that much worse. There may have been others, but that’s what I know about for now.

We stayed at Hank’s Hideaway, a great cabin with a hot tub about 10 minutes from the hill. If you ever go to Asessippi, I strongly recommend Hank’s Hideaway!

I’ve got lots of pictures and video that I’ll be putting up shortly. The pictures should be fairly soon, but the video will be a bit longer. I want to make more of a montage set to music this time.

Stay tuned for more!

Two outta three ain't bad

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-01-31T07:40:57-06:00

Today is the big day - my first goal check. How did I do? Not bad, as the post title indicates. The results:

January 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 1 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 10 (actual: 10)
Waist around navel: 38.5” (actual: 38.25” )

I’m pretty happy with the results overall. I wasn’t worried about the pushups (in fact I could have squeezed a couple more out), I wasn’t sure what to expect with the waist and am very happy with it, but the pullups were a real disappointment. Based on my pullup negatives training over the month of January, especially as the month was drawing to an end, I wasn’t surprised by the zero, but I thought I’d still be able to pull about halfway up. What I was surprised by was the fact that I could barely budge upwards at all, maybe a centimetre tops. :(

Clearly I need to do more research on how to best improve my non-existant pullups! I knew the first one would be really hard but it should get easier after that. That’s why I only set the goal of one for the first month but two for each month thereafter. Now I have to go from 0 to 3 in the shortest month of the year - yikes!

Canada's Budget - 2009

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-01-28T21:56:24-06:00

Good evening,

Below is the text of Jim Flaherty's Canadian Federal Budget for 2009. I don't approve of the deficit, that's for sure. The world got into trouble by spending money they don't have - a deficit won't necessarily make things better. Flaherty's justification that we'll still have the lowest debt load of all the G7 countries doesn't make it right.

For example, suppose you have seven factories spewing all sorts of toxic chemicals into the water, poisoning the fish and contaminating the drinking water. One of the factory owners says, "Yes, we're poisoning the fish we eat and the water we drink, but at least we're not doing it as much as the other six factories." Technically, it is better than the other factories, but that still doesn't make it right - you shouldn't be doing it at all. Now, keep in mind I'm not an economist - I'm an engineer. A good engineer makes the best out of the resources that are available, and having to go in debt means using resources that aren't available. Clearly, this doesn't sit well with me.

Despite that, I do think there is a lot of good stuff in there. If we've got to take Canada further into debt (yikes - I really hate to make that concession), at least there are some good projects that will come out of it.

Here it is - the text of the Budget 2009 speech:

Kids say (write) the darndest things

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-01-25T09:07:18-06:00

A class of third grade students was given a random sticker and told to write a story about the picture on that sticker. This is one of those stories...

From the stupid criminal files

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-01-21T21:03:41-06:00

I couldn't help but laugh at this. I saw it in The Winnipeg Free Press, but it was from The Canadian Press so I imagine it's everywhere. I’m not sure if it’s a stupid criminal so much as a really unlucky one, but either way it’s good for a laugh!

Playing with iMovie

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-01-18T09:49:41-06:00

Good morning!

I was involved in a small movie making project at work recently, and I found it to be really interesting and a lot of fun. Although I only saw a small portion of the video editing to make the final clip, it also looked like it was fun to do. Now, he was using professional level software (Final Cut Pro), but there are many other tools you can use for beginners like myself.

I have iMovie ’08 on my computer, but I’ve never used it. Well, I finally blew the proverbial dust off the program and gave it a go. I used the videos I had taken from the Holiday Mountain trip on January 2nd and combined them along with a title, credits, and probably more transition variations than you’d actually use. :)

For your enjoyment, I present a 5 minute video showcasing the snowboarding trip.

Manitoba is way ahead of the game

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-01-13T19:21:41-06:00

Being a wireless guy for the Manitoba telco, I have to share this!

After having dug to a depth of 10 meters last year, Ontario scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 100 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 100 years ago.

Not to be outdone by the Ontarian workers, in the weeks that followed, Alberta scientists dug to a depth of 20 meters, and shortly after, headlines in the Calgary Post newspaper read: "Albertan archaeologists have found traces of 200 year old copper wire and have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network a hundred years earlier than the Ontarians."

One week later, the "The Russell Banner" a local newspaper in Manitoba reported the following:

After digging as deep as 30 meters in canola fields near Russell, MB., a self-taught archaeologist reported that he found absolutely nothing. He has therefore concluded that 300 years ago, Manitoba had already gone wireless."

