While I was in at the local vintages looking for some Hine Cognac (which wasn't there), I tripped across some Aberlour A' Bunadh. This is a very yummy Speyside cask strength single malt with a great caramel/butter nose and flavour. I've been hoarding my last bottle, drinking it very sparingly. I scooped a new one so now I can enjoy it without a guilty conscience.

This weekend was supposed to be a thunderstorm weekend and while it threatened a number of times, it turned out to be an amazing weekend. My friend Mark was here from Toronto for a wedding and we got out for an 80k ride in Gatineau park. I really need to bring a camera as my cell phone takes crappy photos.

A great ride on a great day, although I need to bake some power bars. I was starting to bonk part way up and feeling kind of shakey-legged once we got back. A pint of Great Lakes beer set me right though. Best way to replace the electrolytes.

The weekend before my friend Kelly was out for the Blues Festival. And the rain. We saw some great acts and did some touristy things while she was here.

It's funny that I spend more time with people coming out from Toronto than I do people I've met in Ottawa. I really need to get on that.

My first day out to the Ottawa Parkway (http://tinyurl.com/yp3n2c) and spent a couple of hours ripping around on the recumbent. Then back for a lumberjack breakfast at Kristys (the local family food place), bland food, but hugely filling. Then hung out in the back yard building a wheel and drinking gin and tonic. A nice way to spend the afternoon.

I've been trying to sell my recumbent for some time. However, I'm a little discouraged after the likes of Mr. Willy and Professor Philip have been the only respondents. Both of which, of course, offered to send me a certified cheque to cover the cost of the bicycle and shipping. Bleah.

However, I was unable to resist the allure of this piece of wonder which is now my new cyclocross bike. I've been looking forever for a classic cross bike in 58-60 cm and this it.

I accidentally wandered into the MEC sale, with various community folks selling stuff. I decided to check out the one bike table and - scoop - set of Fiamme tubular rims on Campagnolo Record hubs, a set of BMX wheels with freewheel, three cogs: Dia-compe and Dura ace, and a funky red wool cycling cap for $100 bones. Very nicely done :-)

I live close to the Carlingwood Mall, which is a bit of a blue-rinse hang out. There's quite a few seniors buildings near by and the locals like to hang out around Tim Hortons for a gab. Which is fine, better that than out driving their heniously huge cars or smoking opium.

But today, as I was putting my Dad's birthday present in the mail, two songs were playing on the intercom that gave me pause. The first was the Scorpion's Rock you like a hurricane. Now I'd expect that in Ottawa, a song released in 1984 playing on mall intercom. But not this particular song. What the locals make of the lyric "Give her inches and feed her well", I'm not sure. The second song was Bad motorscooter by Montrose. Now you may not know much about [Ronnie] Montrose's band, a bit of a one hit wonder with a self-titled album in the mid 70's. You probably are more familiar with the lead singers' name, Sammy Hagar.

In any case, not something I'd be expecting on a Saturday at the mall. I was never a huge Scorpion's fan, but hearing Montrose was a nice treat.

A new wine I've just tried is the Pierre LaPlace 2005 Madiran. Madiran's are made with Tannat grapes, topped up with Cab Franc or Cab Sauginon. Typically really tannic wines, this one is really nice after you let it breath a little. Nose is a bit of black cherry with some plum and you get a real sense of the tannins that are coming your way. Flavour is strongly tannic, but not overpowering. So that means it'll taste quite dry with the flavour of black cherry, currants, overtop of a bit of plum without being bitter. It's got some legs with the tannins dominating but you still get a sense of cherry skins. Very nice for $14.95 at the LCBO. I bought half a case while I was there.

Now that I have a job again, I can start replenishing my wine supply. Sandra and I drank my 2002 High Trellis (an amazing Grenache) a couple of weeks ago, but apart from plonk, I haven't bought much of late.

