Harold pre-launch. Readying himself for his first launch using reverse inflation and at a anew site with no view of the LZ

Les getting ready to launch at Baldy at Vernon

It's been awhile since I got a posting up so here we go. A bunch of Kamloops Paragliders dropped into Vernon for a little flying and a a reserve repack clinic. When we arrived it looked lousy but we hiked to Baldy (Vernon launch site) and waited for a break. After about an 1/2 hour we where rewarded with some good conditions. Les launched first in his usual clean and tidy style. Harold was next and this was his first launch from a reverse and after a bit of adjusting he got off. I was last which is a first for me as usually I am the wind dummy. But we wanted Les to let us know the wind conditions. I was able to get away on my first try. Tat was a relief as I have only done a few reverse inflation to launch. The flight was very nice, quite bumpy but a good learning experience. I landed within 10 feet of my target on my feet. And this picture was taken a few seconds later.

Xman gathering his goodies

Ah a day at the pool. During my visit to Quesnel I had a chance to go to the pool with my daughter Jessi and family. We had a great time and all enjoyed the pool. I got a little vertical to get this shot of Xavier.

My pal Xavier

This is my grandson Xavier showing grandpa his groovy trike.

Harold earns his wings

Harold called me the other day. We got together for a little kiting. In between inflation's I snapped a couple shots of him practicing the fine art of the reverse inflation

Xavier's Hotrod

My grandson was showing grandpa how it's done in his neck of the woods.

More Quesnel

It would seem the Cat was un impressed

Hey have you seen my new laptop?

Had a chance to get up to Quesnel last week-end to see my girls and my grandson Xavier. I was showing off my new laptop and well the picture tells the story. XGL on Mandriva Linux kinda blew every ones gasket. But I think the most fun was had in Winblows using the web cam. It has all sorts of funny addons and virtualizations to have fun with. As you can see they did.

New Laptop

Well I sold the old laptop and my tower. I used the funds to purchase a new laptop. I bought an Acer Aspire 5630-6459. It came preloaded with Windows Vista Premium. I had a a look around the new OS for about a week and decided I was not willing to be a Microsoft Beta tester. I was amazed to find that MS's own messenger would not work. Each time I tried to start it I got a DEP error message. And several of the software programs I use would not work. So..... I did a reload with a clean re-install of Vista with all the stock software that came preloaded and burned a DVD image file of the setup. Then wiped the whole thing With Gparted and put a fresh install of XP did all the updates and loaded all the software I need for photography. Then I installed a copy of Mint Linux 2.2 "Bianca" in a dual boot setup. I must say this Bianca is a very nice distro. An off shoot from Ubuntu. Just full of Open Source goodness. I will re-install Vista at some time but not until the first service pack is released. Right now I am pretty happy with this setup. I am quite pleased with the performance of the Core 2 Duo chip. I have been a AMD guy for years but thought to try the new Intel chip. Time will tell. I am going to try setting this up as a complete tournament setup with a second monitor. I will keep you posted.

Oh Wind and Weather

Saturday has rolled around again. Derek and I took a drive to the "Dump" at Savona hoping to get a little ridge soaring. But alas we arrived to a strong 30+ wind coming in from the lake. So we turned around and came home. Ah para-waiting. I spent the rest of the afternoon doing those things that just can't be denied. You know dishes, laundry, that kinda stuff. While I can't say I like these jobs having them done gives a certain peace. Right now Jackie and I are watching an old 50's spy movie while Sammy sleeps on her lap. It's suppose to snow tomorrow but I hope not. I hope to do a little yard work.

Another Week Flies By

You ever have those times in your life when time seems to be accelerated. Every time you stop to rest you realise a week or more has gone by. For me it seems it's every winter. Christmas time passes and hockey season gears up (photography) and the week-ends just fly by. Add to that what seems to be an annual illness that lasts from Jan. to March and three months pass before I feel like I can breath. Figuratively and literally. So I look spring. I have been using the electric bike to get back and forth to work. It's a bit cold yet but not so bad. As long s it's above 0 I can live with it. Walking has been out since Dr. discovered the reason for my foot pain. It seems my right foot has a fracture that has never healed or re-broken and has been giving me fits trying to walk or hike any distance. I have been referred to a foot surgeon for repairs but as you know that takes months. I have been told 3-6 which is not so long these days. So I wait and just keep doing what I can to stay active. Job is going well, lots to do. Jackie is doing well busy with work and learning how to record the songs she has written using Garageband on her new MAC. I am still working with the open source community and the GNU/Linux operating system. I have purchased a new Laptop with Vista on it and took a look but stripped it off and did a dualboot with XP and PCLinuxOS and openSuse There are many great distro's out there but these two are the ones I am looking at lately. I have to say exploring Linux has been rewarding and frustrating at the same time. Some things that are not given a second thought in Windows can make you crazy trying to figure out in Linux. Command lines and the like. But the open source community and all the wonderful software they write is wonderful. Any way enough for now. Later Folks.

