The Mission

This is where I work.

Saturday Afternoons & New Floors

Well I'm just surfing the net around looking out the window. The weather has turned ugly with 40kmh + winds and just below zero temperatures. It was snowing last night. I just finished laying my first floor. We chose a new product. There vinyl planks that are simply laid down over and solid sub-floor or in my case an old tile floor (we ripped up old carpet). I was a little nervous to start with but it was really quite simple. The only tools I needed where a good solid 36 inch ruler and a sharp knife to cut and score the planks. I would recommend this product to anyone wanting to upgrade with simplicity in mind. The product is called Trafficmaster "Allure" It looks good and has a 25 year warranty.

Vernon Reserve Clinic

We headed down to Vernon to do a reserve repack clinic. Of course we also got some air time in. Here is a couple of shots of things we saw. I will be posting more pictures at my web album.

Here is my new Grandson

We spent a few hours parawaiting at Little Dome. Not much to report

Here is Bryce and his new wife Quyen. In Vietnam a few months before the wedding

Wedding Bells

My Friend and co-worker Bryce Kowalsky recently married in Vietnam. Here is the happy couple

Ayden Damon Shpak

I'm way late but I must let you all know of the arrival of my newest grandson. He came into the world late Valentines day. Much to the approval of his brother Xavier. He was born in Quesnel B.C. and is the pride and joy of his mom and dad.

Apco Vista

Spring is close and paragliding has come to the forfront again. I bought a new to me demo paraglider from Muller Windsports. An Apco Vista. I have only had two sled rides on it so far but looking forward to summer with new equiment. I started with old gear and while it served me I think in retrospect learning with better equipment would have been wiser.

Sunday Morning

Just sitting here reading God's Word getting ready to bring a message to the folks in Barrier Church and was struck by the thoughts of a pastor from New Mexico. When asked what poverty of spirit means as in the Beatitudes. He said "it is my awareness that I cannot save myself, that I am basically defenseless, that neither money nor power will spare me from suffering and death. It is my awareness that I desperately need God's help and mercy. It is stepping away from the rule of fear in one's life, fear being the great force that restrains us from acts of love." It is this last part that captures me. I wonder what a world un-restrained by fear would look like? What do you think?

Podcasts And The Sansa e260

Back to the Sansa. I have discovered an awesome piece of software for Podcasts. It's called myPodder at Podcastready The Best thing about it is you can download the all in one version and it will work in Linux, Windows and Mac. But here is the best part.... It installs to the device itself and can be used on virtually any computer because the software is launched from the player not the computer. For a geek like me this is very handy folks.

The View From the Pimple

Sled Rides At The Pimple

Derek Dave and myself took a little trip to the Pimple a local launch site. It was my second chance to try my new Sup' Air Altix harness and man is it sweet. This was my first attempt at the Pimple and all went well. I did some brief terrain flying getting within a few meters of the big trees growing on the slope. Short but fun . This picture is pre-flight of my brother readying for launch

Doing Mac leopard OS

Well As you may have read in earlier post I bought a Mac Mini. After trying it for a few days I went online a bought 2 gigs of fast ram and tore the little box part and installed it. Because of it's small form factor it uses laptop ram. After watching a Youtube video it looked doable. All went well and It was running great under Tiger. But My wife and I decided to spend our anniversary upgrading to Leopard. Well things did not go well. I watched my wife do an upgrade instead of a clean install and all went well. My turn did not. I always do clean installs in windows and Linux but based on Jackie's experience I gave it a whirl. My first attempt ended in a stalled install. Second attempt worked but after a few hours I discovered that my machine was locking up if left for awhile and it was shutting my Time Machine back up drive down in the process. Nothing would wake it. Nothing except a reboot. Then it would not reboot or allow a re-install. I took several hours reading Google searches to find a way to reset it. Then a clean install and still problems. I was getting a little short thinking Tiger was the way to go. But While I was at work my wife did a clean install with nothing plugged into it. That worked. It has still crashed a couple of times and some times it will not wake from sleep. Tiger was rock stable. Leopard has a way to go. While I am not impressed with Vista I have to say Leopard has not been a great experience either. Time will tell if either of these OS's can match their predecessors in terms of stability.

