From the “it’s like a ghost town here” dept.

Hey folks,

Just and Update on things:

• Flo’s B-day in Collingwood – Went up to Bluemountain to play a full game of golf and celebrate Flo’s B-day. Interesting Fact: There are actually 5 oceans in the world – Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Southern. The Southern Ocean is actually new. It was “created” in the summer of 2000 by the International Hydrographic Organization. The Southern Ocean extends from the coast of Antarctica north to 60 degrees south latitude, which coincides with the Antarctic Treaty Limit. First I’ve heard of it….
• Trip to New York – Jen and I took a 5 day vacation to see our friends Lynn and Cort in NYC / New Jersey. We had a great time. We did a lot of things, saw a lot of the city. Some highlights include:
  • Yankees game (they won)
  • La Bohemme on Broadway
  • Natural History Museum
  • Planetarium
  • Matrix Reloaded
  • Shopping at Jersey Gardens (an outlet mall)
• Performance Review at OnX.com – My performance review was very positive. I even managed to get a raise: 3%. Oh well, at least I managed to stay ahead of inflation. I am very pleased though. During the all-hands, company meeting, they told us that no one is getting a raise this year. This means that:
  1. I am doing a kick ass job, or
  2. I am grossly underpaid.

  I liked Eric’s response:

  “Well, now you’re just mildly underpaid…”

• Still working on the site – I tweaked my stylesheet last weekend. I’m almost done.
• Getting healthy – I’ve been trying to get back into shape. However, when Jen finally came back from Vancouver, it really threw my schedule into a loop. I was getting into a really good pattern for working out, but with Jen being back, I found myself spending all my free time with her. Now that Jen is working in Ottawa for Canada Post, I can start working out again. Yesterday was a good strength training session. Today I ran 3.25 Km.

So Jen saw the Italian Job tonight with Kev and Vi. Apparently it was really good.

Jen bought me a cool book: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. It’s an interesting premise. Leonardo Da Vinci has placed a series of codes and ciphers in his works of art. The main protagonist must solve the code + fend off hostile attacks from a “secret society”. Interesting premise. It actually has cipher built into it’s book jacket. When I was reading the front and rear jacket, I noticed that certain letters in the front and back leaflets were bolded. When I added them up, I got the cryptic message:

“Is there no help for the Widows Son”

. If you google for this term, you’ll get results about the links between Mormonism and the secret society of the Free Masons. Specifically with the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. I think that this will be the subject of the author’s next book. The book’w website has a nice scavenger hunt with some very simple puzzles. Quite a nice touch. The best thing about the book is the research that the author does. Very similar to some of the “Gabriel Knight Mystery” Games. I like the references to one of the coolest unsolved mysteries of our time: Rennes Le Chateau.

I’m heading to bed. Night all.

-T