raymondpoort.com

I’ll be in Slovakia for work the coming days…probably no time (and possibly no internet too!), so expect no posts.

Congrats to Big Daddy Dave Winer!

The ‘blogfather’ 🙂 who paved the way for weblogs in general is celibrating the 9th Birthday of his weblog today.

Well, that sucks…I just got this message when I logged in to Yahoo Mail:

I indeed don’t use the account that much for email (have Gmail for that! :)), the ipodder-dev group was perhaps the main reason for having the account…then again, you would think that the mail-account should not be deactivated if you’re still using your Yahoo! ID (as I do for Flickr)…huh?!?

Anyway, I reactivated the account…only loosing all the emails 🙁

Today 30 years ago, Apple Computer was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, congrats! (and no, this was no April fools joke!)

Seems that Adam Curry & Podshow have found a new way to attract listeners to their shows…the Golden Ticket concept!

Adam (per mail): "In short, it’s a great way to run fun contests and promotions."

This is done by having the podcast-server providing a specialized/customized podcast mp3-file to a random (or selected?) person or group who is downloading that podcast!!

Interesting stuff…taking things to a next level, again! 🙂

I listened to yesterdays and todays DSC and…..DIDN’T win, amazing! 🙁 🙁 🙁

Well, better luck next time, guess that’s the whole point of it. 🙂

We made it! A clean 3-0 win last night made us season-champion of our division!!

Our biggest fans over the past months (Wieke & Ingrid) gave us this trophy:

Nice, eh? 😉

Tonight is the big night, a draw is enough for the championship!!!

Wish us luck! 🙂

Some artists performing at Pohoda 2006 are confirmed…among them the Pixies and Stereo MCs…YESSSSSS!!!!!

The earlier post already mentioned that the journey from Banff was quite tiresome, here’s the complete story;

We planned to fly back on Friday from Calgary to Vancouver, then with KLM to Amsterdam, scheduled to arrive nicely on Saturday end of the morning…in order to do so we woke up earrrrrly on Friday morning (before 6am), drove the car from Banff to Calgary Airport (still a good 1.5 hour drive) and delivered it back to AVIS. Plan was to take an early flight so we would have more than enough time in Vancouver to hop on the KLM jet. As we were flying on standby, it’s always better to have enough time…

Well, what we didn’t know was that following the start of springbreak in British Colombia (Vancouver), which was rally convenient for our trip two weeks before (NOT!), this weekend was start of the springbreak in Alberta (Calgary)…..aaaahhhhhhh!!!! That meant that we again were surrounded by 100’s of teenagers with valid tickets to Vancouver…ggrrrrrr!!! After trying to get a seat on any plane for some hours, we felt it wouldn’t work out this time…the number of people on standby grew with every flight (40+ people on the waitlist per flight!!!) and our rank was last of the last 🙁 🙁

What to do; well we could ofcourse get the car back from AVIS, since it officially still had one day left on the rental period and drive it to Vancouver, ‘just’ a 900km drive. Or take the Greyhound overnight…either way we would miss the KLM flight on Friday and would anly be able to take it on Saturday…that is *if* there were seats available, still a gamble.

Luckily we saw the light (that was just before we started banging our heads against the wall); perhaps we could trade in our Calgary-Vancouver and Vancouver-Amsterdam ticket for a Calgary-….Europe (Frankfurt or London) ticket?!?!

It turned out that this actually worked out and so we were able to leave Calgary with the 17:45h Air Canada flight to Frankfurt!!!

The flight itself was OK, arrived late Saturday morning in Frankfurt, booked tickets from Frankfurt to Amsterdam and finally arrived home little after 3pm!

Last thing (actually expected since we seem to have a subscription on it) was our luggage.

Two weeks before things got mixed up as the luggage stayed in Vancouver while we nearly made it on the flight to Calgary…this time it *was* sent to Vancouver while we stayed in Calgary…thank you Air Canada for screwing this one up, again!

Actually this was not too bad; as we couldn’t check the luggage in for the Frankfurt flight from Calgary, we travelled light and made arrangements for the luggage to be delivered to our home…great service, and free! 🙂 🙂

It was quite a journey (travelled over 24 hours!), but…we’re back again!!

On our way out!,
originally uploaded by raymondpoort.

It was heaps of fun, again…we’ll probably come back some day.

See y’all back in NL…we’re off!!

Gone skiing 🙂,
originally uploaded by raymondpoort.

It is not mine…

Yesterday we enjoyed a fabulous last day of skiing, we did some runs together with Sharon, who is also staying in the Bed & Breakfast. She knows the area pretty well and is a good laugh, so we really enjoyed the last day.

Today we’ll do some hikes around Banff near Lake Minniwanka with Claire and Scott. Tonight could be BINGO-night (we missed out on the bingo at the Legion last week)…then again; uuhhhh, will I really go to bingo?????? 🙂

Am sooooo happy, got the 60Gb iPod with video, obviously the black one…COOL!!!

Discussing eagles with an eagle-watcher,
originally uploaded by raymondpoort.

While hiking through Kananaskis last Sunday, we met some people who are ‘professional’ eagle-watchers…basically they’re counting the eagles flying by through this pass. On a random Sunday they counted 300 of those birdies!!!
They’re member of the Rocky Mountain Eagle Research Foundation.

Quite a nice alternative to fishing, eh? 🙂

Am playing around with Flickr…on the right you’ll see a random photo from my Flickr-page, clicking on it will bring you to the photostream…funky, eh?

New week, new skiing; got my gear yesterday, so Lake Louise…here we come!!!

A pretty relaxing weekend has come to an end…it was filled with sleeping in and some beautiful hikes.

Dined in the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel last Saturday evening, lovely food but the ambiance wasn’t too good (mainly the lights/lack of candles).

Today we went to Kananaskis, an area we both hadn’t been before…*AMAZING* nature…pictures on my Flickr-page!

Some of the pictures we took are posted on my Flickr-page.

I actually have the Flickr-account for quite a while but haven’t use it till now…it was the easiest way to get a bunch of photos uploaded on the net fast 🙂

The skiing at Sunshine was GREAT. We had a three day lift pass and I changed my skis for a snowboard today…heaps of fun and went quite good actually.

Tomorrow we’re off to Calgary with Claire and Scott, gonna do some serious shopping 🙂