First Ride On the Canada Line

First Ride On the Canada Line
Originally uploaded by d.yaro

The joys of modern technology...and its mismanagement. I was on the phone with my ISP's tech support group for about 20 minutes trying to work through their labyrinthine maze of hoops to get back access to their self management page for my internet account. They had changed their system but didn't convert their accounts. Oh joy. Well, at least I got it done relatively quickly. But not quicker than the amount of time it took me to ride the new Canada Line from the Vancouver Centre station to the Broadway & Cambie station. The new line is quite neat...and yet kind of funny. Compared to the subway systems I've rode on elsewhere the Vancouver system is like...a dinky toy. And I almost laughed out loud when riding the train and overhearing the staff member reporting back to "Control" to say that the train was full. It wasn't, not even by Vancouver standards. No part of my body was in direct contact with that of any other passenger. It was a far cry from the experience I had on the Metro in Manila. There we were packed on board like sardines.

Anyways...Here's hoping the blog link in Flickr stays working. It went south over the winter and I never bothered setting it back up again until now. Keeping fingers crossed.

So it goes...

This morning I went to the Starbucks across the street from my office to get my morning "usual": a doppio espresso and a pumpkin scone. I sat down at the counter next to the barista's area and noticed this scruffy looking fellow a couple of bar stools over from me. He was yapping away about something and I ended up catching wind of what he was saying. He'd been given a ticket for riding the train without a ticket and had been threatened with jail if caught again. In between that he was complaining about being homeless and having been slapped with a ticket for panhandling. I just lent him a sympathetic ear though he was tending to get a bit too vocal. Ruby, the store manager tried to get her message across to him that his conduct wasn't the best but he seemed to be in a state where he just wanted someone to listen to him. He complained back to her that he needed to get downtown but he had a load to carry. If anything he wasn't in the best of moods.

Anyways, I headed out of the shop and before I got to the crosswalk I remembered I had some left over "FareSaver" transit tickets left in my backpack. I'm not about to use them this month because I've purchased a monthly transit pass. When I got back to my desk I took my jacket off, logged back onto my computer, took a bite out of my scone and still couldn't get the idea of the unused transit tickets out of my head. So I said to myself "What the heck!", grabbed the tickets, put on my jacket and went back out towards the Starbucks. I found the fellow complaining to a woman at the bus stop about his predicament. I went up to him, tapped him on the shoulder, handed him the partial booklet of tickets and told he could have them. I didn't have any use for them.

And so it goes... To me the idea of slapping several hundred dollars of fines for transit fare evasion on a homeless person (who I suspect may be an outpatient from a mental health institution) is a touch farcical. That sort of punishment should be dealt out to the kids who think they're being so clever by cheating the system. Or the "normal" folks who think nothing of boarding a train without paying the fare. Whatever. That was the situation and that was what I did. I don't particularly care if it was the right thing or not. All I did was take action.

Fierce Looking Fellow...

Fierce Looking Fellow...
Originally uploaded by d.yaro

Doesn't quite fit my mood right now...just plain tired. Was up pretty well almost all of last night on account of work. Fell asleep with the laptop in my lap and the phone under my chin. Good thing I wasn't snoring or else my cover would've been blown.

Anyways, I'm a touch annoyed because I wasn't able to blog this video: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8936205@N02/3265122712/. I'm too tired now to describe this video in depth. But I did get a cute picture of the same cat sitting in front to the big entrance gate of a condominium building looking like it was waiting for someone to let it in.

