Ok, So I was a little bad at updating my blog over the year. Sorry, but I can come away with some great experience and lots of fun memories!!  Some highlights:

Dubai for a week in November
   Burj Khalifa, dune bashing, geocaching, swimming in the gulf, meeting up with some Halifax friends, making a good friend.

IndoChina for Christmas - Thailand (Bangkok), Vietnam (Hanoi, Halong Bay, Ho Chi Minh), Cambodia (Phnom Penh, Sinoville, Siem Reap)
Had a great time with two other teachers, can't wait to travel with my new friends over the next year

Geocaching in Qatar - I found about 240 caches in the country (a little over half, when I left), to do this I bought myself a truck, Land Rover Discovery 2003.

I will try harder to keep up with the blogging.. but something life gets busy!!

First week done!!

So first week of classes are done, and I'm felling more comfortable in the classroom than last week, when I didn't have any books or anything.

Prep is slow, because I am still trying to dissect the Alberta curriculum but I hope that now that I'm in a routine prep should go faster.

I'm also running the LEGO club at the school so I really hope that doesn't take up too much of my time, I'm really glad that a few fellow staff mentioned they wouldn't mind helping out with it. This will give me time for prep and we could send more students.  They want one coach per team, but if we have two teams in the same level then I think that is ok.

We did a brunch yesterday and it was awesome.. I'm so happy I went.. great food and great people!
Well back to work.. later!

Lots to update!!

So things have changed a lot since my graduation from U of U, B.Ed. program.

I was offered a job in Doha, Qatar at the Qatar Canadian School.

The whole process has been very very quick.. Aug 4th was when I emailed with my resume and yesterday, Aug 31, I arrived in Doha!

Here is an email update I seen my family.

So finally got into Doha, the stop over in Montreal wasn't too bad.. I
walked around for a little while, also manged to get Wi-Fi on my phone
to do some emails.  I was able to get a seat at an
emergency exit with about 4-5 feet in front of me.. If you fly with
Qatar, I would suggest doing this.. the other seats are very cramped..
for 12 hrs!!  The man seating next to me asked if I would move for his
wife.. but it would be into the middle.. Sorry.. I should have asked
the flight attendant if there was a free seat in first class.. (they
look very nice, when I walked through to leave the plane. )

At the airport, I had the Al Maha Services. it's a little
lounge and they help with the visa and getting through customs.  I'm
not sure the hassle of not using this service but it was nice to relax
and grab a little food after the flight.

Mike (principal) and Jon (CNA-Q host) met me at the Airport and gave
me a ride to the hotel (Moevenpick Doha). All my bags were ok in the
flight, and didn't have to pay again, yippie.

My room includes 3 meals and wifi so I am able to relax here at the
hotel.. I went out for a 10 mins walk over to the Al Corniche before
lunch and I was sweating by the time I got over there..
I went for a swim in the outdoor this afternoon, the outside temp is
44 and the pool is 32.. like a big bathtub!

I don't think I'll go outside during the day but I'll try to go for
another walk after supper.

App is done!!

So after changing my mind again I finally finished my app, submitted it and got a email "
Vendor Portal for BlackBerry App World Submission Receipt" I finally hope that this means I can get that playbook!! And also I can start doing some school work too!

I'm off to bed!

More App stuff

So my app is coming along nicely!

I have a main page with three buttons each which go to the next screen.  well one of the buttons work.. I'm still working on the other two.. I thought copying and modifying the code would work.. but it doesn't, I was able to find a page outlining what I need to do to fix it.

The next thing is to get the math in the background to get working.. that is the goal for Wednesday night.
Tonight is to work on my Physics Assignment.. right I still do have school work!

My App and Go!

So I have been learning to program in Java with the intent to built an app in android. It has been a rough start with no real great tutorial. I was able to find a decent one on Youtube, edu4java.  I finally have a working app that can multiple two numbers together!!  Now to expand that for more numbers and make the user interface a little better and bam, I'll have a working app to submit!!

In my searching for sample code to work from I found out about Go - it's a new programming language that Google made.  I have only seen demos of it but it seems very fast!!  The thing that I am interested it is the learning curve.  If the curve isn't very steep, this would be a gret addition to a high school classroom!

'via Blog this'

'Smart' Bus Shelters

So Ottawa is replacing some bus shelters.  The interesting thing is that they are adding HD tvs to them for ads and that is it.  I hope they have something to do with the buses or this will be a waste of money, but from I'm gathering it's just for advertising.  