Just another view of the New Years Eve Launch. I'm slowly getting better at this.

Quiet Nights

It's Sunday night and the house is quiet. Jackie and I are just fiddling with our puters. I am patiently waiting for the stable release of PCLinuxOS I have played with the last two versions and the next one will feature Beryl and XGL These new desktops are very cool. 3-D with all the wow factor. I guess the difference with this and say Windows new areo effects is that it will run on older hardware. I have had it running on a Pentium 700 with 384 ram and an old Nvidia 5200 card with no problems. Not much else to do here in the Loops in winter. I am waiting for the weather to break so I can get a little flying in. It has been lousy for air time here but spring is coming and I think we are planning a quick trip to Mt. Woodside to see Jim Reich. I need to purchase a reserve chute and have it installed so perhaps in the next three or four weeks we will get down there. Other wise it's all quiet on the western front. Remember the three "L"s Livin, Lovin, Learnin. Buh Bye for now!

Friday's

My day began at 6:00am. I was standing at the bus stop by 7:15 and noticed the largest brightest moon I have seen in quite some time. I found myself staring at it for some time. Not even the -13c weather could break my gaze. One more day of work and then rest. I have been working for three week ends in a row and am feeling the crunch. The bus arrived as it most always does and away I went to work. My day has begun to unfold, full of promise, full of hope.

The death of the Sansa

Well I bragged the virtues of my Sansa Mp3 player only to have it die one month after purchasing it. I read mt receipt and realized that it must be returned that day. So off I go to Future Shop. They where out of the 6 gig so I tried a 4 gig Creative Ven Plus. I must say it works well the sound quality is better, the radio has better reception. It's smaller and does a better job with podcasts.

Mid-Week Mornings

It's the middle of the week and much has been done. The mission has been busy place lately and the temperatures are going down. January is behind us so one more month of cold and we should see the turnaround. A dreary -7 this morning and already we have had to call the police to get a very intoxicated man off the road. Some time spent in prayer was much needed. It's good to get focused on what really matters. Loving and caring for the "un-lovely" can be difficult at times. At times it's hard to see the good in some of our people but I am reminded. "That to to the pure in heart all things are pure" Prayer helps remind me to look past behavior and into the heart. And those hearts are usually full of hurt. So off we go Living, Loving, Learning.

January Blues

I just finished a busy shift at work and am relaxing to a cup a Joe and a few flying video's. The weather has been lousy to fly. So I wait for spring. I have been trying to setup a Linux server for the Mission lately and I must say I know nothing. I have found it daunting. My Windows experience counts for nothing here. With a windows box I can set it up in an hour but I spent most of the day with Ubuntu and still have not quite solved it. Hum.... flying ya flying.... hum.

Sunday, Sunday

Well Sunday has rolled around again. It's evening time and I am chillaxin to a little tube while a reload my Sansa Mp3 player. I got a 6 gig. for Christmas and I have found it to be a great little player. Tons of features and good sound. I never though I would need a player with so much space but you change them much less often. I have found this player better than my ipod Nano in almost every aspect. I plan to walk to work in the morning hence the reload. The next few weeks will be very busy as I will be doing hockey tournaments every week end. We have settled in after the Christmas season. All is quiet on the home front.

Terry Paragliding

Launching for a a quick sled ride from the microwave towers here in Kamloops.

