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New shed !

2007-07-06T11:54:00.000-04:00

Got it !

2006-07-31T20:14:00.000-04:00

Yeah !

Working in the house

2006-07-26T21:50:00.000-04:00

hey ho !!
Finally got some rains 11 days after I had my grass. The temperature was very hot before that and I had to wake up a 6am to watered my grass every morning ! But now it's raining a lot so that's good for it and I can sleep until 7:15am. Besides my
grass, I had my deck a month after coming in my new house. Now i have to buy a BBQ to put on it ;-)

The big part of my work in the house happened in the basement to be ready to install my pool table. The paint, floor and the "plinthe" are done. I'll do the ceiling probably this winter! Here's some picture of the overall progress:

The basement as it was when I got the house
(except the pink insulating thing)

After painting the white primer...

After I painted the color...

1/3 of the floor was done after the first day...

From the other angle...

Floor was done in about 12 hours in 2 days with one of my friend. At the beginning, we were really not good but the second day went lightning fast !

From the other angle...

Next picture should come friday with my pool table !

And yes, I still play golf even if I have only 10 games this summer yet... I'll be playing more during my vacation which are in the end of August.

...

2006-07-11T21:13:00.000-04:00

Why it's not raining anymore now that I need it for my grass ???

1 more reason to hate Montreal...

2006-04-19T22:53:00.000-04:00

I went to the St-Sulpice tonight... I never search so long for a parking, it was a nice day and I guess everyone was downtown Montreal... After 15-20 minutes, I had no parking so I decided to go in a "7$ parking" and it was all fine... until I went back to my car. At 10h pm, I unlock my door, get in my car and search for my glasses... Where the hell are my glasses ? I looked in the storage in the driver's door but nothing... even my 2 cases for my glasses and my sunglasses are not there... And then I looked on my back seat and I saw some pieces of window on it... Yup I had a broken window and got stole in my car. My mp3 player, FM receiver, glasses, cellular charger, money in the cigarette thing are gone ... They also took my case for sunglasses but not my sunglasses itself which were on the dash of my car and it was the only thing visible from the outside?!?! WTF ?

Anyway, it sucks even if my insurance will pay for that... I have to call Lebeau Vitre d'auto for my rear window, a store for a new pair of glasses and my insurance for everything...

By chance my golf bag was not in trunk yet... that's the only good news for tonight.

And now I'm kind of nervous to leave my car with a garbage bag instead of a real window...

House/Golf

2006-04-10T18:53:00.000-04:00

I went to see my house this week-end and my door is installed which means I cannot go inside until may 15th ! Moving will be on Monday june 5th.

Here's a photo with my 2 neighbours :

Besides my house, golf is also coming very soon ! I'm already 1 game late if I compare to the same date last year ... that's not good... I haven't drive a single ball outside yet. I played twice at Golf-O-Max but it's not the real thing...

Building a house - Almost done

2006-03-21T18:43:00.000-05:00

It was March 16th and was almost over...

Heres the latest 3 pictures I took :

Almost done, only the entrance has to be finish...

Kitchen

Living room...

Floor has to be varnish (verni !) and I'm all set for the interior !

Now I have to wait 2 months before I can get inside ;-(

Building a house - Inside...

2006-02-26T11:09:00.000-05:00

More pics from the inside... walls are done ;-)

Living room...

Basement...

Basement from the other side...

Kitchen and part of the dining room...

I've got a hole on the wall ?
Must be for the oven

For Bernard... !!

Brick is also done...
No it's not my front door, it's a temporary door !

Building a house - From the Inside...

2006-02-12T18:24:00.000-05:00

First I have to say I was wrong for my left neighbours's house; it was a big hole but for 2 houses and not only a single house !!

I went to see the inside of my house this afternoon and I put some speakers cable through the walls, here's some pix:

Living room...

Basement...

Basement from the other side...

Kitchen and part of the dining room...

Other part of the dining room +
bathroom on 1st floor...

Building a house - part 4

2006-01-27T15:33:00.000-05:00

Today was a big day for my house ! I had to choose everything from ceramics, white wood, handle, brick, top for kitchen counter, ... Took me and my parents 1hour and a half.

Here's the house at this moment; roof is done and window were being installed when I took the picture (which was through my car window, which was a bit dirty !)