Speaking of plonk, you may already know about the Argentine Fuzion (Shiraz/Malbec) in the LCBO right now. At $7.45 a bottle, its a great value. Another great value (and a tastier wine IMO) is the Nero d'Avola Enzo di Sette Rue . Very nice for $12.95.

Anyway, one thing I don't have in my new apartment is a decent wine storage place. I decided to stick one in a closet. A convenient sale and a gift card from Christmas for Canadian Tire, and I had a new wine rack.

After reading some reviews on the Canadian Tire website, I decided to buy some #6 1 1/2" screws to replace the nails provided in this kit.

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If I'm going to keep this site (and the domain name is almost up for grabs) I should really put some posts up here on a relatively regular basis.

Work is going well. I'm pretty much responsible for the respiratory/enteric and vaccine preventable disease portfolio at work, in addition to anything else that pops up.

Ottawa is still gripped by a transit strike, which does not affect me much as I'm still biking everywhere. It's actually kind of nice not to have buses blowing by me, but as we approach day 40, it's getting a bit much. Ottawa being a fairly right wing town, most of the moaning I've heard is about the union and how they should be grateful to have jobs, blah blah blah. Working in a unionized environment and having a fairly sweet deal myself, I don't feel in a position to criticize.

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There are two nice things about Ottawa drivers. The first is they rarely honk. At anything, including each other. This is in sharp contrast to Toronto. The second is that, generally, they give you a very wide berth if they can. Again, in contrast to Toronto drivers, who seem to want to use you to clean their cars by rubbing against you as they drive by.

Today I rode out to an industrial area of town to buy a used computer desk. I have to rent a truck to get it home, unfortunately, but it was an interesting ride for a couple of reasons. First is it emphasized my first two points. It's not an area you'd expect to see a bike and the roads are some of the narrower I've seen in Ottawa. Second was that, in Ottawa, buses have their own roads (or transitways) from which other traffic is barred. With the strike on, I jumped on a transit way. It was so sweet. Sort of like the Ride for the Heart in Toronto where they close the DVP and the bikes take over...

This week has heralded a major snow dump and a transit strike on Wednesday. It hasn't affected traffic volume too much, at least not on my route and commute times. Thus far, apart from goo accumulation on the Raleigh, the winter commute in Ottawa has been sort of fun. You can't beat a pristine shoulder for riding through. If only the cars would stay at home.

I took my winter beater out for a run today to see how long it would take to get to work. Turns out around fifteen minutes or so, which isn't bad. The path system is not an option - it's glare ice from all the walkers etc. and I'd need studded tires to run it. The roads itself aren't too bad although crossing the 417 is a little grisly. A few motorists weren't too sure what to do with a bike and I can see how some fool coming onto the road from the highway without looking may be a problem. Sidewalk may be an option at some point and I'm thinking side blinkies, at least on the left, are likely a good idea. There's another route to cross the 417, which I might check out for the ride home from work tomorrow. It's not too far out of the way, but less direct that the route I went today. but it would require a jog in the wrong direction.

The run today doesn't give me much indication of traffic volume either. Volume today wasn't bad, but I'm thinking it's the ride home that will be the worst.

So my move happens tomorrow. I've rented a moving truck from Uhaul, hired some guys to help at this end and some students in Ottawa to help off load. Power hookups are all arranged as are internet services, mail forwards and all the other things you need to deal with when moving. I must say it's a heck of a lot easier with internet dealings, although I did need to spend some time on the phone as Ottawa Hydros hook up online form doesn't email you to let you know anythings happening. So I ended up calling them, which was better anyway. They told me to get a letter of credit from Toronto Hydro to avoid the security deposit.

In other news, my voice is almost back to normal after spending Sunday screaming at the Ottawa Cyclocross Provincials. You can see pics at Mike Clark's flickr account http://flickr.com/photos/shapelike/

So yes, back to the move. Tomorrow morning I should be packed and on the road by noon. Here's hoping

I just got back from looking for housing in Ottawa after accepting a job with Ottawa Public Health. I'll be covering a maternity leave for between 9 and 12 months. A good chance to get some experience with a good team.