The thing that sort of bothers me is they can't go a step further and add a solar panel to the roof.  San Francisco annouced they are doing the something similar a few weeks ago, but it will be a lot better. Solar roof, Wi-Fi, real-time bus schedule, LED lighting after all this putting power back into the grid.


Why not go as far as they did in Italy? These bus stops look awesome and they have great features - touch-screen, LEDs, features a bus map, plotting locations in real-time, e-mail and Web access, tools for planning a best route and getting directions, a community bulletin board, and, of course, a place for silent video advertisements.

Round the world in the fastest time!

 Since I have been interested in peoples journeys around the world I read a few books about traveling around the world either using only human power or only using ground transportation.  This lead me to an interesting documentary with Mark Beaumont.  In 2007/8 he cycled around the world in 194 days and 17 hours to break the world record by 81 days.  He had a camera with him and a series was on BBC. I have also tried to read other stories about other people trying to break this record.


Well it turns out there is a race coming up!  The World Race is starting Feb 18th from the UK and there are 12 riders out to race around the world.  I really really hope that a film crew will be following a couple of the riders because this could be an awesome journey. Here is another link to the race from the folks over at Cycle The Earth.

OC transpo GPS

So I read in the paper that OCtranspo still doesn't want to open up the GPS location of the buses to the public for App development.  They opened it for a few days (maybe not too sure) and a few apps came out of it.  Then the OC closed the source, hoping to develop their own apps (i.e. tap into a source of revenue).  I think that they have realize that there is a great potential to make money I agree, however, if I think that if they really want to have the best app, they should have a contest for something and get people to develop one.  Then they can take the best parts of the apps and develop a great official app and to think most/all the work with me done for free!!  If the OCtranspo develops an app, I'm sure they will make us pay for it and it might not have all the options that we as users might want to use.  I'm excited to see where this will go.

As for STO, they are light-years behind everyone.  I think that they first to develop their schedule for Google Transit.  Time will tell!

Doggie

I didn't mention this before but Jaelle got a dog. Tobi is a Yorkshire Terrier and that he is!
He is 10 weeks old and we are stilling pottie training him.  It's an uphill battle!  He loves to bit too!! I will keep you updated on this progress!

No free trip to Japan!

I don't know if you heard that Japan was planning on offering 10,000 bloggers free return airfare to Japan. I would have blogged my heart out for that!
Ends up I'll have to work to earn money to free over there.. if I ever go.  But I guess that doesn't eliminate the chance for me to teach ESL overseas to make a large amount of money and maybe do some traveling at the same time.

I have a couple friends go to the Teachers' Overseas Recruiting Fair.  I chatting with one and she said it was good and hopes good things come of it.  I hope she grabbed a few interesting things to pass along.  I wonder why U of O can't do something like this?  Maybe they are too busy doing something else with our money.. Well that doesn't make sense because the fair is $125 a person, and they only allow a certain number of people.. lets put the cap at 300 people and it's $125 for a two day pass.  That would be $37,500.  Geez, I should contact the Queens people and see about organizing it here in Ottawa!

Stay tune for more reasonable outlooks at real life!

Classes.

So you might be wondering what classes I'm taking.  I have a senior physics and senior chemistry. And the practicum class the same as last term.  I'm also taking a mandatory class about learning processes, it's ok. We are learning how people learn.

Then I'm taking a couple electives, the first one I chose right away was the tech class, and then I chose a second language learning class.  So far I love the tech class with all the blogging and twitting and google apping..

New School work!

So I haven't been on here for like four months. Lots of things have changed in the past four months.

I have started my B.Ed. and it's fun.

I did my placement in a school in the West end of Ottawa, and I had a great teacher mentor. She did her master's in geophysics at Carleton.

I was teaching grade 10 science and grade 11 physics. the students were fun!

I am also 'working' at Minto Suite Hotel.

Ok thats enough for now.. I will try to add more every week.

Nik and Steph's Wedding

So I was at Wolfe Island, Ontario this past weekend for Nik and Steph's wedding.  It was a blast.  I was Nik's bet man and I hope I did well.  I liked my speech for this wedding better then at Lance's wedding back in Oct '10.  I have known Steph for about 5 years and Nik for about 4 years and well you could say that I introduced them back in '08(?).  We went geocaching a bunch and when I got really into school they went out for the Binthair Challenge.

100 DAYS ARE UP!!

Well the 100 days are up but I wasn't able to keep up for the last week or so.. I have decided to continue until I catch up .. so the means everyday I add another 100..