I also saw the hole for my left neighbours's house.... and believe me it will be HUGE! If I'm not wrong their house will be on 2 "land" (2 terrains de large!) ...

Building a house - part 3

2006-01-25T22:42:00.000-05:00

I went to choose the color of my roof this morning... Here's the pictures I took while being there:

Second floor is up, yeah !

Here's a close-up...
Guess I will have to tell them to put the roof ON the house and not on front of it...

Happy Birthday...

2006-01-24T23:38:00.000-05:00

to me !!

Building a house - part 2

2006-01-20T11:49:00.000-05:00

I've got walls !!

Is it me or it looks very small ?! ;-)

Again again ...

2006-01-16T19:37:00.000-05:00

After my boss and one of the tech guy, the database administrator is leaving, this one was totally unexpected. This is the third person leaving in a month or so... Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh another 5 to 7 !!!

New house - part 5: more details...

2006-01-16T19:09:00.000-05:00

Here's more details about my house:

Location:
- St-Jean-sur-Richelieu (about 3 mins from Phil's house...)

Pricing:
- Base price for the house is 110k .
- The land is 30k (6000 square foot * 5$).
- White woods or ceramics everywhere is 7000$.
- 4000$ for the 2 bay-window
- A couple of other things like network connection around the house ;-)

Final price is 170k taxes included.

Plan:

That's about it for now !

Building a house - part 1

2006-01-15T13:42:00.000-05:00

December 30th: My basement is done !

I'll be at the left of the house on the picture. I don't have much space between my house and the one on the right but I'll have a lot more on the left side.

New house - part 4: Done !

2006-01-15T13:30:00.000-05:00

4 months to go exactly... my new house is suppose to be delivered on may 15th... which let them a month and a half in case they are late ! I bought it a week before christmas and my parents came yesterday to have a look at the "model house".

My house will looks like this one (the one without a garage !) :

For the first time yesterday I had a look at the different kind of whitewood (bois-franc), ceramics, brick and everything else I will have to choose. There is like 300 differents kind of handle its crazy... I'm glad my parents will come back to choose all these stuff !

Snow for xmas party !

2005-12-18T19:13:00.000-05:00

About 40 cm of snow last friday, going to work was a real nightmare. First I woke up at 7h15 and I was out at 7h45 to remove the snow from my car. When done I took a look at the entrance of the parking; about 3 foot of snow there, no way I could have pass through this with my car. So i had to shovel the entrance of the parking and for those who don't know I'm in appartment so I'm not really suppose to do this !! Anyway I did it quite quickly just enough to get my car out of the parking. I went back inside to change socks and pant and get ready to go to the job which is like 10 minutes away... usually ! I change idea 3 times on my way to work trying to figure out which road I should use... Finally I was at work, 1h30 later ! Day was quite short, we were like not working all day long and we had our christmas party in the evening ! For lunch we called Benny but the line was always busy, probably because everyone was ordering food.. We decided to go to Scores....... What a good idea, the restaurant was empty, we were all alone in there so we had our food very quickly... Bad thing is we get back to work a lot sooner than usual for a friday !!!

Party was real fun. It started by 3 hours of bowling and yes it was fun !! Best score was 106... I was 47 after 3 squares but I guess it was pure luck ! After we went to play pool at Rack'n Roll.. We had 2 tables which was not enough because we were about 20. I think I played about 3 games in the first 2 hours... Some people left for a bar name "The Surf" in Longueuil but 4 of us stayed to play pool until 3h in the morning

Again

2005-12-14T19:15:00.000-05:00

8 days after my boss told us he was leaving the company, another person is leaving in 2 weeks... Never 2 without 3 ... who's next ?!

Xmas Party !

2005-12-13T20:14:00.000-05:00

Yeah, friday night is my xmas party for the IT people in Longueuil. We are going to play bowling... and also pool right after that which should be more fun ;-) We were suppose to have this party last thursday... yes THURSDAY night ?!?!? The IT director decided to do our christmas party a thursday night which is really not a good idea for all of us because we would have to work the day after. The reason he wanted to do that a thursday night was because we have 3 persons from Ontario which might have come and then they would have the friday off to relax and fly back to Ontario... and during this time we would have to be at work at 08h30... Because of that we decided not to respond to the invitation for the thursday night and the party was cancelled... so we decided to make our own party without any boss ;-)

Bye bye boss !