As freaked out as I am about global warming, today's +17C weather was a nice change from the cold/rainy weather we've been having. And it was a lovely day on the disc golf course. I birdied a few holes and came close to a hole in one on #3, which would have been very choice.

And it sounds like I'm getting a job offer from Ottawa Public Health to cover a maternity leave position as an infectious disease epidemiologist. It's been a long seven months looking for working and straining not to do something soul-sucking, but it's paid off. I'm really looking forward to this job, learning more stuff, and getting paid!

In other news a cyclist was caught in Toronto with a gun.

Well, I have a few interviews lined up for the next two weeks and I've been hitting the books to review a few things pertinent to infectious disease epidemiology.

But all work and no play isn't good! So I've interspersed the work with some hacking of images put by pals in the Toronto Fixed thread of the bikeforums http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?p=7784738

The first was one of my pals Keith and Wes (that's Wes running up the hill).

With the most recent a pic put up by Matt Rennick Living for the City.

Both done with Gimp and Imagemagick with some optimization online at gif image resizer.

It's fun to break up the day with this stuff, even though I pretty much suck at it. But in any case, how long can you really look over CUSUMs and epi curves without going cross-eyed?

Recycling things isn't just fun, it's a moral imperative. I just finished fixing a sewing machine someone had tossed. Admittedly it was placed so people could snag it, but it's not the kind of thing you generally pick up off the street.

Looking it over, the zig-zag lock was seized (and I promptly broke it trying to loosen it off). A few minutes with a drill to drill out the mounting bolt and a dive into the parts bin for a machine bolt and an old quick release skewer cap from the bike parts bin and it's working fine. It's up for adoption or donation to Goodwill.

Now back on getting the recumbent ready for sale. Really long cable paths are a bugger to adjust properly.

For some bizarre reason I've had a few folks try to inject text into the trackbacks. While the scripts defuse the content, I'm left with gobbledygook in the trackback fields, so I'm removing trackbacks for now.

The corporate jackals whooped it up to the tune of $440,000 in celebration of the financial bail out of AIG by the US government

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/1007083aig1.html

I'd say heads should roll, but that would just means whopping lawyer fees and no result. Unfortunately, it's unlikely this pillaging of the American people will end any time soon unless there is a significant about face on corporate transparency and regulation in the US.

Mutt is completely behaving itself and I'm very happy with that. An additional tweak I've made is to pipe Mailtos to a fine script by Martin Krafft http://svn.madduck.net/pub/bin/mail/mailto-mutt. There's a few scripts out there to handle mailtos but Martins' works splendidly with the browser I'm using, Iceweasel. The only things I modified in his script were to route the /path/to/handler to the mailto-mutt script and to respecify the xterminal to aterm, the terminal emulator I use. And don't forget to make the script executable.

I've given some thought to using a text browser to replace Iceweasel, but generally my websurfing is pretty image dependant. I also think that, as a visual media, that's not a bad thing.

About jarheads in their crappy lowrider cars who think it's funny to head fake at you in traffic? Seriously. Where's the humour. I know they're sexually inadequate pea brains, and I pity them. Its just surreal.

This chimp thought I was turning to have words as I pulled into my apartment. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to take his picture with my cell camera. Given I think I know this car from the neighbourhood, it would have been good to get his plates and see how he like's tuna juice on the engine block.

Rage fantasy, really. This turnip isn't worth my time or effort.

I recently decided to go back to using mutt, a text based mailer for 'nix systems. While simple to look at, mutt is an extremely powerful. Because it acts only as a mail reader, it can be a bit of a challenge to set up, particularly if you're not aware of how mail is handled in Linux. There's also a few tweaks you can make to add some useful functionality. This is one of the beauties of mutt, you can script it to run exactly how you want it to, not how someone else wants you to manage your email.

