Brent Sellers & Rowena’s Hennink’s Wedding Photos

On June 19th, 2010, we were honoured to attend the wedding of our friend Rowena Hennink to Brent Sellers in Kaleden, BC, on June 19th, 2010. It was a great wedding! Although the breathtakingly talented dynamic duo, Dave & Quin, were there shooting as the official wedding photographers, I still wanted to snap a few pictures for myself. I figured this was a good opportunity to field test a Tenba Messenger Photo Bag I had been sent for review months earlier, so I lugged along my Nikon D300 with a battery grip, 70-200mm Nikkor lens, 24-70mm Nikkor lens, 35mm Nikkor prime lens, Panasonic GF-1, Dell Vostro V13 laptop…and a few other small things. The review of that bag is coming soon to Laptop Thoughts and Digital Home Thoughts. But back to the wedding…

Sort of funny story: on our way there, we used my GPS to find the town (village? hamlet?) of Kaleden. It was easy enough to locate, but the wedding was being held at a place called Ponderosa Point, and that place wasn’t on the GPS. We didn’t get any directions before going there, and there were no signs, but figured since it was such a small place, and we knew it was on the water, we wouldn’t have any trouble finding it. Was that ever a mistake! When we drove up to the waterfront area, there were a bunch of cars parked, so I got out to see if it was the place. An elderly lady said there was a wedding going on nearby, so I walked around the corner to check. There was a tall man in red and orange robes raising his hands and talking about the blessings of the sun, the love of Mother Earth, etc. – surrounded by a bunch of people. It was a wedding – of sorts – all right, but not the one I was looking for! We drove up and down the waterfront area, eventually giving up and looking up a phone number for the resort (and getting more stressed out by the minute). They tried to explain where they were located, and even then it took us a couple of tries to find it. Thankfully, we arrived a few minutes before the wedding started, and we didn’t miss anything.

I tend to go for fairly realistic looks in my photos, but I had some fun with a setting I developed (based off a Lightroom 3 preset) that I used in the photos in this post…

Mild Insanity + Rage + Slight Technical Know-How = Hilarity

Below is an email I received a little over a month ago. I blurred out the name of the person who sent it to me to avoid his further embarrassment, but this was just too funny not to share. Read it and weep tears of laughter…

After reading this email, I started to reply back with basically a “What on EARTH are you talking about?” but I decided since he gave me his phone number, I might as well get to the bottom of this immediately- I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. Right from the beginning of the conversation, I couldn’t get a word in – he was spewing forth a non-stop barrage of anger and frustration. I tried to explain right from the start that Windows Phone Thoughts was a news and reviews site, that we didn’t sell anything directly, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He told me some story about how he bought his son two mobile recharging units for his son’s iPad, and his son was leaving on a trip to China, and how the “damn Boxwave chargers were defective”.

Aha, Boxwave! Once I heard that, the story started to make sense – I tried to break in on his ranting to say that I didn’t work for Boxwave, and wasn’t affiliated with them in any way, and he literally screamed at me “THEN WHY DON’T YOU HANG UP ON ME?”. I replied back that my mother raised me to be a polite person and that I wasn’t going to hang on up him – but that I could appreciate it if he would stop yelling. “I’M NOT YELLING!” he yelled at me. This hilarity went on for another minute or two, and finally he calmed down. I calmly explained yet again that I had no affiliation with Boxwave, though I had reviewed their products in the past.

In a nutshell, this guy used a search engine to find an old Pocket PC Thoughts post mentioning Boxwave and used our contact form to send me the above email, thinking he was contacting the company. He had made several attempts, but they ignored him. He was adamant that he used the Boxwave contact form and that their contact form must be routing all contact email to me. Yeah, right. After some further discussions he calmed down a little more, and I wished him all the best in getting in touch with Boxwave.

Another day, another crazy person. I love being online!

Logan’s First Hair Cut

Just when I thought that my boy couldn’t get any cuter, he went for his first hair cut (at a place called Beaners), and came back looking even more adorable! I can’t get over how fast he’s growing up – it seems like just a month ago he was still a little baby, but now he looks like a little boy. All those cliches about time passing so fast are quite true. I feel so very blessed to be able to work from home and get extra moments with my son throughout the day – something not very many dads get to do. My hope for 2010/2011 is that will be able to continue.


In Case Anyone Thought I Was Joking…

Just in case anyone thought that I was joking about ordering a Mac Mini, there’s the proof above…I know, I find it hard to believe myself. I don’t know what kinds of dreams I’ll have tonight…the ghost of Windows Computers Past might pay me a visit!

Someone Invent This: In-Car Emergency Services Warning System

I’ve gotten lazy about sharing ideas for inventions that pop into my head, so here’s another entry in the Someone Invent This category. I think someone should invent an in-car emergency services warning system. Here’s why…

I was in the car with Ashley this past weekend, and we were driving along a road doing 80 km/hr. Ashley was driving, and like any good driver, she was routinely checking her rear view mirror, so she saw the ambulance rushing up behind us and moved over to the right long before it reached us. The guy in the left lane, the lane the ambulance was in, didn’t see it or hear it until it was right up on his bumper – the ambulance had to slow down and wait for this driver to realize they were behind him and move over. This cost the ambulance tens of seconds of momentum, and when you’re talking about emergencies, seconds add up to minutes, and every minute of the Golden Hour counts. Drivers not paying attention to emergency vehicles costs lives, and I think there’s a technological solution to the problem.

Here’s the concept: via a wireless signal, emergency vehicles – ambulances, police cars, fire trucks, etc. – would be able to broadcast their presence to vehicles within a radius of “x” feet. This signal would do a couple of things; mute/pause music/radio playback and audibly broadcast an alert to the driver (“EMERGENCY VEHICLE APPROACHING: PLEASE SAFELY MOVE TO THE RIGHT”). By having a few seconds of warning, drivers, even the most irresponsible ones, would be given an alert they’d likely heed. Sure, human nature being what it is, it might not be the perfect solution – but the vast majority of people would respond to the warning.

Technological implementation? Bluetooth is likely the best bet – there are a lot of cars out there with Bluetooth implemented. I’m not sure if, from a security standpoint, Bluetooth has the sort of “override” needed for this to work. A class 1 Bluetooth device can broadcast 100 metres (328 feet), which seems about right in terms of distance. Cars that have a GPS could implement an advanced version of this, providing Z-axis data…meaning if you’re on an overpass, and an ambulance is driving under you, there would be no warning. There are some interesting mesh network technologies that can be implemented here as well to round out the solution…

Anything involving vehicles takes a lot of effort and coordination, so the inclusion of this wireless system would have to be government mandated and rolled out into vehicles over the course of many years. Retro-fitting older vehicles with the required technology would be difficult – heck, we can’t even get old oil-burning junkers off the road where I live – but over time, you’d reach a critical mass big enough to make this work.

OK, somebody go invent this please. 🙂

Dragon Fund Meeting Scheduled for June 16th

If you’re an investor that has money in the Dragon Fund, the fund originally started by Dave Jones of Wealthstreet, you’ll be interested in knowing that the trustees of the Dragon Fund (of which Dave Jones is no longer one) have called a meeting. I phoned Michael Arnold (one of the trustees) today to ask what the latest updates were on the land in Airdrie, and he said they had been contacting investors via email – and that the email they sent me bounced. The meeting is being held on June 16th, 7pm, at Southside Victory Church (6402 1A Street SW) in Calgary. I’ll be there and will report back what the trustees tell the investors.