Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everybody!

Wow, I wonder if anyone even looks at this anymore?

Microsoft i'm initiative

So I have found an amazing new thing from Microsoft called the i'm initiative. Basically, if you put a tag in your MSN messenger name, they will put some money towards the charity of your choice. Wow! This sounds exactly like a common chain letter, except that it's coming off of the Microsoft site! You can find out more about it here:



Myself, I have chosen to help out refugees around the world. Evelyn has chosen to help stop global warming. Now, the requirements for this are basically for you to have MSN Messenger 8.1 (free) and to put the tag in your name (also free).
Reasons to NOT do this:
1. You feel like this isn't going to matter.
2. You don't know how much Microsoft is really going to donate anyway.
3. You think charities are all corrupt.
4. You feel the people that the charities help don't deserve it.


Counter arguments:
1. and 2. Perhaps it doesn't matter, or hardly any money is really going to come from Microsoft. I can, however, guarantee that Microsoft will give at LEAST as much money to charity if you do this compared to if you don't. You aren't losing anything if you do this. The charities aren't LOSING if you do this. And Microsoft...well, they aren't losing either since it's more of an advertising and increasing user base return on investment sort of thing for them. If I gave you a free lottery ticket, I can guarantee that your chances of winning have gone up a lot (from never to remotely possible) at no cost of your own.
3. Hopefully you can find one charity in there that you feel isn't corrupt. While once in a while this can happen, I don't think people in general go into non-profit organizations to make lots of money.
4. Ok, well, I don't think I can do anything for you. If the idea of helping people makes a bad taste in your mouth, this isn't for you.

The life of a goalie

So it has occurred to me that I haven't actually said anything about floor hockey! I have recently (as in about a year ago) found out that I really enjoy playing as a goalie! This came as quite a surprise since when I was a kid the idea of being in goal was NOT a happy one. However, as I've gotten older I've become more tolerant of the idea of standing in the way of flying objects for the good of the team. I was lucky with my equipment, as well. My awesome cousins gave me a gift certificate to Canadian Tire for a wedding gift, and since Evelyn doesn't need to buy anything from there, I got to use it to buy all of my gear! Yep, worked out really well.

Anyway, it happened that I had a chance to be a goalie with my current floor hockey team, so I am! I think I'm getting better every week, too, which is nice. It's always nice to make the critical save which keeps us in the game. Plus, I'm not exactly the scoring hero on our team. Now I just have to work on my flexibility! I have found that flexibility for a goalie really isn't necessary so that you can stretch further to stop the puck. It's more about not hurting yourself too much when you DO stretch for the puck.

Ahh!! The agony!

So I hurt my knee on Monday. It was a little sore Sunday while curling and then playing hockey right afterwards. However, despite that I never expected that curling practice on Monday would push it over the edge. I wasn't able to finish curling practice, in fact, and had to hobble off of the ice. the good news is that it's feeling a lot better already, so hopefully that means no permanent injury. I'm going to just be a bit careful with it for the next week or so and see how it's doing. Who knew curling could be such a dangerous sport?

The rare new post

Hi guys! Yes, I know it's been forever since I last posted on my blog. I have to wonder if anyone is actually checking this blog anymore. I guess if I start posting and people make any replies in the next few months, I'll find out!

So lets see, what is there to write about? Well, is it even worth catching up with all the stuff that I need to talk about? I guess maybe quickly. So what has happened with me lately? Let's see. Since my last "real" post, I have gotten married, went to Bermuda and New York for the honeymoon (wedding and honeymoon pictures can be viewed here). I have also nearly finished my project, and should be finished here in the next week or so. I have also started the fun winter activities schedule, which includes dancing on Monday, TA'ing dance on Tuesday, curling on Wednesday, dance on Friday, and floor hockey and curling on Sunday.

My latest big game that I'm addicted to is Neverwinter Nights. This game is your basic roleplaying game, and I would have been over and done with it a long time ago, if not for the massive online community effort put into it. See, the big thing about Neverwinter Nights is that anyone can make a module (aka game) for it. So you can still be playing a game, but with totally new storylines made available for free. I just finished one storyline which had an arguably better storyline than the original game itself! So yes, it's hard to get bored of this one when you never have to play anything more than once.

So I found out recently that a friend of mine was (is?) a bit upset with me. This has made me rather sad about the whole thing, though it was so long ago there really isn't anything to be done. To anyone who can relate to being that friend, I'm sorry. On a related note I am starting to wonder how many of my friendships are going to last the test of time? I'd like to think that my friends aren't going to totally forget about me even if I don't get to see them very often, but you never know. Everyone seems to be moving off on their own path. One friend I would have to schedule almost 2 months in advance just to have lunch or supper with them! Maybe I should just accept that and value the time I get to have with them. Whatever it is, everytime something happens I feel I'm being pushed further and further away from my friends, and it's getting me down. I think the only real problem is that I can't figure out a solution, except to feel that there really isn't a solution and that this is inexorable.

On a lighter note, we won our last curling game, and we also won our last hockey game! So that was pretty cool. I'm playing as goalie on our hockey team, which is SOO much fun! I never knew that I would enjoy it so much, or I would have played goal way back when I was a kid. Of course, I bet I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much back then. Oh well. Now is as good a time as ever, I guess. I actually made a really nice save and played pretty well in general, so that's good. I think I'm actually improving. As for the curling, we had a pretty strange game in that no one made more than 1 point in any end. Thankfully, though, it was because we stole a point for 4 ends in a row! Quite an interesting game. Evelyn even played third! Peter skipped and he did quite well, too. Actually, we all did, though I know we can be even better =).

Pictures!

Hi everyone! So with all the pictures that Evelyn and I have from our wedding and honeymoon, we've put up a Flickr site. There are just too many pictures to be handled by blogger efficiently. Anyway, the link to the website is http://www.flickr.com/photos/geoffandevelyn

We don't have all the pictures up yet, but there are definitely some pictures from our honeymoon and such that you can see.

Enjoy!

Still working

Well, it's saturday on the May long weekend and I'm the only one here in the office. Mitchell has gone out camping for the weekend and won't be back until Tuesday. Adrian is coming in, but he slept in (he hardly has had any sleep at all the last couple days) and now he's about 2 hours late. The project has been going well, though! I'm slowly putting the shattered pieces that is our program back together after totally redesigning the thing. We have high hopes that after all is said and done we're going to have a much more efficient and robust product to give to them by the end of the month. That being said, I'm still going to take off Sunday (though I'll be here again on Monday) as well as Friday evening after Evelyn defends her thesis!

I'm definitely looking forward to finishing this project! Hopefully everyone will like it when they try it =).