Man I Love Linux

This post is coming to you from a Linux Desktop. Linux Mint 4.0 to be exact. I have been very impressed with the rapid pace of development of Open Source Linux desktops. In the last two years I have seen a step by step refinement of the Linux desktop. I have tried too many too mention. The Distros that have stuck around are Mint, Ubuntu, PClinuxOS, Dream Linux. I also use Puppy Linux to refurbish older hardware we sell at our thrift store. Puppy consistently makes old Pentium II's viable work stations for basic computing. Anyway back to my rave. I bought a little Sansa e260 for under a $100 to replace a Creative ZenV Plus that died. I was disappointed by the lack of Podcast support in Windows. So out of curiosity I booted into Mint Linux and fired up Amarok. It saw my player right away and I was able to load songs and setup automated podcast downloads. If it was not for my need to run Photoshop natively I would ditch Windows altogether. But for now I dual boot. I also use Mac and recently tried to do an upgrade from Tiger to Leopard more on that later......

Ever Wonder Who Dave Is?

Well this is Dave!

Looking Back

Dave took this while Paragliding in November. These are views of Kamloops that very few ever see.

The Launch

It's been a while but here is a picture of Dave doing his thing at the Little Dome launch

A Loving Savior

Can't explain it but Jesus has been sweet heavy on my heart lately. He comes like a thick warm blanket and leaves me feeling a deep comfort.

Something to think about

"Sometimes it takes a storm to understand how I really feel"

Thanksgiving Day 2007

It's been awhile since my last post. Here it is Thanksgiving day already. I have much to be grateful for. I have a good life. A great family, a job I love and a Saviour who loves me. What more can you ask for I just returned from the school where I spent an hour kiting my paraglider. That went well. I had several good inflation's while learning to control the wing with my "C's". Jackie's brother Alan arrived we just finished a nice lunch that Jackie prepared for us. It's movie time so talk to you soon.

As I climbed up to Sahali this was the surreal view I was treated to. A blanket of fog slowly moving north to revel a sleeping city underneath.

It was a cool fall morning and I snapped this shot while driving to work. It was brief moment that the clouds opened up and the sun made an appearance.

Flyin,Flyin,Flyin

The boys where getting air time a few weeks back and I took my long lens out (Canon 20D Sigma 70-200 2.8 with a Sigma 2x Tele Converter) and grabbed a few shots. This one is of my brother Derek cruisin.

Getting Air Time

My brother and I got into the air for a quick flight earlier this week and he snapped a couple of pics. Here is one of yours truly.

Food for Thought

"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

Jesus Christ

PCLinuxOS Desktop

Just a screen shot of one of my Linux desktops.

Mint Linux

I recently had a chance to install Mint Linux on my son-in-laws computer. He was impressed with all it's features and ease of use. Time will tell if we have a convert.

Novice Rating

Well I headed down to Mnt. Woodside to see Jim Reich and try to secure my novice rating for paragliding. Despite almost everything going wrong it seems I passed. I botched my take off and could not get into my seat during the flight so I headed to the LZ and landed ok. We headed to Bridal as conditions where getting rough. I spent the next hour and a half kiting. At 5 pm I had to head home. I was feeling like I had screwed it all up. But atlas Jim emailed saying I had passed.

Fedora 7 "Live"

As you know I spend way too much time fiddling with Linux. This is a screen shot of the latest offering from Fedora . I spent a little time checking it out and I must say it is very nice.

Sea to Sky & Ferry Ride

Here are a couple of shots from the holidays on the way to the coast

McKenzie Launch Pemberton

I was able to connect with the folks in Pemberton. I got two flights in with a couple of pilots there. It was good. This is the view fron launch.

Amazing Kite

During our beach walk we found this fellow trying out his buddies Acro Kite. The design was very simular to a paragliding wing. The little wing had a lot of power and was very fast. It made a wild buzzing sound when it was pushed into turns. VERY COOL!