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?

100 day challenge!!

So it's my birthday and I'm going to start a 100 day challenge..

10,000 steps and 100 pushups... I wonder if I can really do it!

Mom and Dad gave me a pedometer so I will have use of that.. and also Jaelle's Wii.

The 100 pushups might be easy or hard.. I'm not really sure!!

Nothing short of perfect..

Thats what I can say about the amount of blogging I do!!

Summer was laid back.. maybe too laid back. I'm still looking for a job.

I worked banquet stuff and made some money but nothing more promising.

Bluesfest was good, but I would have liked to see more of the shows.. There was a new tent, the Mill St Brew Pub, and we had the food for it. Deep Fried Pickles, Sweet Potato fries, Chicken Wings and Pretzel. The first three were great! the Pretzel not so much..

But by the end of the festival, I think the bosses were thinking a no go for next year. Mainly because they didn't do any advertising!!

I have not cached as much I have wanted!!!! I did get one great day out with Mike doing the CHL series about 2 days before it was removed so I'm very glad about that.

Daryl and I were discussing placing a few caches on the PPJ near Shawville, a great rail to trail but There was 125 caches placed on it last week.. Oh well, guess we have 125 new caches to find!!

I have been looking at my stats for various challenge caches, and I also have started to write a marco. The challenge caches are just looking back at what I found when, etc.. The marco is for a challenge cache, http://coord.info/GC28F5K. You have to find 5 different caches which are 'islands'. At the time of finding those caches, there can't be another cache within 3 miles. Not that hard to program when you think about it, I guess..

Next time I'll break it down and maybe someone can help!

Been forever...

SO I haven't been on this thing forever... loads of things going on...

I'm been geocaching, done a bit of traveling and also been looking for a job.. yippie me.

Master's in Science in Medical Physics and all I can do is be a banquet server..

So I do have a fan... Rob it's a good thing you did update every 6 hours for the last years. You would have missed it!!

The book I read was The Google Story. About Google from the start up... I was thinking about Matt G and Rob F doing the same thing in Thornton... hehehe

Two things, I've taken from the book, I want to make a LEGO computer, and there is a recipe for fried chicken, it's suppose to be good..
Oh, you should check out the site, there is a GLAT, Google Labs Aptitude Test, for those smarties out there you should try it... who knows you might be working at Google soon!! (if you do get a job, send me a cool Google thing.. i.e. not a shirt)

back to writing

Well it's been forever...

So I have posted about a year ago... and I'll try to post more.. but I'm trying to get my thesis done.. so I can't spend too much time on this...
But a few times I wanted to say:
- Add Google analytics to see how many actually read this thing.
- Just read a book about Google and man the stuff they are doing... will take over the computer world... with the internet almost conquered, and a mobile phone on the way.. next thing is an OS!!
- moved in with the GF... we even got X-mas pictures... things are good
- I'll update thing in 2 months when I'm done the master's thesis...

Lates!!

Yes I'm alive

SO it's been like 5 months since I last posted...
Lots has happened... but I'll only update on a few things...

I'm still here in Ottawa, just starting my second year on my Master's, research is going well but now I have to take some classes so it gets in the way of research.

The summer was great, lots of great bands, Sloan, Trews, Signal Hill, Great Big Sea, Live, Nelly Furtado, Jimmy Swift Band, and a bunch more that I can't remember right now.

I volunteered at the HOPE volleyball tounry (because The Trews and Sloan were playing so I saw them for free), but I met a cool girl, it's sort of funny, we didn't really talk at the event but after we hung out at the volunteer party and she came with me to see some jazz with friends (from work) in Hull.

Took a weekend trip to MTL, it was fun. Helped a friend move but stayed the night and meet up with some friends (some Brits). I'm on this site, couchsurfing.com and Globalfreeloaders.com and got a message asking if (two days from then) 5 Brits could stay at my house... I thought about it... and I was like hell yeah!! so they crashed on the floor of my apt for 2 nights I hope that they had a great time... and then that weekend I saw three of them in MTL... really nice to see them again... and one went on to Halifax and had a day visiting with my folks... went to Peggy's Cove and the like.. this assures me a few places to craash when I'm in the U.K. next!! (for the first time)

well thats enough posting right now... I'll check back in another 5 months....

Andrew

Ok here I go!

So not much has happened in the past little while..

I posted my DVD list if you want to check out my list, you can say that it's pretty big....

I got back a couple days ago from a trip to Mont St Anne and Le Massief, two ski hills just north of Quebec city, it was a really great time! great snow, and had some good times with friends! We changed our trip from Jay Peak Vermont to Quebec because there was 40 cm of snow that fell in Quebec. It was a great choice.

I started using Facebook . It's another friend network website, I think that more people use it, so if you have it... add me!


Thats about it for now.... off to get ready to head out to party!!

Good new Bad news

So two things I didn't talk about in my last post.

One, I am a published Physicist!!!
I had my paper that I was working on last year published in Canadian Undergraduate Physics Journal, you can check it out
here . I have the main reseach article and also the cover!!!

and the bad news....
I was robbed... On wed, I came home to find the door frame of my apt cracked and I went to my room and it was a mess, (more then usual). My DVD/CD-R drive, bottles of Vodka, Rum and Tequila, my nice watch, 128 CD holder... empty! and my knapsack, because you can't steal things andnot carry it in anything!! FUCKERS! Well it's not as bad as my roommate, his laptop and XBox was taken!!

oh well, I'm pissed and ..... later

Andrew