I thought I'd put up a brief blurb of what I used and how I got it running as some resources are pretty scattered and not always written in plain language. I'm not going to go into a lot of details about configuration, there's lots of sources for that out there already. My favourites include My First Mutt and Randall Wood's excellent mutt manual

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Robert Plant has put paid to rumours that Zeppelin will tour again, at least with him doing lead vocals. While I'm not a died in the wool Zeppelin fan by any means, I must take my hat off to Robert for issuing this statement (he's currently on tour with Alison Krauss) while many 'old time' bands are jumping on the reunion tour bandwagon.

Now I don't begrudge anyone making money, but it does get my back up when I see bands like the Eagles or Beachboys, way past their prime, stroking their fans for tickets. Well, okay, maybe a starting ticket price of $55 USD plus ticketmasters' mystery fees is worth it as a starting point to see a band like the Beach Boys, but not for me.

Even worse is the example exemplified by a band I really respect(ed) AC/DC is one. For their recent Black Ice tours, all seats, no matter how crappy are $90. If you can get them. You're more likely to pay well into the hundreds if not thousands of dollars though. The concert in Toronto sold out in 20 minutes. On ticketsnow, the scalping, I mean "secondary market" site owned by Ticketmaster, you're looking between 295 and 1000 each for tickets. While this may not be the bands fault per se, it shows that bands themselves aren't the only ones cashing in on hard core fans and the bands are doing dick all to make sure that their fans have reasonable access to come see them. Working man's band my ass.

Save your cash and see some local bands.

You'll notice some new additions to the wee monkey blog. I've added a twitter feed which I may or may not keep. I realize twitter can be really annoying but it's kind of a neat way to concisely say what I'm up to at any given point. Unfortunately the plugin, which is supposed to only put one message up, puts all the twitter messages up. I think I can limit this at the Twitter end.

The other is the Colophon entry which summarizes the blog and how it's put together. Given Blosxom's mode of operation, I had to reset the date stamp to bury the entry.

The last thing is the Music I'm listening to section. This is a tweak of an allmusic plugin. It still uses allmusic (although I may modify it to use emusic) but only parses the album image. I found the original parsing syntax was falling down and including huge swaths of irrelevant text. This likely due to a change at allmusic that the plugin couldn't accomodate. A minor edit presents only the album covers.

So that's it for the blog function. In other news, the search for work continues. While I'm not totally depressed at the lack of responses to applications, it's getting the point where I might need to consider some types of work I'd really rather not be doing. Chin up though and we'll see what comes about. On the other hand, being unemployed is great for developing my disc golf game!

It's the season again for bike salmon. Those bikes riding upstream against the flow (i.e. against traffic) on the wrong side of the road. I'm usually pretty good at missing these bicycle aberrations, but I hit one today when making a right turn onto Dundas. One was on the sidewalk, one in the bikelane, screaming along the wrong way. After hitting me, they proceeded onto the sidewalk across the road and knocked over a little old lady. She seemed fine and was on her way by the time I got my situation sorted out.

Two broken spokes which I've replaced and I just need to retrue my wheel. What a pain in the ass.

Or at least it appears to be. I'm in the process of converting some old vinyl over and when I set up my old turntable, it skates across the LP. That's usually a sign that the stylus is pooched. At least I'm hoping that's what it is. I'm taking in to Ring Audio http://www.ringaudio.com tomorrow to see if they can sell me a replacement stylus.

I'm really hoping this is all it is.

One of the latest "issues" to arise in the upcoming American presidential race is the revelation that John McCain's Republican running mate, Governor Sarah Palin, has a 17 year old daughter who is 5 months pregnant out of wedlock.

Why this is such a deal is beyond me. Republican values are generally applied to "others" and not their exponents. Why should it be a contradiction that a staunch Republican has a pregnant daughter? Nancy Reagan was three months pregnant when she married Ronald Reagan. Why worry about yourself when there are children "out there" to save? George Bush spent $135 million on funding abstinence only sex-ed programs. The fact that they don't work is irrelevant to the Republican mind set. Oh, if people would only listen.

Okay, it's late and this is the best I could come up with.