New - Goal Tracker page

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-01-07T19:57:11-06:00

Good evening!

I’ve created a Goal Tracker page to... keep track of... my goals... :)
(Imagine Austin Powers saying that as though he was saying “Allow myself to introduce... myself.” )

That is where I will be keeping score on the aggressive health and fitness goals I’ve set for myself for 2009. I’m sure people will say to me “You want to lose six inches? Why? You’re not overweight!” I’ve had people tell me things along those lines before when I mentioned in the past that I’d like to shed some pounds. I think the reason for that is because compared to many, dare I say even compared to most, I am of average (or even below) weight for men my height (and proportionally for men taller and shorter). While that is well and good, that doesn’t mean that I’m in the best shape I can be.

Snowboarding videos updated

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-01-03T15:29:02-06:00

Hi,

After testing the videos live this morning after they uploaded to my web host last night, I realized that it really hurts the user experience when you have to wait for a couple of hundred megabytes of data to download before watching the videos. It was late last night when I posted them and I was tired from a day on the hill, so my brain wasn’t altogether there. If you didn’t try it between last night and now, trust me - it’s much better this way! :)

Also, if you’re familiar with YouTube videos, often you’ll now see a link under the video that says “Watch in high quality”. I was able to figure out how to embed the high quality flag in the videos below, which is nice because they default to low quality and the user can’t change the setting when the video is embedded in another page like I’ve done here.

Holiday Mountain pictures
Holiday Mountain videos

Snowboarding at Holiday Mountain

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-01-02T21:12:31-06:00

Well, it took a while, but we (Sean, Dan, Adrian, Ryan, and I) finally made it out for our first snowboarding/skiing trip of the season. We tried to make it out to Springhill a couple of times, but being right on the floodway they are more sensitive to the wind chill and so they were closed down on those days. Today, we planned ahead and got an early start for the drive to Holiday Mountain in La Riviere, Manitoba.

We had a great time, the weather was nice (mid -20s Celsius), we all worked on our jumps, and while there were some spills, nobody got hurt. :D

Pictures and Videos from the day

Happy New Year!!!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2009-01-01T12:03:44-06:00

Happy New Year!!!

I wish everybody all the best in 2009, and hope that all your goals and dreams come true. If you set goals or resolutions, make sure they are SMART goals:

Specific (well defined)
Measurable (can track progress and define completion)
Agreed upon (if it involves more than you)
Realistic (within your means, resources, laws of physics :) )
Time based (enough time to complete goal but not so much that it is forgotten about until the end)

With this in mind, here are some of my goals for 2009.

Are your taste buds keeping you overweight?

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-12-30T20:04:11-06:00

Hi,

Here’s another newsletter from Mike Geary. I’m guilty of this myself, in fact I scored rather poorly on the short quiz, although I’ve been working hard to overcome it.

Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!!!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-12-27T16:35:48-06:00

Merry Christmas everybody!!!

I realize this posting is two days late, but it’s the holiday season and I’m happy to say that I spent more time with family and friends than my computer over the last couple of days. I think that makes it alright! :)

Eat anything at parties and still stay in shape

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-12-21T17:05:06-06:00

There is an email newsletter that I subscribe to from Mike Geary at TruthAboutAbs.com. His advice really makes sense to me and agrees with a lot of what I believe about health and nutrition.

Here is a recent newsletter. Every newsletter says at the bottom to feel free to forward it on to friends and family, so I assume it's okay to post it here too as long as I do so in its entirety. Enjoy

What every Ukrainian kid wants for Christmas!!!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-12-18T20:11:29-06:00

To all my fellow Ukrainians out there, I present the ultimate gift this Christmas:

Accordion Hero
Nothing has ever kicked more ass.

All puns intended!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-12-13T10:39:41-06:00

Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent!

A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.

Pain of a married man

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-12-11T20:33:56-06:00

A woman awakes during the night to find that her husband was not in bed. She goes downstairs to look for him. She finds him sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of him.

He appears to be in deep thought, just staring at the wall. She watches as he wipes a tear from his eye and takes a sip of his coffee.

"What's the matter, dear?" she whispers as she steps into the room. "Why are you down here at this time of night?"

The husband looks up from his coffee, "Do you remember 20 years ago when we were dating, and you were only 18?" he asks solemnly. "Yes I do." she replies.

