Final days

Today we packed up our house and stored, sold or shipped stuff.  Here are some recent shots…

We still had time for a quick game of nighttime/daytime

Trail work

Time to put something back into this Squamish Trail Network we love so much.  Today we did some time on a secret project.  Its a critical link-up for walkers and bikers; best of all it may annoy some property developers, and maybe help save these woods!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

To Facebook or not to Facebook

I sent 8 friends the question – “Do you use facebook” (I have other friends I KNOW use it so I did not ask them).

The responses are interesting:  I got 5 yes, 1 no-reply, 2 considering.

====
I have a facebook page, but I don’t access it all that often.  Other people seem to be on it all the time.  It is very easy to use, you can post lots of pics up on it, and you can keep up to date with what other people are doing whenever you want.

The main reservation is that people misuse it like it’s nickname ‘stalkbook’ suggests.  But this is avoided by either not putting anything on there that you wouldn’t want everyone to know!  It is a way of people looking other people up and seeing there life, but you can keep picture galleries ‘private’ which limits who gets access to it to the people you are friends with, and I’m sure you can limit it even further by actually picking who you’d like to be able to see things but I haven’t searched the settings that thoroughly.

I don’t have access to it at work like my email, which is a really good thing because it can be the worlds biggest time waster the amount of stuff, games, things post, what and who to look up etc…

So I say go for it, it’s really easy to use and just keep whatever you put on there simple and things that you don’t mind everyone looking at!  Not too hard really!

Plus you get invitations to things through it and I find this happens a lot more with people like xxxx and his age group, and you won’t get invited via the usual methods…  not because they dont want you to come, it’s just that they assume everyone has a facebook page!

=====

Yep suck it up and “enjoy” gen me . Lookn forward to seeing you in the hood again mate al good here

=====

Really useful for keeping in touch with people, especially those who lose their phones and change numbers regularly. People definately overuse it, but that comes down to self discipline.

=====

Yeah I do use it, it’s probably the main way I keep in touch with people these days. It’s just a few old fossils who still use email 🙂

Not sure whether I’d call it “useful”, other than that you can see what people are doing (or want you to see) with fairly minimal effort. Plus I get updates from other stuff like bands, music, authors, software, Android, Perth festival etc so you can keep up to date on that kind of stuff in one place.

====
Yeah get on it. It’s free and I’ve pulled quite a few roots through it 🙂 plus it’s the best way to keep up with what everyone’s up to if it annoys you then don’t sign on as much.

====
I did have a facebook page, but the only people that wanted to be my friends were people I once went to high school with and so I killed the page. Whilst had it I mentioned to xxxxx and as I shut mine down she started and still uses hers.

The ‘nickname’ Stalkbook is excellent as I recently read a novel about a serial rapist who used twitter and facebook and really appreciated his next victims telling him where they were going to be at certain times etc.

====

Facebook – hmmm….

xxxx has an account, and gossips endlessly – some of it good i’m sure, but lots of chatty bollocks to people she sees all the time anyway..

Have banned kids from it so far, partly safety, but really – i would rather they did not spend their childhood angst-ing over online comms, but get outside doing stuff – they occasionally use xxxx a/c.

Me?  keep thinking i should, mostly from the perspective of “I’m an internet software developer, I should be familiar with all these kinds of things” but no i’ve avoided it.

I’m not really that curious about it – pretty sure i get it.
I already struggle to get 8 billable hours done, without opening up yet another socket.
Maybe i’m just an anti-social git, or maybe i don’t want to sink into a quagmire of endless trivia.

I can see the benefit of widespread personal directory and comms, but as a natural paranoic commie sceptic – we get most of that with email and thats more democratic.

</rant>

one more tip that seems popular around our friends with teen kids – ensure that mum is subscribed as a facebook friend in a way that can see all messages.

Time to go…

Old Favourites…

Its a rainy day here so I am adding some old favourite pics from years back

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Big Snow

There was a huge dump of snow this week (35cm in our yard).  Its hard to believe I was climbing on this with the kids a few months back!

The car looks cool like this though

Today

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The sum of us!

1.1.11 Update

Wow, no updates for a while.  Time flies  — or I am a bad diarizer.  December saw the start of the skiing seasons with the healthy and PC Callaghan Valley fighting it out with the quick fix of Whistler for our attentions.  Both are great in there own way, especially with friends and family.  This photo of the Black Tusk was taken on the downhill  day Kate and I had alone on Whistler (great day,  complete with Waffles at Crystal Hut).
Squamish is interesting in Winter, it seems to be either really wet, or very cold and dry, or snowing. Nothing by halves.  Its still possible to fit in the odd ride when there is enough rain to wash the snow away.  Some of the best riding during the really cold spells when all the puddles freeze solid, and the rock is bone dry .  This photo is of a winter walk in the Smoke Bluffs with the kids a few days before Christmas.   For the Solstice, Kate and I treated ourselves to a night in a cross country ski lodge – it was snowing very heavily for both days, and we had to ski a difficult route out as the grooming machine hadn’t done the easier one!  Here is a picture Kate took of me trying to make tea on the way in. 

 

We skied at Callaghan (in the rain) on Christmas day, and then had a truly great dinner at the Berrisford’s house with way too much to eat and drink, I think I rode home after.  Boxing day we went sea Kayaking in the Howe Sound which was a lot more fun that it sounds, the views were amazing,  Kate loved it – I was under-dressed and got cold!  Then we spent 4 days in Tofino, so I finally got to see Vancouver Island.  (I had to try surfing one time – I’ll never complain about Margs being cold again).  The kids invented a new beach game, which was smashing inch thick sheets of glass pulled off the top of the rock-pools.    We enjoyed staying in the worlds best Hostel in the Botanical Gardens, and met a great German/English family.

George who runs it even lent us a Canadian Canoe – we couldn’t leave Canada without paddling one at least once.  Ok we got stuck in the mud when the tide changed, but it was surprisingly easy for us (well Demelza) to push us out.  A sunny cold ferry ride saw us back in Squamish for an awesome NY party again at the Berrisford’s house (thanks guys).  New years day we skied in sunshine on Whistler (film coming soon).