Floatplanes - A Comparison of Digi-Camera Video

I shot the first video clip back in December or January using my little Canon SD1100. I uploaded the video onto my machine and was a touch disappointed because I had captured a scene where a floatplane had to delay its take-ff thanks to some dummy in a boat crossing its path. The second video was taken Jan 31st. I just wanted to see how much better video my Canon S5 IS could capture. Where does this lead to? Well, if I get a digital SLR I'll be looking for one that can shoot HD video. (^_-)

Punk Goes 'Round And Back Again

Punk Goes 'Round And Back Again
Originally uploaded by d.yaro

Short entry this time: I was trying to sneak in a photo of these young ladies but couldn't pull off a decent one. One of them yells "Stop taking pcitures" so naturally I went over to show them that the pics were crap. Then the one with mohawk says "We'll pose for ya for smokes or money". Done deal. You can't tell with this photograph but the one in the middle would have trouble making it through an airport metal detector. She had a lot of piercings on her person.

Ambulance on the scene...

Ambulance on the scene...
Originally uploaded by d.yaro

First time I've ever called 9-1-1. A woman crossing the street here got knocked down by a GMC Suburban driven by a fellow making a left turn. I didn't see it hit her. I was walking away from the vicinity of that crosswalk. I heard a short scream and I turned around to see a pedestrian falling backwards onto the street surface.

So yeah, I called 9-1-1, got asked a bunch of questions and then waited to the ambulance to arrive. A police cruiser, fire engine and ambulance were dispatched. The victim wasn't bleeding or in anguish. She was obviously shaken by the experience and one fellow, a total stranger to her, kept her company and comforted her.

So there you have it. My incident of the day...

That Photo Was Taken Yesterday

Snow On Pine Needles
Originally uploaded by d.yaro

The reason why I didn't get to upload it was because my ADSL modem conked out on Monday. I phone my ISP's tech support line and from his end things looked okay. We went about testing the modem and had no luck with it. So he booked me an appointment with an onsite technician on Tuesday.

Well Tuesday came and went. I wasn't contacted by the tech who was supposed to make a housecall at my place after I got home from work. So today I phoned tech support and stated that I wanted to get my hands on a new modem. I said I intended to ship the modem back to them. That resulted in my phone call being transferred to their LNR (Loyalty and Retention) department. The end result of my conversation with the agent there was that they were going to send me a new modem (which I requested that I send to my work address). It's supposed to show up in 3-4 days.

So tonight, I headed back from work and stopped off at a co-worker's place to borrow a spare modem he had on hand. When I got home today I found a parcel delivery notification from my local Canada Post service counter. So I went to claim my package. What the clerk brought out was a plain white box. Then she said another package for me had arrived at the store and brought out a package which looked more like what I had been expecting to receive. Off I trundled back home...

It turns out the mystery package contained a modem and a letter from my ISP explaining that they were going to do a network upgrade on Jan 26th and my old modem would no longer work. The modem in the package was the replacement. Great. So why hadn't the tech I had phoned on Monday known about this? Who knows. All I can say is obviously the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing there...

Checking Out the Scene

Checking Out the Scene
Originally uploaded by d.yaro

I just couldn't find the camera setting to get what appears to be blue lights to show up in the photographs as the mauve colour it was to the naked eye. I obviously lucked out with this photograph. The light fixture on the left hand side reads "MARKET". This area is part of the shopping plaza area of the new Shangri-La Hotel in downtown Vancouver. The hotel officially opens tomorrow. The shopping complex has been open for about a month.

Today was a rough day: Was awakened by a phone call from work at 3:40am. I worked from home until 10am, went to the office, had a 15 minute lunch break, worked until 5:45pm, had a half hour dinner and then plugged away until 9:30pm. I got home at 11:30pm because I spent an hour or so wandering around taking pictures. I just got engrossed in finding things and scenes to take pictures off and lost track of the time...

After Work Photo Shoot

Window Display - Hudson's Bay Company Department Store
Originally uploaded by d.yaro

I was just going to get some video images of the Scotiabank tower. Instead I ended up with about 90 more images taken from around the Hudson's Bay Company department store, up Granville Street, up Smithe Street and then up Burrard.

