I finally registered for Northern Voice today, as it seems pretty certain that I will be attending – probably with Megan and Andrew. If you want to register, or want more information, click “The Moose Is Loose” button on the left.

Wow, what a weekend! Or was it?! Haha just kidding, it was tons of fun, even though it poured almost the entire time. And because it rained, it was quite cold too. We had a pretty good turnout, with Andrew, Jane, Megan, Andrea, Jen, Felicia, Chu, Michelle, John, Peter, AndrewH, Dickson, Sharon, and Kimmi making appearances.

First off, big thanks to Jane for getting this show on the road. And awesome job picking the site, we are definitely going to have to go back. Megan, Felicia and I arrived around 7 PM on Friday to see Andrew and Jane setting up camp, and Chu and Michelle setting up the love shack! Man that tent was rocking! Friday night also saw Andrea and Jen come in Andrea’s Aztek (you know, with the tent on the back) and John, Peter and AndrewH all came as well.

It absolutely poured on Friday night, an experience Inge summed up quite well – “it felt like I was in Jurassic Park”. That description was dead on – everywhere you stepped there was a huge puddle of water and mud. Everything was completely soaked on Saturday morning, including my jeans. So soaked in fact, that Felicia had to lend me her sweatpants so Andrew and I could take some clothes down to the dryer. Thank goodness Kokanee Springs is an RV park and had such facilities!

In addition to a washer and dryer, they have a driving range which we took full advantage of on Saturday. Felicia and I did our best to make a “happy gilmore” shot, and the one that I hit perfectly came right after Jane turned off the video camera. Peter had the longest drive, with Andrew and I not far behind.

Jane was our resident cook, and she made some awesome sandwiches on Saturday. Oh yeah, and Andrea toasted the buns and spread the mayo, so kudos beans! Dickson and Sharon stopped by on Saturday, and I think Sharon wins the award for “Most Out Of Place”. Fortunately they stayed long enough to see the fireworks! Not real fireworks, but we got some awesome flames going with coffeemate. Flames so high that we almost got the trees! The stuff is so flamable its crazy – I even burned my hand with it! It rained again Saturday night, and Megan’s stereo finally gave out and starting making noises like an upset animal.

Unfortunately most people left Saturday night, so there was only me, Andrew, Kimmi, Megan, Chu and Michelle left on Sunday morning. Chu and Michelle got up at some ungodly hour and left, so the rest of us had to clean up the campsite. It looked like a damn warzone, let me tell you. We even had explosions as Kimmi decided it would be a good idea to throw a lighter into the fire! If only we had video footage…

Kim, Inge, Megan and I went to Denny’s for lunch after we got back into the city today. It was kind of funny actually, we were so dirty and probably smelled so bad. I can just imagine what people were thinking! Somehow I arrived home with more alcohol than I took (Kimmi brought me more out on Saturday) so we’ll have to go camping again soon 🙂 I dunno about anyone else, but that shower I had when I got home was quite possibly the most satisfying I have ever had. I can finally feel my feet again.

Alright, I think in order to make a good experience great, you have to take away some piece of knowledge – you gotta learn something. I think this weekend was great, so here is what I took away:

• Andrew is a pretty good camper – and he slept in the bed of his truck! Awesome!
• You should always bring two pairs of pants and two pairs of shoes. Thanks Felicia!
• Coffeemate even burns in the air and will carry the flame quite high!
• Lighters make awesome explosions in fire pits.
• You should definitely wear gloves when at the driving range.
• You can reply to almost any statement with some variation of “or can you?!”
• Shoes will burn when you put them in the fire.
• The conversation can always reach “a new low!”
• When you’re in the forest, you are never out of firewood.
• CD’s can be dried off and played without error.
• A marshmallow is only roasted properly when you can take the shell off three times.
• I am a very helpful and considerate drunk!

Ah good times! Check out the photo album of pictures from my camera here. Hopefully I can get the rest of the pictures and video from Jane, Felicia and whoever else, and we can put together a CD photo album. I expect to see all of you there next time, for the entire weekend!

I realize I already made my camping post, but this is just too good to pass up:

The family of a Toronto man say they were shocked when he showed up at their home while his own funeral service was in progress.

Read: National Post

In a matter of hours I’ll be on my way to the Kokanee Campground in Seba Beach! I am mostly packed…I got the beer. So yeah, I guess I am finished packing. Andrew’s post pretty much sums it up – this is gonna be great 🙂

Lots of people are going, so look for some good pictures/video on Monday. Have a great weekend!

Does the title bore you? Interest you? Make you curious? Excellent! You should come out to the first Microsoft sponsored event of the year, taking place at the Dinwoodie Lounge on October 6th. You can find full details and register for the Edmonton event here. If you don’t live in Edmonton, find your event here.

So what will you learn? About game development! Microsoft Academic developer envangelist Anthony Vranic will take you through the steps of building a 3D game from start to finish using C# and Managed DirectX. And you’ll even get to keep the code.

