A Night Out Like It Used To Be
It’s not very often that we get a chance out for a night out by ourselves, so when the opportunity presented itself last a couple of nights ago, we weren’t going to miss out.
First up was heading into town to catch the sunset at English Bay. We got there a little later than we intended - almost 8:00pm - so the sun was already almost gone when we got there, but I was able to get a shot or two before the sun was completely gone.
Sunset at English Bay
After that we spent time wandering around the West End, eventually winding up at the Comox Road Long Bar and Grill at the Coast Hotel. Good food, and good music. We’ll be looking to head back there for a weekend sometime in the near future.
About 11:00 or so we drove back to English Bay, parked the car and walked down onto the beach and watched the waves pound in while sitting against one of the logs. We couldn’t see anything towards the water, but that wasn’t the point. After we got back in the car, we noticed a skunk waddling across the road and heading in the direction we’d just come from. I’ve seen three skunks in my life, all in the West End. Not where I thought I’d see them, that’s for sure.
Not yet wanting to head home, we crossed the Granville Street Bridge and parked by the water at Vanier Park, amazed at just how windy it had gotten. We sat there for about an hour, watching boats practice maneuvers on the water.
Now it was coming up on 1:00am, so it was time to head home. Maybe it wasn’t the most exciting night - out at the clubs or anything like that, but it used to be the kind of night that we used to have - and we definitely missed it.
It’s something we’ve got to do more often. S’good for ya.
Man Drives Truck Through Maple Ridge Restaurant
Around dinner time last night, for some unknown reason, a man drove through the parking lot of a strip mall in Maple Ridge, and crashed through the front window of the Halu Sushi restaurant, killing two people, critically injuring three more, and sending six others to hospital with less serious injuries.
Apparently he kept going through the restaurant until he hit the back wall, so it wasn’t a matter of inattention on his part, but police haven’t said yet whether or not the act was intentional or whether there may have been a medical event that led to the crash. However, the fact that the driver was arrested, and not taken to hospital would tend to discount the chance that he’d had a heart attack, stroke, etc.
A single photograph and more details are available at GlobalTVBC.com
Ironically, about two years ago, almost the same thing happened at the Quiznos right next door to the sushi restaurant, when a driver accidentally pulled forward and pushed a woman standing out front of the Quiznos through the front window, killing her.
I’ll post more details as they become available.
Never Take The Campsite Next To The Playground
On my second week of holidays, we decided to go somewhere a little warmer than the Cariboo region of BC, which, while nice, was a little unpredictable in the weather department. Usually the Okanagan turns out to be a better choice, and that turned out to be the case here, as you’ll see.
It was raining when we left Vancouver, and it seemed like the storm was going to follow us all the way to the Interior, we had a decision to make. Where was the driest place in BC? Seeing as how it’s located in the only arid desert in Canada, Osoyoos seemed to be logical choice, so that’s where we decided to go.
By the time we got there, and checked into the motel for the first night, the storm had been left behind, never to reach Osoyoos. I decided to take a walk down to the beach, and was more than a little surprised by the wind coming off of the lake. I expected to see a reporter from CNN standing on the shore talking about the coming hurricane, but, was out of luck. I’m willing to bet that the windsurfer above had a pretty good time, though.
After the first night it was off to find a camping spot, and at the Brookvale Campground, we were able to find one right on the beach. Literally. Sleeping on the sand is a whole lot softer than sleeping on the root of a tree, believe me.
We even had guests for breakfast and dinner each day. Small, brown, feathered guests.
A few days later, though, the campsite was going to be full of reserved spots, so we had to move on, and Penticton was the destination. After we arrived, we checked out a few spots, but decided that $40 a night just for tenting was too much to pay, so we found the South Beach Gardens RV Park, which also had tenting sites, for a little less and settled in.
That’s where the title of this post comes from. They put us right next to the playground, and to be honest, the site itself was the biggest one I’ve ever seen. Our site itself was bigger than our backyard. However, the location was a real drawback. The playground was open till 10pm (!) and you could forget even trying to get to sleep until it was closed and locked. Funny, but I don’t remember nine year old girls screaming that *loud* when I was a kid. We went to the office and requested another site the on the second morning, and literally threw everything into the car and drove to the other end of the campground.
After we got set up in the new location, we were shocked at just how quiet the place was. Guess we’ll know for next time. Incidentally, the morning that we were packing up to go home, another family carried their fully raised tent through the campground and dropped it in the site next to ours. I kind of wondered, so I asked if they had moved from campsite L3, which was the one we had been in. Turns out that they got stuck with it after we did, and they demanded to move to.
Other than that, though, there was nothing wrong with the campground itself. I think there were more Alberta license plates there than BC ones, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
But if we learned nothing else from this trip, the number one lesson was, never take the campsite right next to the playground.
A (Somewhat) Universal Inbox
I’m sure that there’ll be some people reading this who will figure that I’m a bit slow for not having done this sooner, but seeing as how all of my domains use Google Apps to manage the email, I went into the settings for each account and had them all forward on to one specific address, making the daily email run a little simpler.
Once mail starts coming in to the catch-all address, I’ll start applying filters so that the amount of mail that I absolutely *have* to read. I realized that I hadn’t been checking all of them regularly, and I’m a little surprised at the amount of spam that got through Google’s filters. No matter, though, I’ll just mark the stuff as spam and it’ll be gone for good.
Now if I could just find something that would forward voice mail from my cell to this same inbox, I’d be really happy.
Page Rank Is A Weird Thing
This morning Tyler was telling me about his ongoing PR issues with Google, and I decided to check the page rank score for rodtempleton.net for the first time in about 4 months.. Turns out that it’s back up to 4 after sinking as low as 2 not too long ago. This got me to thinking.
Over the last little while, Tyler’s been a lot more active with his posting than I have, and yet my PR goes up, while his goes into the tank. But if you search my name in Google, 8 of the 10 results on the first page relate to me (only #3 and #6 aren’t links to me - gotta get working on that). And it’s been that way for years - good search results in Google, and lousy Page Rank.
It kind of makes me wonder if PR is the thing that bloggers should be chasing. Seriously, if every result on the first page relates to quality content that you’ve provided, does it even matter what the page rank for the site is? The only thing I ever use the Google Toolbar for is to check my own PR, and that’s only 3 or 4 times per year. I don’t use it to check other sites, and a PR of 1 or 2 isn’t going to make me doubt the information on a site if I find it useful.
It’s sort of like the Technorati craze a year or two ago where the only thing that mattered was getting into the top 10,000 and then then the top 1000, and finally the top 100. It doesn’t matter what your score is if you’ve got crap content.
I’m sure that PR plays a part in Google’s search results somehow, but if it does, they’re obviously not going to explain exactly how, and I wouldn’t expect them to.
But I just don’t think that PR is holy grail that bloggers should be chasing.
If you think I’m wrong, please tell me.
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