No, they’re really not, but its fun to pick on them =)Canada was pretty nice. Spent most of the time eating and snowboarding, which isn’t a bad combination honestly. Went up there on the 20th, and after a few delays, managed to get there only an hour or so behind schedule. But honestly, that ain’t too bad considering that I had two layovers on the leg to Vancouver. Its ironic, but before 9/11, the airlines would have probably been even slower to get me to my destination, and have a higher chance of screwing up my bags. But now, after virtually all the major carriers have been tossed around a bit financially, they seem to be doing things a lot better. Market based shakedowns are great.But anyways, yeah, mostly ate lots of Chinese food the entire time, probably way too much. What can I say….Austin has no selection of good Chinese food to speak of. Nothing. Squat. Houston does have a better selection, but thats 3 hours away. Besides, gotta stuff my face sometime, hahahaa ;)Went snowboarding at Cypress Mountain while we were in Vancouver. Madass convenient, maybe 30-45 minute drive to the top of the mountain from downtown Vancouver. They even have a shuttle service so that when the mountain is covered in snow, you don’t have to try and get stranded on the road up the mountain if you don’t have snowtires or chains. That didn’t stop lots of people from trying though….I bet those tow truck guys just raked it in ;)Ended up buying a snowboard in Canada as well. Its a pretty nice setup for the money, so I’m happy with it. Its fucking fast too ^_^Visited my recently deceased grandfather’s resting place as well. Man, its fucking ridiculous how much places charge to give you a spot. You basically gotta leave a couple grand lying around to cover things. Thats just nuts.On the return trip on the 31st, it wasn’t too bad. Only one layover in DFW that time, and I barely made the flight thanks to snow in Vancouver. Apparently, this year they had their first major snowfall in the actual city in quite some time. It was pretty neat I thought, reminded me of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh had icier snow though, not nearly as good for snowballs 
Shockingly, somehow my bags made it to Austin, even though I literally had 5 minutes between my arrival in DFW and the departure of my flight. Running through concourses is fun and all that.Made it in for the New Year with about half an hour to 45 minutes to spare. Decided going downtown would suck (drove by downtown in the shuttle back to my place, it was crazy packed) so stayed at my place and unpacked. Broke open some scotch for the New Years, but nothing special.Resolutions? Um, I’ll give you an IOU ;)And a preview if you get bored….http://gallery.rewq.org/Its not how I want it exactly yet (have to tweak the look of it) but this one is a pretty spiffy gallery system that I decided to download and play around with. Its not something I wrote, but it does have a lot of developers on it, and has some nice ass features I wouldn’t be able to do reasonably. Yes, I’ve given up on my photo gallery and just submitted. If you’re interested, its running Gallery (http://gallery.sf.net).Bah, off to work…
{ 2004 01 05 }