Is that all, you ask? Well…YOU COULD WIN A COPY OF HALO 2 FOR XBOX BEFORE ANYONE ELSE! That’s right, two lucky winners will get a copy of Halo 2. Need I say more?

REGISTER NOW!

After I cleaned up and added a few words to my post on Interac Surcharge Insanity, I sent it off to the Gateway for publication. It appeared in today’s issue, and I must say, they did a pretty good job editing. My headshot doesn’t look too bad either, and they even included a photo of an Interac machine!

You can read the published article here. Also, thanks to everyone for your comments on this, both online and offline.

Survivor: Vanuatu starts tomorrow at 6 PM MST, and my dad is running a pool. If you would like to join, either email me or email him. Please let us know ASAP.

Think the show is past it’s prime? Well this year’s outcasts include a 25 year old, blond, pigtailed “sheep farmer” named Dolly who bears a striking resemblance to Britney Spears. I kid you not. You cannot BUY comedy like that! My vote for hottest girl on this show goes to the 21 year old Eliza.

Watched Canada beat Finland 3-2 tonite at the PowerPlant with a bunch of people including Megan, Andrew, Dickson, Kimmi, Felicia, Felix, Alex and Jamie. Even though it was fun enough to see our guys win, it was even better as we celebrated Alex’s birthday!

Good times were had by all except our waitress, who had to clean up 25 shot glasses, two pitches, numerous highball glasses, and a few pints in addition to the spilled water and burned napkins. She really didn’t do that great a job anyway, so don’t waste your time feeling bad for her.

Today at CAB I decided I wanted Chinese food so I went over to the cafeteria place to get some. Grabbed my good old Coke, and headed to the counter to pay using my debit card. What happened next I was not prepared for. I was shocked…they wanted to charge me a 35 cent surcharge for using Interac.

Before I go on, I must say I sat in CAB and griped to Andrew and Megan about the surcharge. I made a fuss, and even grabbed four forks and a stack of napkins to make myself feel like I was getting something for my 35 cents. However, if you are a frequent reader of my blog, you’ll know that I don’t rant without facts. And this post is no different.

Why was I upset about the surcharge? First and foremost, if a method of payment is made available for use, it seems counterproductive to then restrict the use of that method. Why did they invent Interac? Because it is convenient. Now Andrew made the claim that because it is convenient, I am willing to pay a higher price for this extra convenience. This is totally untrue. Any convenience I get from using Interac is instantly negated by the convenience the merchant receives. My use of Interac not only saves them time, but money. The funds go directly into their account, they don’t have to hold cash on hand, and there are no trips to the bank, no deposit slips to fill out, etc. From TD Canada Trust:

An automated terminal provides instant authorization of Interac Direct Payment, Visa and other major credit card transactions. As a merchant, use of an automated terminal allows you to reduce the number of trips you make to the bank, because funds are deposited for you electronically. And you don’t have to spend time filling out deposit summaries. These benefits add up to increased convenience and potentially increased sales.

Why on earth should I pay extra so that they benefit twice? Its ludicrous! But wait! It gets worse. This is from the Interac Association website:

Interac Association does not charge fees to consumers…

A surcharge is a fee charged to cardholders by the Interac Association member responsible for the Automated Banking Machine or the Interac Direct Payment terminal. A merchant cannot surcharge for the use of Interac Direct Payment. The surcharge fee is in addition to any service charges the cardholders may pay their financial institution for using the Interac shared services.

So as you can see from the above quote, merchants cannot charge me a surcharge for using Interac on top of whatever the bank is charging. So if the University wants to charge me a surcharge, I want COLD, HARD, PROOF that they are being charged per transaction by the bank. I haven’t read, seen, or heard anything about the banks raising their rates, and it seems to me that it would have made the news if they did. After all, “more than 34 million banking cards are in circulation among an adult population of 21.8 million. Canadians love their banking cards using them more than 2.4 billion times in 2002. That’s an average of 76 times a second for every hour of every day.”

Charging me for something that saves you money? Ridiculous, and I won’t have it. The war is on.

Well here I am, back in good old Edmonton. Sure is colder than it was in Toronto! Mostly uneventful flight home, which is always a good thing. The security at the Toronto airport was probably the nicest group of security people I have ever encountered at an airport, very nice for a change, even though I still had to undo the belt.

Today was obviously the last day of the Launch Meeting at Microsoft, and we didn’t go quite as long as yesterday. Lots of cool stuff coming up for events on campus – even for you non-programming types! More details to come soon, but I think you’ll definitely want to check it out. We also talked today a little bit about Windows XP Service Pack 2, so like I have been saying, if you haven’t already, or if I haven’t already for you, install it!

Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on theSpoke yesterday as well, I will make sure it gets to the right people so that we can improve the site.

I did end up taking some pictures today, which you can see here. All in all, it was a fun trip and a very interesting weekend!