Motorcyle License

On Friday I went for my motorcycle driving test. I was a little intimidated after the previous weeks class where we were driving 180km in heavy traffic over the weekend. I don't drive a car so man was it ... intense. So back to Friday - first I caught the bus way the hell in Richmond and met the rudest woman I've ever seen. She was some european older lady with her 10 year old son and she boarded the bus, went to the latino woman (8 months pregnant) and barked "MOVE" showing the poor woman her bus pass. The latino woman got up, the fat cow took a seat and someone gave up their seat for the pregnant woman. A little while later Cow got hot and barked to the man beside her "OPEN THE WINDOW". He said in his talking to a little child voice, "can you say please?". "OPEN THE WINDOW ... please". So he did, she said sarcastically "Thank you ..... for the lesson teacher". He replied "I think you need it, my two year old knows how to say please". But in the end the fat cow didn't really seem to care, she just sat with this stupid smug look on her face. Wow, that took my mind off being nervous for the test. I showed up an hour early but the test in front of me cancelled so I was on. First I had an hour to warm up, it was great, all by myself on the little backroads, the mist was still hanging over the river and I was just going up and down on the roads. The test went fantastic, a lot less stress than the weekend before. So now I have my license!! For the test they follow behind you in a car and you have a vest with a radio attached. There is a driver and an examiner in the passenger seat and he says 'turn left at the next intersection'. Lots of school zones, lots of turns and I came back to the starting point on the freeway. I'll publish a photo of the fantastic motorcycle jacket from the 70's later. Its a sight.

Bill Monk

So I found this neat web ap, Bill Monk. Its a 'social banking' site - you create an account (with friends) and when you split a bill it tracks who owes who how much. It also keeps track of lending books and DVDs etc and you can upload info using a phone (say when you're at dinner and you want to remember the bill). The 'take a tour' gives a pretty good explanation.

Motorcycle

I have finished taking the motorcycle training course, here is a photo of me on the cone course. The training facility is at this old runway. It's pretty neat to see, there is this huge runway divided into may different parts. They have a car course set up and this morning apparently someone flipped a car taking a corner too fast. The fire department also does training at this runway and its really neat to see the firetrucks speeding through a narrow cone course with all the lights flashing. At the far end of the runway is the motorcycle training course. Today I successfully passed all the tests which means I have a motorcycle learner license. Now I'm going to start shopping for a bike. In fact, everyone in my family has a motorcycle license except me so I'm a pretty late bloomer. ^_^

The old airport is also the site of the dirigible. Bell Canada has a dirigible that they fly around at events advertising their brand. It turns out the landing place is on a field next to the airstrip. Its neat to see the airship tethered to a mast up close, someone at the track was saying that licensced operators for those ships are rare and they try and get foreign workers in with the qualificaitons. Maybe I should be doing that instead of science....

Cool computer desk

As noticed on Boingboing, this really cool all in one computer desk that folds into a cube.

New Addiction

Well, I've got a new addiction and I've taken the house with me, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This was an earlier creation by Joss Whedon, the guy who created Firefly and while its pretty old, none of us ever really got into it. My excuse is I can't watch something even slightly scary without a room full of people. There are great lines and wikiquote has a lot of them.

In other news, start-of-school-term-bus-pain-in-the-ass, full bus after full bus passing you by while you wait on the curb. But the car drivers don't have it any better, all their cheap parking lots on campus are getting turned into expensive parking lots.