The husband pauses; the words were not coming easily.

"Do you remember when your father caught us in the garden?"

"Yes, I remember." said the wife, lowering herself into a chair beside him.

The husband continued, "Do you remember when he shoved the shotgun in my face and said, 'Either you marry my daughter or I'll send you to jail for 20 years?'"

"I remember that too." she replied softly.

He wiped another tear from his cheek and said, "I would have been released today!"

It really was Black Friday

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-11-30T17:13:08-06:00

What is wrong with people these days? Have you heard of the Wal-Mart employee in the US who was literally trampled to death in a stampede of shoppers bursting into the store as it opened at 5:00am on Friday November 28th? Thanksgiving in the US falls on the fourth Thursday of November, and the Friday after that is known as Black Friday. Black Friday is, apparently, one of if not the largest shopping day of the year (similar to Boxing Day in Canada - the day after Christmas). Black Friday usually has stores opening up early and having huge sales.

Captain James T. Kirk

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-11-05T22:10:11-06:00

Hahaha! This is so funny!

Let me say that I do like Star Trek, including William Shatner and Captain Kirk. That said, this picture is too funny to pass up. It looks like it's based on those inspirational posters you see here and there with a scenic photograph and inspirational quote beneath it. Except this is less than inspirational.

My apologies go out to my brother - I'm sorry Sean!!! :)

Captain James T. Kirk
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.

Bring on the snow!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-11-03T22:48:22-06:00

It's sad to say it, but summer in Winnipeg is over. Although today was a very nice day and tomorrow should be too, there's snow in the forecast. That means that it's time to change the summer tires over to the winter tires. Shannon and I both have the same type of tire - Nokian Hakkapeliitta RSi. They are excellent winter tires and served us extremely well last winter. In fact, this year my brother picked up a set of the new-and-improved Nokian Hakkapeliitta R tires this year due at least in part (I like to think) to our recommendation. :)

National Post excerpt - Dr. Doom Forecasts Depression

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-10-30T20:03:54-05:00

Here is an interesting excerpt from a National Post online article. The article is from October 27, 2008, and can be found in its entirety here: http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=911549

It is an interesting viewpoint from Peter D. Schiff (known as Dr. Doom) who thinks the U.S. government should just leave well enough alone and let the market correct itself. I personally agree with this. If the government won't bail out individuals losing their homes, why should they bail out the huge corporations and seven-figure income CEOs?

FP refers to Financial Post - the financial section of the National Post. Enjoy!

Separating BES emails from the rest on your BlackBerry

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-10-22T21:29:20-05:00

It is true, I love my MTS BlackBerry Curve 8330 very much. I'm not sure if it's something I would have originally paid for on my own, but since I get one free from work it allowed me to try it out and incorporate it into my life. Now I'm completely hooked and if I left MTS tomorrow, I'd have to go out and buy one for myself. Which is really high praise since I really love the iPhone and want one of those too, but I think I love the BlackBerry just a little bit more. ;)

I'm obviously not a Conservative - so what am I?

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-10-19T16:58:17-05:00

I think it's pretty clear that I'm not a Conservative supporter, so who do I support? I really liked the Green platform - they are NOT a one trick pony contrary to popular belief. I think Elizabeth May is a very charismatic woman and is not afraid to do what's best for her country. Therefore I voted Liberal. (Cue needle scratching on a record player sound.) Huh? Well, I really really really wanted to vote Green, but I couldn't in my riding. Sure, there was a Green candidate in my riding, but last election Rod Bruinooge, the Conservative MP and candidate in my riding of Winnipeg South, beat out the Liberals by only 111 votes. Yikes, that's close! So, while I wanted to vote Green, voting Liberal was the best chance to take away that blue seat. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Bruinooge ended up beating the Liberal candidate by 5,835 votes this time around. I should have voted Green to lend my support, but hindsight is of course 20/20. My reasons for voting Liberal were sound. Sorry David Cosby! Sorry Elizabeth May! Better luck next time!