As if you really cared. But this means at least that the majority of the technical things have been squared away. While I'd still like to add a few gew gaws, it appears that I have my blog running more or less as I'd like it to.

Now, let's see if I'll actually post to it!!!

Okay, I'm having some troubles getting trackbacks working, but this should be fixed soon.

Took the recumbent out for a spin this morning and it was probably the best ride I've had on it yet.

The seat is somewhat cranked down from the pic above as I've done some fine tuning on the body position. I'm getting used to shifting to the top ring as well as it takes a bit of oomph compared to the record shifters on the Pinarello. But I felt much more comfortable on it, particularly starting which is where I've been struggling Recumbents often give a bit of wobble on the start, but I've improved that significantly. The only thing to do is switch back to the original tires. At full pressure, the Terrys that are on it now rub the brake bridge on the rear of the bike.

Now off to finish cooking some chicken legs and black eyed pea pasta salad for the picnic with Sandra today! Yummy.

So I got the comments section working more or less and should have a few other things on line to improve the blogs useability and security. Finally. It would have been a lot easier to use a different blog system, but I'm kind of fond of Blosxom. Once things are running, it's super easy to use and offers lots of flexibility. I'll be adding a couple of plugins in the coming weeks to make things even easier from my end.

So a lot has happened since the last update. My Dad had a stroke from which he has recovered well. My Mom had knee replacemet surgery and is doing very well. They've both come to the realization that things have to change in how they conduct their lives but they seem to be dealing pretty well with all of that. It's hard with me being in Toronto. I spent two weeks at home after my Dad had his stroke and hope to go back in the next week or so for 10 days for a visit. They've more or less got their lives back on track and I can probably help out a bit with some odds and ends as sort of a pre-fall work thing. Putting storm windows on, that sort o thing. It's been an interesting experience for me too. My family has been relatively well and everything has come together. It's a bit of a jolt on the mortality.

In other news, I've finished my Masters and am currently looking for work. I'm intending on staying in Toronto, but have not heard back from any of the ten or so places I've applied. Which is a bit of a pain. In the old days, you'd at least get a letter telling you they weren't interested. Nowadays, in the age of the internet, email, group mailing etc. they only contact you if you're selected for an interview. What a pain.

In fact its got me thinking of doing my own thing and trying the entrepeneur route. The past week in the news has been layoffs in Bell (6% of the their middle managers in Ontario), Starbucks (yeah, like I care), and now Governer Schwarzenegger in California is attempting an apparently illegal move to cut the pay of state employees in order to balance the books. Looks like the corporate world has found out you can't pay CEO's exorbitant salaries and grow in an uncontrolled fashion to satisfy stockholders and still be viable.

So the search goes on.

I've had to disable the comments for now as I'm starting to get spam in them. I'm working on getting a new feedback script working that should solve the problem

I took the Pinarello out for a ride along with a Friends for Life Bike rally training ride today. It's about 50 km from Finch station and since I rode up there and back it was about 80 km or thereabouts total. The weather was perfect, cool but sunny. The riders were great as well and I was able to hook up with a relatively fast crew. The Friends for Life Bike rally supports HIV/AIDs research with an annual ride from Toronto to Montreal. You can find out more here www.bikerally.org. I've never done it myself, but contribute to people who do. My friend Mike didn't roll out of bed in time for the ride today (his loss). The Pinarello behaved very well and I think I've almost got it dialed in.

I did forget how bad roads are in the Yonge and Finch area, though, and smacked a couple of large potholes. Also some of the motorists were confused by a bike on the road. Unfortunately I knee-jerked my signal finger a couple of times which detracted from an otherwise pleasurable ride through some beautiful areas.

I did forget my sunscreen though and I felt a little baked when I got back. I wanted to get the Vision out for a quick scoot and may just end up doing that tomorrow morning.