2005-12-05T19:05:00.000-05:00

No i'm not kidding... my boss leaves the company... Haha bet I got you on this one, its not me who is leaving ! Now the question is: who will take his place... In 2 months I will know

New house - part 3: better...

2005-11-29T22:53:00.000-05:00

Best price so far was 230000$ for a new house (semi-detached in Brossard) which is, a real joke... Last saturday I went farther from my job (and from Montreal...) at St-Jean-sur-le-Richelieu. Now thats much better ;-) First 2 I saw were around 180k for a single house. That's about the price I wanted to pay for a house. The same evening I had dinner with friends who lives there and another girl. We ate "fondue and raclette", it was so good ! We watch the game for like 5 minutes and then start playing cards while having the game in background. At 10pm , everybody left and me and a friend decided to go play pool. It was a "2 hours" of non-stop pool! He won 12-9 I think.

Now back to "My house" project ! Sunday I went to see the 3rd company at the same place. Much better and 15000$ cheaper. The vendor bring me to the new developpment which was like 5 minutes away from the "sales office". I went to see 2 houses. 1 with 2 floor and a basement and another one with only 1 level and a basement. First one had 1 more room, a lot more spaces in the kitchen and living room and is only 4000$ more expensive. Other thing is the basement which is like a big square 26'x26' without any post.. perfect for a pool table and other things I want in there ;-)

Here's a picture of the "default" house:

This is the different front frontage (ok I admit, I took the dictionnary for this one, it's facade in french by the way!) It's an extra 2200$ for one of these. And after that I can choose any color I want of course.

Detailled plan of each level coming soon.

So it's by far the best price I have so far and the house is great in the inside. Like I wanted it ! I still have 2 or 3 places to visit in different city but I think it will be hard to beat... we will see !

During the evening I went to snaky's place to watch the grey cup final. Montreal lost the game in overtime but it was a hell of a game, especially from the second half. Even the girls were on the edge of their seats !!

The power of milk !

2005-11-29T22:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday at work, we made Pratt & Whitney shutdown some of their operations because they were sending us there gaz and strange substance in our building...

Fact is this plant is building huge turbine engines use for all kind of plane, including the new boeing which is suppose to be really big. (They made some test with this new plane and the turbulence created while landing is preventing other plane from landing on the same path for a couple of minutes !) So when these engines are built, they have to do some testing and for doing so, they need fuel and kerosene. In this particular day it was cloudy and there was a lot of humidity so all these odours came right in our building all day long instead of going in the atmosphere.

When we came back from lunch a 1h15pm, it smells strange so by the time we figure out what it was, 2 guys from Pratt&Whitney came in and ask people which were feeling not so well to leave right away. So 30 minutes after that, they stop doing their tests and close 1 of the 2 chimneys. Either we have problem with our ventilation or they have an exceptionnal ventilation in there own building! I'll go with option 1.

Good thing is we all got a rebate a 500$ for our next purchase of a turbine engine ! Nahhhhh just kidding here ;-)

Friday 4h30 pm...

2005-11-18T19:44:00.000-05:00

Never answer the phone when you're about to finish your week at work...

It was 4h25, my computer was turned off, I was talking with some people in my ~~office~~ cubicule and suddenly my phone rang... Dring dring dring. I asked the 3 persons with me: "Should I get that call ?". Everyone said "no" of course so I decided to take it; stupid me ! No it wasn't someone inviting me for dinner, it was the helpdesk of the company calling me for a problem in Victoria. So I had to stay like 20 minutes to realize it was a "user problem - code 18". By the time I called back at the Helpdesk to tell them it was ok, surprise, another problem, in Don Mills this time. Arghhhhhhhh another 40 minutes to fix it... Why do problems always happen on friday afternoon. Why it never happens on wednesday morning ? I guess it's just like that !

Besides that, I got my winter tires on wednesday, 1 day after the first snow !! This is one more reason I don't like winter. I have 16" low-profile tire for the summer and small 14" for winter. It's quite a difference but we have no choice in Quebec with all the snow

Hockey game tomorrow Habs vs Washington. It's at my place this time. We will be only 5 but it's ok like that since my kitchen table is not that big !! We should be playing NHL06 from EA Sports during the intermission. I know someone who can't wait to have his revenge after losing his last 6 or 7 games against me ;-)

New house - part 2: OMG !