XGL + Compwiz = WOW

I have been fooling around with some new Linux distros lately. Namely Open Suse 10.2 and Mandriva 2007. Both ship with the ability to run XGL and I have to say it's very cool. I will attempt to post a picture of it in action but if you want to see the real deal go to Youtube or Google Video's and type in XGL and watch a demo. I have been having a ball with all the effects but I also believe that this can be a productivity tool as well. Having four desktops available to you and being able to use them with little effort is a time saver. I tried Mandriva 2007 Power Pack first and was delighted to have a painless install and when it came time to finish my setup it asked me if I wanted to install a propietory driver for my video card (Nvidia 5200) I clicked yes and off it went to find download and setup my card with Nvidia drivers. Wow that was easy! After my first boot into the OS a quick look around the menus brought me to a "enable desktop effects" button. One click later XGL was running on my old hardware. I spent a day checking it out then did the Open Suse install. It was a smooth process also but installing the Nvidia drivers took a lot more work. But I prevailed and then enabling the desktop effects was a one click affair. Both OS's are very nice but I think the nod goes to Open Suse for it's clean look and sharp clean fonts. Don't get me wrong Mandriva is very nice also. I will spend some time with these two and let you know how it goes

Something to think about

A quote from a song I heard on the radio.

"The more we take... the less we become."

I have thought about this a lot lately seems God wants say something and I have come to understand that when he speaks to me I need to listen, but more than that I need to act.

Saturday is here again

It's been a long while since my last post. Saturday afternoon is here and I am taking a break from chores. I just finished a little housekeeping, cooking and repairing our phone jack. The Internet has been making us a little nuts, one minute fast the other painfully slow. I found the phone jack was seized and the cord stuck. It would seem there was paint in the jack and hence problems. All seems well since I changed the jack out. The cold spell that hit us is over but we have a lot of snow left over. Derek said the launch has been plowed but only to the microwave tower. So.... still no flying. Perhaps in the next few weeks we can get a sleddy in. All is well here looking forward to Christmas. Just a few more things to get ready. Work is extremely busy but that is normal for us this time of year. Kris is coming to be with Jackie and I for Christmas and I am really looking forward to seeing her. We have been apart since she moved and I miss her. Thank God for the Internet and web cams I get to see my children and grand kids online. While it's not the same as in person it is nice. Jackie got herself a new laptop. This time she bought a MAC. I have looked at it a bit and found it similar to Linux but different enough where I feel lost. She is running Parallels software on it and is able to run windows at the same time as Mac OSX so it's kinda groovy. I am still playing with Linux and both my laptop and desktop are running dual boot with WinXP and Ubuntu. While the idea of a free OS and free software to run on it are appealing I think the average user will still find Linux a bit of a challenge. But with that said it is getting very close to being a viable desktop replacement in the very near future. Well the ham is bubbling in the pot and it's time to get some soup made.

Chilly Mornings

As I walked to the bus this morning I was struck by the beauty of the sunrise. It has been unseasonably cold of late. But the sweet sunrise somehow made it just a little bit more bearable. 

It's a dreary tuesday and my mind wanders.....

It's been too long since my last flight. Withdrawal is setting in. Once you look up you become curious, but once you look down your hopeless.

Oh My... Oh My

Well as you might already know I am now paragliding on a regular basis. With 17 flights under my belt I still feel like I know very little but it's starting to make sense. I finally got my harness adjusted to my liking and am finding it gives me better control. Most of my flights have been short what is called a "sled ride" meaning no lift just gliding. But the odd flight I have found some lift and felt the power of "going up" I have to say it is most remarkable. Finding and staying in the lift has been a challenge but one I want to learn. I have met some great folks while involved in this sport. It was my brother Derek that got me started. He wanted to show me this new passion he had found and I was a willing driver (to save time retrieving the vehicle). I spent the summer watching the boys and getting several photo's of them but knew I needed to try this myself. Next Derek asked me if I wanted to come to Mara Lake and help drive for a advanced maneuvers course. I jumped at the chance to see more and was offered a tandem ride as a thank you. Well the view was amazing but the spirals left me nauseated (I never did do well at the midway) but I knew I had to try this. So in Sept off I went to take basic training. I have to say it was tough and I thought I would never get it. But we got three flights in and I was hooked. We where rained out on one of the days of training so I called and went back to get a little more confidence under my belt. They where great and so was the weather and we got four flights in one day. It was really good for me. I left the first time feeling kinda uneasy but the additional training left me feeling confident. Three days after my return I got a call from Derek, the conditions where perfect. We drove up to Little Dome and I did my first launch here with several of the local pilots and equipped with a radio and with one pilot on the LZ. All went well and my first flight was a success I was greatful to have the radio and did what I was told as I approached the LZ. The rest is history as they say.

Harold Returns To Earth

This is a shot of Harold my flying buddy coming in to land on his second flight. He planted a perfect landing.