I hardly ever walk by the HBC building and even then I don't pay too much attention to their window displays. But I found the current displays to be quite different and well done from a point of creativity. So I took the time to snap a few photographs of them. After I got home I realized the HBC's display windows are a bit of an oddity, if not a throwback to an era long gone by. The Sears (formerly Eatons) store basically looks like a giant bar of soap and as such doesn't have the large window display areas the HBC has. There are no other department stores downtown.

Anyways, the set for the photos from tonight is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8936205@N02/sets/72157612885185060/. Right now it just contains the ones I took of the HBC displays. I'll be uploading the remainder of them tomorrow.

A Row of Lights

A Row of Lights
Originally uploaded by d.yaro

I wasn't thinking of taking many photographs on the way home tonight but things changed after I had a burger (with yam fries - very tasty!) on the way home. The fog started getting thicker and things started taking on an eerie look. I haven't opened up all the results of the efforts in Flickr. I'll do that in a few days time. But up front I should say I was trying to capture images of things that don't look quite the way they usually do. I did speed up my exposure time so I lost a couple of shots, especially the one of a guy and gal carrying a sofa. She obviously didn't have as much strength as he did so they had to stop while she tried to get a quick breather in. I did take a photo of them sitting in their sofa when they had set it down on the sidewalk but I fell short on two points: 1) the flash from the camera reflected off the fog and 2) I took a dead on shot when I could've gotten a more interesting shot if I taken the photo from one end of the sofa. Oh well. Them's the breaks.

Icebreaker Outrigger Race

If You're Still Looking for Nemo...He's On Your Head.
Originally uploaded by d.yaro

I suppose it was appropriate that one our crew members was wearing a toque with "Alaska" emblazoned on it. Because it felt cold enough. Today was the day for this year's Lotus Icebreaker Outrigger race. It's a short (less than 6km) V-12 outrigger canoe race hosted by the Lotus Paddling Club in Burnaby, BC.

The one thing I enjoy about the Icebreaker race is the simple fact that it's held in the dead of winter. It's nice to get out and paddle when the temperatures are in the single digit range and there's snow on the ground. I think if paddlers from warmer climes found out we do this sort of thing they'd have us all committed to an asylum. There they are paddling in sun and surf while we're running the risk of being numbed by hypothermia.

Oh yeah...I don't think outrigger paddle makers would be too interested in advertising their wares using photographs of paddles sticking out of snowbanks...

Now Where Was I?...

Had a good laugh at work today: We noticed that calls were being recorded for one of call centres where the call monitoring software is running but supposedly there are no calls being routed to its switch. Turns out there are calls being routed to it...and out of it. I looked at one such call in the list of monitored calls and I said to my co-worker "I bet you that's a call to our conference call number". He gave me this incredulous look as I clicked on the recording to play it back. Yes, it was a call to the conference bridge number ("Please enter your passcode followed by the number sign"). We're so easily entertained.

Missed getting a photo of all the firefighters milling around in their dress uniforms outside of a local firehall. I was going to take a shot when a bunch of cars turned in front of me obscuring my view. When I was ready to take the picture my camera shut itself down telling me its battery charge had run out. I was not happy about that....

A Glimpse of 2009 Vancouver Polar Bear Swim

This year is the first time I've ever gone down and watched the insanity which is the annual New Years Day Vancouver Polar Bear Swim. I read somewhere that this year's edition is the 89th one. Last year we cruised off the beach in a double hulled outrigger canoe ("V-12" canoe) but went back in when we realized we'd be waiting for another hour. We didn't have enough coffee and Bailey's to keep 12 people warm that long!

Anyways, I had no wish to go in the water. I got unceremoniously dumped into English Bay of Kits Beach in late November when the solo outrigger canoe I was on "huli-ed", i.e.: flipped over. I had no time to tell if the water was really cold because I didn't spend more than 10 seconds in it! Mind you, the temperature then was about 5-6 degrees Centigrade warmer then than it was today. But it certainly wasn't as warm as the water in Hawaii!