After 5 years away, I return to the ocean.
On Vacations and Oceans
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The Transformation of Facebook
While much has been written about Facebook, this isn’t about how Facebook as a
website or a company has changed, but rather how my relationship with it has
changed. I am particularly inspired to write this this morning after reading
this
article
by Cassey Johnston in Ars Technica.
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Caen France District Dissolved
Spending 7 months as part of the Rouen Branch meant that, in a way, they
become our family, and the Caen District, which covered all of Normandy,
became our extended family. Our last week in “France” was actually spent
with the District at the Temple in Frankfurt. We knew that
District Conference was this last weekend, and we were a little
disappointed to come home just before it, but I was very surprised to
receive this email:
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Reflections on France, Three Months In
So it’s been a little over four months since I arrived here in France.
I’m working, but only what I’d typically consider about 1/3 of “full
time” and so I’ve had lots of time to unwind and just enjoy myself.
Bring newly wed, I’ve also affectionately referee to this time as a
“honeymoon” too. That said, there’s a few things that stand out in my mind.
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Disconneted?
So it’s been two and a half weeks since I’ve had a steady internet connection. In an objective reality, that shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but in today’s fast-paced and always-on internet society, that timeframe seems to lie somewhere between an eternity and an epoch. I’ve been travelling (to Iceland and France) and so there’s been a lot to do and see, and so I haven’t felt a particular lack. I haven’t been travelling alone either, so I haven’t been lonely either.
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Blog Redesign — Live Now!
A blog redesign is a big step, perhaps even bigger than my homepage because my blog gets far more traffic. The concern is that people will land here and because the look is different, they won’t recognize it as ‘my’ blog.
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Bretona Corner
School projects make for interesting things to post. This time, it’s the
presentation from a class I took in traffic modelling. I started playing
with the images I wanted to use in PowerPoint and I realized that it
would probably be easier (and more fun) to just put everything into a
video! So I played my in-class presentation from YouTube! The
presentation is on the junction of Highway 14 and the Anthony Henday
(Highway 216) on the southeast corner of Edmonton.
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Emotional Response
‘Geers (or ‘engineers,’ to the uninitiated) have a thing for numbers,
and thus like to make full use of them to solve any problem that comes
their way. For example, to size a pipe, you take the flow rate (a
number), work a little bit of calculus (or black magic…), and you get
out the pipe diameter (another number). ‘Geers like their numbers enough
they’ve even figured out how to assign numbers to things that usually
don’t get numbers, like public support, personal preferences, safety
ratings, the simplicity of the solution, etc.
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Spring in Paris, or the Crazy Night
A couple days ago we made a run to IKEA to get a little furniture to
spruce up our place, and I came home with a painting to put on the wall
(an unplanned purchase, but I like Paris, so why not?). The picture is
called Printemps à Paris (Spring in Paris) and was taken by a lady
from Alberta. I decided to make a video of us putting it up and it
turned out hilarious!
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Travel Bug
A couple weeks ago, I got that vibe — the one that says “Run away for 6
or 9 months, explore the world, and ‘find yourself’!” It didn’t take
long for my practical side to kick in and tell me that I really couldn’t
run away; I have work now and school starts up again in September. That
said, I do graduate from school next April and it’s looking like I might
have a little down time then, so why not run off? The question remaining
then is, Where to go?
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