Another Birthday... In The Air!

Well another birthday has come and gone. I turned 48 this year. My gift this year was to pool my resources and take a paraglideing course. I drove down to Eagle Ranch and took the beginner course. www.flybc.org A fellow named Harold Sartorius and I hooked up to share expenses and try the course. We spent Friday evening learning to kite which is to get the wing over head properly inflated for launch. This proved to be quite a learning experience. I have all the bruises to prove it. Saturday morning was more of the same. We spent our afternoon doing more of the same and then came the call. Round up your gear we are going up the mountain. We scrambled into the van and pounded up the mountain logging road to the summit and upper launch. The view is and was absolutely marvelous. If you look on the site you will see a picture of it. I must admit I was scared spitless. But I trusted that my instructor was going to see me fly. Well I blew my first two launches both times I stopped running and tried to jump into my seat. Needless to say I landed on my butt with a wing wrapped around me. Well third time was a charm and off I went into the sky. I have to say it was about the sweetest thing I have ever felt. To be in the sky with just a few lines holding some fabric is awe inspiring. I cannot put into words the feeling you have. Suffice to say I plan on getting my own equipment as I can afford it and continue to learn this craft. We both got three flights in and I plan to return soon to get my novice certification.

I Got A New Puppy

i'm not sure if I mentioned PuppyLinux in the past. This little distro is 72 meg download. It comes in several flavors. This Is "Seamonkey" this refers to the choice of browsers. The latest offering from Mozilla. This distro comes whith and amazing amount of software. You can surf, chat, music, draw, write a letter do a spreadsheet, you name it right out of the box. It takes about 60 seconds to load on a average system. It runs totaly in ram no install necessary. It can save files back to a hard drive, thumbdrive, even a rewitable CD or DVD. This snapshot shows you just a little bit of the Puppy's stuff. if you need more programs you just go to the package manager and look around. Two or three clicks and you have just about every thing you need. Hardware detection is awesome. I have tried this little distro on everything from a PII 233 with 128 meg of ram to a Athlon 2400 with a gig of ram and it has run on every thing in between. I have also used this to rescue Windows computers when they are fragged. I just boot into Puppy mount the windows drive and burn all the files to a cd and reload Windows. Think about it you don't even need a hard drive. Just as long as you have 128 megs of ram. If you need a free OS that can deliver give this one a try. Click the link to the website and you can click the picture to get a better look.

Steveston Wharf

This is a shot of the boats at Steveston wharf is was a postcard kind of shot 

Monk McQueens

This a shot of a table of trouble. We had a wonderful dinner at a place called Monk McQueens on the water. It was the scene of Dad's birthday dinner. The food was ok and the service great but the view was extrarordinary. 

Vancouver By Night

The picture was taken of the water front during the birthday visit. 

The Butcher Bunch

Here we are from left to right.
Derek, Ginger, Dad, Shane, and Me (Terry).
It was a great day. 

Matt & Shane

My brother Shane and his son made the trip from Ontario to be a part of the birthday celebration. It was great to see Shane again and to meet his son who I had not seen since he was about 6. Matt was haming it up with dad for some happy shots
 

Harry & Hazel's Boy

This is my dad. Caught here during a lunch with his kids during the birthday visit

The Siblings

During our visit all four of Mr. Butchers kids got together for the first time in 34 years. A historic occasion. This a little picture of the youngest and the oldest. Derek and Ginger respectively. 

Mickey's B&B

This is the B&B that Derek found for us in Kitsalano two blocks from the beach. We all gathered to honor our father on his 69th birthday The rooms where nice and the beds very soft. If you need a place close to the city and beach Mickey's is a good choice.

Kitsalano

This is the view from Kits beach back to Vancouver 

Let The Sun Shine

We made a little trip to Vancouver and decided to make a stop at Bridal Falls. While the falls where great the sun pouring through the canopy was also very nice. I loved the dappled effect of the sun straining to reach the foor of the forest 

Kubuntu 6.06 Desktop

Well here is another screenshot of a Linux desktop. This is as the title says Kubuntu. It's Ubuntu with the KDE desktop environment. I have made several mods to the desktop. I love the wallpaper and it's message just double click to see it larger. I hacked the menu to hide itself and then used Super Karamba to setup the OX 10 style menu and added a system monitor to keep an eye on the internal goings on. Just need to use Gimp to get rid of the penguin from the bottom right