First time off road in, what, nearly 15 years? First time with suspension? First time with clipless? I did a lot better than I thought on my inaugural ride on Devil Strip Rollers, the dirt version. Some of the old reflexes started coming back by the end of the ride: don't look at your wheel, use your rear brake, but being able to coast is still taking some getting used to. A few foot dabs that didn't need to happen, but still it was a lot of fun. And I didn't hold Ted, Wes, and Andre back too much. Although I think the bar ends need to go, on a SS speed as soon as I move to the bar ends, I'm doomed anyway. Think momentum, Cam

Well, the first foray back into mountain biking was less than glorious. Chris Pyzer and I met at the trail-head of the Don for a ride, but I got a flat tire just before arriving.

Of course I didn't have a pump, patch or tube with me. But thanks to the amazing Doug, a random cyclist by who went home and got a tube and returned with it, I got back on the trail. It's people like Doug who restore my faith in human nature.

However, shortly afterwards I got another flat. This is surely a sign from the Great Magnet that I am not to go mountain biking today. After arriving home I discovered the culprit, which is what I had suspected. I used these rims for touring and had put a brass insert into the rim to convert from Schrader to Presta valves. At the lower pressure of the mountain bike tire, the tube sheared along the insert, cutting the valve as it inserts into the tube. So it's back to Schrader valves for me. An inauspicious end to what has been a pretty good day.

I'm starting to get a few project finished of late. The first is the single speed conversion of my old Bianchi Grizzly II.

I've had this thing since '89 and we've been through a lot together. It was my my Saskatchewan offroad machine, my commuter when I first moved to Toronto, my touring bike in Newfoundland and BC, and now it's returned to it's roots, minus a few bits.

The Mag21 fork is new to the bike, a Craigslist purchase, tuned up by Phil at Cycletherapy, but everything else is old (school). The Hite-Rite, the Scott Mathauser pads, even the Panaracer Karthoum on the front wis circa late 80's (which may not be my wisest idea in the case of the tire, but it looks fine). It'll be hitting the trails this Tuesday on the dirt version of devil strip rollers.

The next one is completely new, both to the fleet and to me. It's a Vision R65 short wheel base recumbent.

I got this, again off Craigslist, for touring mostly. The Bianchi (see above) was super heavy, and a bit of a white knuckle affair on descents, on tour. I'm just getting it dialed in right now. I've adjusted the boom and chain length and now need to recable it. The brakes are goo right now, as I found out the hard way.

There is definitely a learning curve. When turning you need to coast or else you'll hit your heel on the wheel. Speed bumps are also interesting as your feet go straight down when you hit a bump with your fleet slipping off. So clipless pedals are next.

But it's fun so far. I need to spend some more time riding it to get used to it, particularly when turning. It'll be great for summer touring though!

Yes, the Raleigh twenty has been sold. I'm selling it to a friend after some cleaning up. She'll be using it when her nephews come to visit.

This lovely old Raleigh Twenty has now been added to the fleet.

I'm not sure if I'll be keeping it as it may be a bike for my friend Sandra's nephew when he comes to town. We'll have to see. Space is becoming a problem.

My masters is over. I went to the Metropolitan Tuberculosis Issues subcommittee meeting where the project I've been working on was presented by one of my supervisors.

It went over pretty well, which was good, with some good questions. Made a few contacts which might be helpful in the Search for Job. No offers though ....

I heard a robin singing yesterday morning, but today I saw a sure sign of spring
.

Yes, the Pinarello's are back for the season. And what better way to welcome them back than with colour co-ordinated shoes

They repel motorists, make you go faster, make you a better lover and ward of satan. Couldn't do much better than that.

At least officially. My practicum report went in today, so I have the big 10 I need to officially graduate. My other two courses seem lined up, although they're really icing on the cake.

It won't really feel like it's over for a bit, though. I'm still working at TPH on the TB project, but that may be winding down a bit as well too. We'll see how it goes. Then on to find a real job (again), but not too soon. Me need some feet up time.

I've got one paper left to go, a review of the role of co-operatives in affordable housing. Then I'm done! Well, until my practicum report goes in, but that should be soon. I can hardly wait!