Jason’s Random Thoughts

It’s funny how something as simple as being somewhere with the woman you love can make that somewhere ten times more enjoyable.

I grew up in Southern Ontario, spending much of that time about an hour’s drive away from Niagara Falls.  In the 22 years I had spent in the province, I had seen The Falls maybe half a dozen times.  Each time I had gone with friends, but never girlfriends.  Because of this, we would often go just to watch people or visit one of the many nudie bars that lay on the outskirts of the city.

Seeing The Falls themselves was alright, but not much fun.

So when Reiko and I visited Niagara Falls with some of my family today, I was quite surprised with how much I enjoyed the trip.

Driving there from Simcoe took two hours, and after arriving we had some lunch.  The weather was great, and the light breeze picked up the mists generated by The Falls and blew it across the picnic area.  Even with this cold water hitting us for the first hour or so, the day was remarkably warm.  From there we managed to take several hundred photos as we walked both above the ground, and below.  One of the attractions allowed us to walk behind the falls, and this was enjoyable as we could get right close to the water and see some of the snow that had built up in the morning.  We also treked up Clifton Hill to take in some of the sights, and even enjoyed a brief Ferris Wheel ride.

After all this, I’m still surprised that Reiko managed to stay awake.  She had just come from a Tokyo to Toronto direct flight the day before, with a four hour train ride beforehand.  With the excessive time differences, she had woken up several hours before anyone else.  And add to that the nervousness she had felt for meeting some of my family … I’m really surprised she didn’t pass out mid-afternoon.

Maybe that’s why she chased after the squirrels ….

I’m glad that we could make the trip to Niagara Falls during the short stay in Ontario, and I’ll be sure to bring Reiko again if we get the opportunity to stay longer.  There are quite a few places in that province that I had never really understood as being “special”, though I’m certain that everything will be at least a dozen times better with my Reiko.

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Alrighty … it’s been five years, but I’m back in Ontario.

The flight to Toronto was relatively uneventful, with just occasional discomfort from the people next to me.  The plane managed to arrive 45 minutes ahead of schedule, and this was certainly some good news as I really needed the bathroom.

I will admit that I was quite surprised by the lack of WiFi at Pearson International, though.  For an hour after landing, I was sitting at a coffee shop trying to get in touch with the world and I couldn’t find so much as a stray signal from a local McDonald’s.  Oddly enough, I was even having trouble with my Rogers GPRS data connection at the coffee shop.

Just to add some adventure to the trip, it seems that I had gotten every detail about Reiko’s flight to Toronto wrong.  I had landed in Terminal 3, and was expecting her to arrive at the international wing of the same terminal only an hour later.  Almost 90 minutes after she landed, we finally contacted each other via cell and found that she was actually in Terminal 1.  By this time I had already met up with my father and step-mother, so we made the trek to the other terminal and met up with my Reiko-chan.

Ah, what fun.  I wonder what would happen if Reiko and I could go 1 trip without some kind of adventure at the very start.  Hopefully the rest of the week will be enjoyable.

Tomorrow we go to Niagara Falls, and I’ll be taking lots and lots of pictures.  Later on, I’ll start posting to a new album in the photo gallery.

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I knew this day would eventually come, but I did not expect that it would come at this time.

Today I fly back to Ontario for the first time in almost five years.  In that time I’m sure that much has changed, and people have grown.  I have a nephew and a niece to meet for the first time, as well as a potential brother-in-law (assuming he ever asks my sister the question **shakes fist**).

Reiko is already on her way from Japan, and I’ll be meeting her in Toronto.  She’s sure to be exhausted from the 16 hours of flight, so I’ll be certain to have something for her to eat should she get hungry between Toronto and Simcoe (a two hour drive).  Unfortunately, because of time constraints, Reiko and I will only be able to stay in Ontario for two days.  In that time we’ll visit Simcoe, Niagara Falls and Port Dover, and there will be some small family things, too.

So this will give me ample opportunity to snap several hundred pictures and put them in the image gallery.

On Wednesday, Reiko and I will be making the flight back to Vancouver (on seperate planes … grr!) where we’ll spend a few days with friends here.  So on that note, I don’t think there will be very many science or technology-based entries in the next few days.  I do have a few in reserve for those “slow news days”, but I can’t quite put them up yet.

For anyone interested in the progress of my OpenSolaris-based Dynamic NAS project, I’m in the midst of putting together a very low cost server to test my initial work on.  The goal is to make use of a very simple $250 (or less) base and expand as required.  For the moment, this is certainly looking more plausible than other network appliances on the market.

I’d say “stay tuned” … but that’s so passe ….

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Until very recently, I had only seen this Faithless album once.  Now that I have it, I don’t know why I didn’t special order it from the UK earlier.

Faithless has been one of my favourite bands of all time.  Since first hearing Rolo’s smooth voice in “God is a Dj” a decade ago I have been a fan and dutifully collected all the albums whenever possible.  Saturday 3 am, however, has often eluded my searches.  This compilation contains several great remixes of the tracks found on their very popular “Sunday 8 PM” album, and I’m impressed by the uniqueness that is prevailant in each piece of work.

Often times I find myself writing in some C-language variant or working with complex SQL structures while listening to this group in the background.  I can’t pretend to know much about music, but I can certainly appreciate the great works of our time.  For anyone that hasn’t listened to anything from these UK progressive dance artists, I’d suggest getting either Reverence or Sunday 8 am.  All of their albums are enjoyable, and these two are my favourites.

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