2005-11-14T17:10:00.000-05:00

Oh My God. I went to the "sales office" at Brossard this afternoon. It's a new development with TownHouse and semi-detached ("maison de ville") and the price is starting at 230 000$ !! Some people advise me that the price of the houses were high... I wasn't expecting so high for a small houses in Brossard !
Well I'm kind of discouraged right now. I looked at some houses which are not new and I found 3 at around 170000 which is a lot better for my budget...

New house - part 1: yeah !

2005-11-13T17:25:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking about buying a house since 2 years and now i'm really decided... I'm paying 715$ for my apartment and a house could cost the same thing maybe a little bit more... So friday night I checked on the Internet and I'm so glad I found this website (MaisonMax). This site has a list of all the new residential project by region with links to the constructor website. So I printed a bunch of paper with the adress and everything I needed.. Saturday and sunday I went to see those places. I saw 5 developpments of new houses and this is only for Candiac, LaPrairie and Brossard. The one I prefer so far is in LaPrairie. The neighbourhood is very nice with a lot of trees which is not the case of the other places I saw. Also it's not that far from where I currently stay. Monday I'm going to the different "Sales Office" (Bureau des ventes) at all these places to have an idea of the price and the availability. I hope the price won't be too high !! What I'll be looking at the most is the size of the living room and the basement.

The main reason I want a large basement is to be able to use this thing I see every day while going upstairs or downstairs:

Which, once assembled, looks like this:

Yeah I know it's sad seeing a pool table in about 30 pieces everyday but i hope it'll get better days in a near future !

Besides this project, I completed "Brothers in Arm" on Xbox and I'm starting the sequel right away ! This game is great and is not the typical FPS we all know; it's a FPS but you also have to lead 1 or 2 squad (or tanks) to complete the different missions. The first one took me about 15 hours to complete which is not very long. I hope the 2nd will last longer.

Pictures to come

2005-11-06T18:40:00.000-05:00

It's soooooooooooo nice to be back home now... Plane was 45 minutes late at Vancouver and then we had to fly around Montreal for 15 minutes before we landed !!

Hey...... here's the pix !!

Totem at Duncan... I'm on the left by the way !

A lot of logs on the river

The thing to get the log out of the river, it was huge!

View from my room at Nanaimo

View from my room at Nanaimo

View from my room at Nanaimo

Someone from our group went to see the trees, he was using my camera for this picture but the batteries went dead after thie one and only shot !

All those pictures are pretty boring it was gray and rainy all week long...

Here's some pix from my previous trip to Calgary 2 months ago for the job again. Difference is we had time to go to Lake Louise on a morning. Too bad we stayed there about 20 minutes only:

Canadian Rockies, on my way to Lake Louise

Lake Louise, amazing view from there

Same here...

... and here !

Almost over !

2005-11-03T15:04:00.000-05:00

1 more day in here, I was suppose to leave on thursday, but I will leave friday. They want someone to stay in BC while everybody else is on the plane, so I propose myself to stay one more night! In fact 2 more people are staying another week so I won't be all alone!

Last days were as crazy as the days before. Monday I had to be at the office at 4am for the drivers's first day with there new handheld ! I wnet there open the door with the key but there was an alarm system in there and it went on. A girl from WestGuard came in and disable the alarm for me... Days goes well except for this old guys who has only 2 months to work before he retire... He was so funny... Other than that, I got about 100 questions all day long ! Wednesday I was suppose to go see the sequoias, too bad for me we had a problem with the handheld so I was not able to go there...

Last night I checked-in at the hotel for the 4th time in 10 days got a new room again, had to unpack my stuff and go for a beer with the rest of the group... It was good to speak french again after 3 days speaking only english !

Today is friday and I've got nothing to do except waiting for call from the user. I'm going to have a guided tour of the plant also later today..

Oh yeah... pictures to come !!

This is crazy

2005-10-31T22:38:00.000-05:00

I just had a look at my timesheet for the last week... 83 hours ! A lot of people said to us "Good holiday" before we came in BC... No comment on that. In 7 days here, all I saw in Victoria was the road between the plant and the hotel (which is about 5 minutes). And all I will see in Nanaimo is the road from the hotel to the plant. By chance I drive from Victoria to Nanaimo, thats the only photos I will have...