On the geocaching front, I am at day...58 (well I still need to find one for today!!)

I had one close day.. I DNF'ed on 4 downtown!! but finally found one.. This goes to show.. don't look for caches downtown if you need to find one!

The only problem I foresee in the Easter weekend, I'm going to NB with Jaelle's family. I am taking an overnight bus on Thursday morning to meet them in MTL and then off to NB that day.

So I need to find a cache Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Sunday and Monday I'll find in MTL as it will be easier since I'll be on my own. But Thursday, Friday, Saturday might be a little more challenging.. But after that weekend I will only have about a month left!

Lots of stuff

Well I started my caching streak on Feb 14th and I'm still going.. so I'm in my longest streak 12 days!!! before that was in Halifax for 10 days.. and end that with the longest cache-to-cache on one day 954 km.. A great way to end a streak!!

I don't know how long I will go, I'm going for the 100 days cache but if I get this job extended then I might as well go for 365 (but I could end on Feb 29th because next year is a leap year..maybe that will be my goal!).

As for the job, things are going great.. I am alone at nights (or after 8-9 pm..) so I hope nothing goes wrong.. like two nights ago, a patient wasn't agreeing so I had to turn on the machine and remeasure it and it still didn't agree!! I didn't know what to do so I just left it.. but I was there for an extra 2 hrs..

And yesterday, man am I silly.. I left the machine on!! I had to take the bus back to the centre to turn it off.. an extra bus fare and 2 hrs of my night gone! As I've said before, you usually learn from your mistakes!!

And I'm on the downhill path from my pushups!! my app says 46 days left.. I was thinking maybe doing another 100 challenge after that.. sit-ups? 150 pushups? 5 km walks?

Speaking of walks, I did 8 kms down Yonge st on Tuesday. I should have worn my hiking shoes not winter boots.. and not picked up some groceries!! Anyway.. I picked up a cache and say a few neat places to eat! I am planning on doing the same walk on Monday.. this time with my hiking shoes! (I hope there isn't too much snow!)

New Job

So the new job is great. I have been training for the passed two days and it has been nice to see how it's done. By Feb 22nd I have to be able to do this on my own (I'm replacing a woman who is on leave for 6-months and the other woman is going home for 2-weeks). So I have to take lots of notes and hope for the best!!

Last night I was watching Phil and there was a case where the dose wasn't agreeing so he had to do some additional tests, not too hard but I hope to be able to pick up on some of this stuff quick so I can do my own troubleshooting before calling people!!

I'll post more of a description when I get more comfortable with my place in the process!

As for my push-ups, I have 62 days left and I have 75 left for today, things are on track!!

I will start another challenge maybe next Monday, 100-days of caching. I am waiting until I have a TTC pass so I don't only go after the close ones first, so I can save those for a storm day. Also I can explore the city at the same time.

If anyone has great places to go and see let me know!

Quarter done!!

So I have a day countdown on my dashboard and it says I have 73 days left!!

I have had a couple hard days, and I'll be honest.. I didn't do the full 100 BUT I did catch up to it. So I am doing good now!

Another nice thing is that last week I went to Toronto for a job interview.

It was at Sunnybrook at the Odette cancer centre. The position is a Physics Associate job. This job would be doing QA (quality assurance) for the radiation linac and the patient treatment plan. This is a great position for me just starting out in a Medical Physics career.

Well Great new.. I got the job, they called on Friday to tell me I got the job. It is super exciting for me. I don't know when I start, they want me ASAP. I told them that I could start on Monday, which she was very happy about, but she told me that it HR wouldn't be able to turn around that fast.. So I'm still in Ottawa getting everything packed, looking for a place to stay and looking for a drive to Toronto.. Not really knowing when I should be there for. (I'm think Wednesday or Thursday would be a reasonable starting date!

Well all for now!

Day 9

So I don't need to update every day.. but I am doing the push-ups everyday!!

I'm doing 4 sets of 25 now.. it's quicker to do that then 10 sets of 10!!

Oh Ross this is for you:

Her name is Buddy and will be 9 on Jan 24th.

I have taken her caching a couple times but she isn't a real bushwacker like Chuck or Sam!

Day...6 (I lost count for a sec there..)

Good thing I have a count down app on my desktop!! 94 days to go!!

So the push-ups are easy to do.. but the steps are harder.. (the other way then I would have thought..)

I have been on Wii Fit Plus and Gold Gym's Cardio almost everyday so maybe I'll just do an hour of that a day..

Also I got my blog to post of FB so that should work now!

Any thoughts?