Merry Christmas

My wonderful wife was able to find the one store in Calgary that had my favorite red, Cosentino's THE ZIN. They had just 3 bottles of the 2001 vintage left.

Basement development

We've got contractors coming in all this month to give estimates on finishing our basement (Hello home theater!). Not only has Mike Holmes scared me off doing any of it myself, I now worry that even picking a contractor on the cheaper end of the estimate spectrum will result in him kicking my ass.

MILCOTS proves itself

Three Edmonton soldiers injured in Afghanistan

Last year I mentioned how happy I was, as a former soldier, that Canada was getting new jeeps. Well recently 3 soldiers from Edmonton and a Journalist in one of those new Mercedes armoured SUVs survived a roadside bomb. I hate to see any of our guys hurt, but it's just great they're alive.

US housing speculators starting to back off

The US housing/credit bubble is a favorite topic here at work. 'The Gig Is Up' For 'Retreating'Speculators: WSJ

"Robert Cayouette has put down deposits on 10 homes under construction in Florida, figuring he'd quickly flip them and make a profit of about $30,000 apiece. The first of those purchases, a three-bedroom home in Port St. Lucie, is expected to close this month. But Mr. Cayouette has learned he'll be lucky if the house fetches $285,000, or $10,000 less than his original purchase price. 'I wouldn't be able to flip it if I wanted to,' says Mr. Cayouette."

Flight of the Phoenix

On Monday night, version 3.7 of RPM went online to everyone. One customer had been using it for a week already and we had been using it internally for over a month. The codename of this development effort was Phoenix, and yes, I pick the codenames. (Actually that's more or less all I do). This version is turning out to be one of our smoothest yet with only minor defects so far, all fixed in minutes or in the minor update Thursday night. Unfortunately, I have now officially jinxed it by writing this so now I'm expecting there will be server fires and error pages on Monday.