Our boss are crazy, they are asking us to do things we never did before... On sunday afternoon, which should have been our only spare time of this trip, I entered price list in the system with another guy in here... Wtf is that ?!? What can we say ? Nothing for now... They want everything to work perfectly and we all know it won't happens because it's way too big. Anyway i'm off to bed now. I worked 15 hours today so I have to get some sleep...

And oh, this hotel here is a lot nicer then the Holiday Inn. I'm on the 14th floor with a view on the nanaimo port and the pacific ocean. There's also a couple of mountains, it's very nice (pictures to come !!)

News from BC

2005-10-29T15:02:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, october 25th, 5am, it's time to go to the airport. When we arrive at the airport, we had breakfest and then went to our gate. 30 minutes later we were on the plane. Half the plane was japanese, quite impressive. We had a movie during the flight, It was suppose to be "Batman Begins" (or "Batman Starts" like our captain said !!) but instead we had "Game of their lifes". It was a movie about a US soccer team which goes to the "World Cup of Soccer" and won a game 1-0 and that's about it... I would prefer Batman for sure. I didn't really watch the movie because I was in the first row, right in front of the big screen, so it was kinda hard for my neck! By chance I had my MP3 player. Flight was about 5 hours to get to Vancouver. Then we switch to a small plane of about 40 places and 15 minutes later we were on the Vancouver Island in Victoria. Next step get the rental car. I got an American car with some "wood" part in it. This is so ugly ! This car is way bigger then mine so I had some difficulties to park it. Took me about 2-3 try each times. Then we go to the plant in Victoria. We stayed there until 9pm. That was a hell of a long day. We go back to check-in at our hotel (Holiday Inn) and then had lunch at the restaurant in the hotel...

Next day I woke up a 6am and I went to the Safeway store do to the DEX testing (see previous post), It didn't work and maybe this thing will be cancelled cause we spend too much time on it. After I went back to the plant. We were 7 in there with our laptop computer in a small room. Two girls went to buy some candies and they came back with some Kit-Kat banana flavor !! It was not bad.... It was another long day, like 12 hours.

Thursday, I had to go to Cassidy, which is about 1h15min from Victoria. Road to go there was very nice (pictures to come). Big moutains, couple of islands which I could see from my car. I go trought a city called Duncan. There was totems everywhere along the road. Also there is a huge hockey stick on one of the building. Weird city... Day was quite boring over there so nothing much to say. At around 5pm I came back to Victoria to have lunch (and beers). There was a hockey game Vancouver-Colorado. Funny thing is when I watch hockey in Montreal, I'm the only one (or almost) taking for the other team. And even in here, I was the only one cheering for the Colorado because thats my #1 team! They won 6-2 so I was happy about that! There is another game between those 2 teams on friday night so I'll be there again.

Friday - nothing to say, work from 8am to 6:30pm, sleep at 10pm!

Sunday I'm heading north to see the Sequoias. I've been told those trees were like 200 foot tall and 10 foot wide ! It will be the fun part of this trip !

Thats it for now. Pictures are coming in my next post if my next hotel room at Nanaimo has Internet access !!

BC in 2 days

2005-10-23T22:02:00.000-04:00

Yup i'm leaving for British Columbia tuesday at 08h30 ! I'm going there for business because we bought a company and we (me and 15 other persons) are going there to implement our system... Flight will last 5hours 15mins to Vancouver and then 30 more minutes to get to Vancouver Island. I'll be in Victoria the first 2 days and after that i'm going to Cassidy, a small city near Nanaimo on the Vancouver Island also. I was told Victoria is the nicest city in Canada with a lot of japanese and their money ! Let's hope we will have time to visit a little bit. Since we are there for 10 days, we should have time on sunday !

We worked very hard last couple of weeks to make sure everything is ready. This week-end I had to make the handheld send/receive file to the white laptop on the picture. It was a really boring week-end but I had to do it. By chance I had a dinner saturday night which was great (even if the Habs won...)

So I guess that's it for now, next post from BC ;-)

First post !!

2005-10-12T19:49:00.000-04:00

First post... let's see how many days I will keep this thing up and running...

I could not find a template I like so I took the one call "minima" which is pretty simple.. black text on white background.

I'll work a little bit to make it look better. See you in a couple of days...