What is wrong with Canada's electoral system

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-10-18T18:10:39-05:00

Okay, it's been a few days and I've calmed down a lot after the election, but I did want to get this out so here goes. But first, I must take this opportunity to bash Harper one more time. :) Stephen Harper has announced a six point plan for the economy. That's all well and good; why did he announce it the DAY AFTER THE ELECTION?!?!?!? That guy really makes me uneasy. I agree with the conspiracy theorists that say that Harper has some kind of nasty radical plan that he's keeping quiet until he can unleash it on us. But alas, that is not the point of today's pos

Well that wasn't worth nine bucks!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-10-15T20:44:14-05:00

It's finally over. After five weeks of campaigning, the Canadian federal election has come to pass. What has changed? Nothing! It was a huge waste of time and money, and everybody knew this going in. The only good that could have come out of this election (and I really really really hoped it would) was if Elizabeth May (the leader of the Green Party) had won her seat in Central Nova. It would have been great to have her voice in Parliament! She struggled with a language barrier in the French debate, but really shone in the English debate.

Figured out the screwy post order!!!

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-10-13T14:11:34-05:00

Okay, I've finally figured it out! :)

The post order was messed up because of the time zone setting. I wrote the first post to welcome my blog to the world, and then I started configuring my WordPress installation - including little things like the time zone. By changing the time zone from UTC to -5, that impacted all future posts, but not any past posts. Therefore, the system was behaving as though I had written the first post five hours into the future. I figured out that you can change the date and time a post was published, so by subtracting five hours everything is in line again.

Phew! :)

Goodbye to posting via email

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-10-13T13:27:02-05:00

Well, after thinking about it, I've decided to remove the posting via email feature from my site. Anywhere that I can send an email, I can also post directly using the web interface, so it really only bought me geeky coolness and no actual functionality. The only slight exception is that I could have sent emails using my MTS BlackBerry, but do I really need to be able to update my blog no matter where I am at any time? In the words of Dr. Evil:

How about no, Scott. :)

If I just can't live without jotting down my thoughts for ~~my massive readership~~ posterity, I can always type it up on my BlackBerry and email it to myself, then post it when I'm at a computer.

You know, blogging is kinda fun when I let myself go free.

Why is my post order screwy?

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-10-13T11:34:17-05:00

This is peculiar... My post order for the first three entries is wrong. At the top is the first post I wrote using the web interface, then it's the second email test post, then finally the first email test post. I thought blogs generally sorted with the newest post on top. So, why is the oldest post on top, followed by the newest post, followed by the middle post last? Bizarre.

This post is simply to see where it ends up in the list.

Another email test post

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-10-13T11:22:03-05:00

Well, it took me a while but I figured out how to get the emailed posts to display. You have to manually browse to /wp-mail.php in order for them to be processed. That's not very convenient! There are some automated ways around this, though. What I've done is set up a cron job on my web server to run every five minutes to basically hit that page for me. We'll see if it works. Of course the five minute interval just passed, so now I have to wait four more minutes. ;)

Test post from email

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-10-13T10:23:43-05:00

Hi there,

This is simply a test post. WordPress has a cool feature where you can post by email. Here's how it works. Create a private email account that only you know about. Since I own and manage my own domain, that's very easy for me to do. If you don't manage your own domain you could see if your internet service provider (ISP) allows you to create new email accounts. You could probably also set up a Gmail account with POP enabled, but I haven't tested that (no need to in my case). At any rate, once you have this email account, you configure WordPress to log into this account to check the mail there. Anything that gets sent to this private mailbox will get posted on the blog. Pretty cool, huh? :)

That's it for now.
Later!

A blog for Troy - Take II

troy@troydolyniuk.com — 2008-10-13T09:29:38-05:00

Good morning!

This is my second attempt at a blog. I think that the first attempt failed because I wasn't sure what I wanted to put up there, so then it stagnated as a result. Do I know what I want to do now? Not exactly, but I've got some ideas. I think trying to limit myself to only discuss certain things within a very narrow category was the problem. This time around, I'm going to place no restrictions on it. Why should I? After all, this is my blog! :)

As it stands right now, there is only the default theme selected. This will of course be changed in short order. I will also change the layout. One thing that kept me away from running my site using blogging software as opposed to some other types of content management systems (CMS) is that I didn't think you could do static pages well. As it turns out, I'm wrong. I saw some sites/blogs using WordPress that also had many different static pages. I liked that! For example, if I want a section for photos, I'd like them all to be gathered together. Maybe for something like that I'll find that having post categories won't be good enough. Then again, maybe it will. Who knows - this is all part of the unrestricted blogging clause I have for myself.

Well, that's it for now. I'm off to play around with the layout, theme, etc. Later!