Cuba

Well our trip to Cuba is coming up in a few weeks. We have been doing a lot of reading, in particular we have been checking out reviews of the resort we will be staying at. Although for the most part people are happy with there stay, but there are also major swings one way to the other, so one begs to ask the question, why does visiting the experience of visiting a resort vary from one person to another?

We are all different that’s for sure, but when one person said that all the staff where so wonderful and then another says the staff where really bad, what happened to one person over the other? When someone has bugs all over their room, and another person says they saw just one bug, why? Yet again, someone says the food was good, just a little bland, and someone else says the food sucked, so gives?

OK, the examples above where all within a few weeks of each other, so one must assume that not all the staff turned over in that time frame. So what would be the varying reasons? I will be honest I don’t have an answer, I wish I did, these reviews makes reviewing worthless as not knowing all the circumstances around each visit to the resort one has to take them with a pinch of salt.

So, here we are three weeks out from the trip, we plan on making it a good time, neither of us have ever had a vacation like this and intend to have a good time. But when we return I will try and make a critical review which will by posted on tripadvisor as well as this blog, in my review I will try and give good reasoning why I say what I say, hopefully a review that people may find useful.

Till next time.

Home and cooking and working... and...

Another day ends. Still struggling with the Application Virtual Client package. Currently re-packaging with Adminstudio. Appsdeploy have a packager but it has permissions issues when trying to run it, at least Adminstudio I have used before.

The instructions from good old Microsoft are not very clear.

Well back to cooking salmon.

Church in Nova Scotia in HDR

Church in Nova Scotia, originally uploaded by derek.bowen.

During a recent trip to Nova Scotia I decided to try my hand at doing some HDR photo's, so tripod and camera in hand It set out one morning and looked for interesting shots. I was more looking to take shots so as to practise this art. I found this church on my way back to Anne's house in Middleton.

If I remember right the church was actually for sale, seems to be that there was a lot for sale in Nova Scotia, guess that would be because they have a lot of churches and less and less people are going.

I like doing HDR, it really adds depth and enhances the shot.

Fall and changes

Fall, originally uploaded by derek.bowen.

As the seaons change it seems the skyline of Grande Prairie changes as well. This shot was taken from the Rotary campground over the playground that is there, I cropped out the playground.

Over the past 20 years I have lived in this city I have seen lots of changes, as you drive into the city from the east or the west the city seems to trail on for a lot further both north and south, although north is pretty much the development between the city and Clairmont.

Thre pictire is of St Joe's church in the distance, once the site of Holy Cross school.

Moon over the city

Moon over the city, originally uploaded by derek.bowen.

The Moon has been fairly large over the past few evenings over the city. Snapped this one from the desk of the house on a tripod, hence the car trails.

Balloon Championships Grande Prairie Alberta 2008

Balloon Championships Grande Prairie Alberta 2008-79, originally uploaded by derek.bowen.

Taken in the park of Friday evening. Really cool to see all the balloons inflated and doing brings to light them up. This was well worth the visit to the park and would recomend anyone when they have a chance to view something like this.

Will be up in the balloon call "Sundance" next week, Oct 20, will take some pictures and post them on my Flickr site.

Till next time.

Balloon Stuck - Grande Prairie Daily Herald Tribune

Below is the link to the news article about the balloom incident as well as soom info on the championships.

Grande Prairie Daily Herald Tribune

Stuck

20081009-DSC_0048, originally uploaded by derek.bowen.

This happened around supper time on Oct 9, 2008. There were a number of balloons passing by as part of the Championships being held in Grande Prairie, sadly this guy came a little low and got snaged in some power lines near Pamco in the industrial park.

In this picture the power has been turned off and he is trying to untangle himself with the help of the tether lines pulling him back and forth.

Kudo's to the emergency services and ATCO power getting on scene so quick and, as far as I know, there was were no injuries.

McDonalds New York Style

20080821-DSC_0053, originally uploaded by derek.bowen.

So, off to Time Square I did and among all the glitter, there it was, the biggest McD's sign I have ever seen.

Swan on the Norfolk Broads

Swan on the Norfolk Broads, originally uploaded by derek.bowen.

Just took a nice pic of my Dad's he has on Flickr and cleaned out the front of the boat and some dirty lens stuff...

I have not been to the Norfolk Broads for a long long time. Hope to make it back sometime.

Nice New York pic

20080820-DSC_0136, originally uploaded by derek.bowen.

Was on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty when I snapped this... Kudo's to the people of New York... great group of friendly people.

Air Canada and Air Travel in general

So having traveled by air a few times this year... some crazy rules and regulations.
So the biggie is the Air Canada 1 bag rule. You can only have 1 checked in bag now on Air Canada, previous you could have 2 as long as the combined weight did not exceed 50lbs, the reason is to save fuel, I can understand that after all e know how much gas costs. The crazy part of this new rule though is the fact that the combined weight of the "one" bag cannot exceed 50lbs. Now I wonder which executive in the glass towers of Air Canada thought that one up. Let's do some math... 2 bags...1 weighing 30lbs...the other 20lbs...add them together and you have a combined weight of ummm 50lbs... so where is the weight saving? Now they make you cram everything into 1 bag so yes if they lose it then you lose everything. I would be interested to see the stats on WCB claims from baggage handlers. Remember Air Canada has a $1,500 luggage liability which is not commonly known. Oh one last thing on the baggage... no liquids...so you cannot put liquids in your carry on... you have to put it in your checked baggage, but if they lose say bye bye to any compensation… seems the liability rules have not caught up with the security regulations.

So what about these liquids, seems you can take up 1 liter on board, but the containers can be no larger than 100ml. So what sense does that make? The person who wants to get on board with some “bad” liquids, well don’t you think they would know the rules and if they wanted to get onboard with a “bad” liquid they would just put it in 10 100ml bottles making 1 liter… oh right terrorists are dumb people they would not think of that, they cannot fly planes either!!!!!
Another one I came across just today. So they don’t want any weapons on board the plane, I understand that, hence we get plastic everything on the plane, cups, forks, knives etc. They check for all that when you go through security, so today flying Air Canada I felt I needed something nicer than the on board snacks, so I bought a nice sandwich and a bottle of Snapple white ice tea… note bottle as in glass… I could e wrong on this one, but when you break a bottle I think you can use it as a weapon…pretty sure I saw it in a movie or two... again all these snap reactive rules to try and calm the public, when the average guy just thinks, who the hell thought that one up.

I have an idea… the departments that come up with these ideas should have an offshoot committee made up of average travels, you know some business people, tourists, just average people who have to follow these rules on a regular basis and see a joke when they see one.

Grossman's Bar Toronto

Grossman's Bar Toronto, originally uploaded by derek.bowen.

Wow what a great place. This was taken while in the big TO, the picture was taken last on August 1, maybe early morning of the 2nd.

Really check this bar out when in Toronto, it really does not get going until late at night.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.