Painting

So we painted this weekend and here are the unofficial results:
Number of Rooms - 2
Time Completed - 2:00pm Saturday
Number of Arguments with Michelle - 0
Colour of Walls - Blue Fox

It looked quite good in the end and I think we might have potential for another career.

We hooked up with some friends Saturday for impromptu drinking and I ended up losing to some rookies in texas hold'em and toppling the jenga tower. I then proceeded to throw back a few pints at the Bow and Arrow. Woke up with a nice headache and then mouthed off a guy in Tim Hortons (that seems to be happening a lot lately) who was complaining because I got my bagel first when in reality I had ordered first.

Day got better as Michelle and I managed to get a 30 minute run and some weights in. Michelle's birthday is this weekend coming up...

Lance out.

Missile Defense Shield

I'm happy to say Canada is out of this ridiculous project.

I particularily like the quote at the bottom of the article from the US Ambassador:
"We don't get it. We think Canada would want to be in the room deciding what to do about an incoming missile that might be heading toward Canada."

I'm perplexd that the ambassador to Canada would not realize that no one wants to shoot a missle at Canada...and hence there will never be a case where we need to be "in a room" deciding what to do about it.

To America..please send a new Ambassador.

The Other Motley Crue at the Loose Moose

The Other Motley Crue at the Loose Moose
Originally uploaded by lancemartel.

Nice pic of the group before the Motley Crue show...excellent night.

Altercations with Women.

This morning I took my usual subway ride to work from mid-town Toronto to downtown. The subway was quite busy and I was up against the exit door. As each stop approached I would look for anyone trying to exit and enure I stepped out of the way. At one particualr stop however I noticed several people attempting to exit as we neared the station...I prepared to step out of the clear the way but before the doors were fully opened a very rude lady began shoving me and attempting to squeeze between me and the half opened door. This was so annoying that someone can't even wait 1-2seconds for the door to fully open so I can step out.

If that lady happens to read this all I can say is I feel sorry for anyone who has to deal with you on a daily basis because you seemed like a total b*tch.

This reminds me of another near altercation when a women at the grocery story rammed her cart into the back of Michelle's legs. When we trurned around the lady was pissed off at us for some reason. Words were exchanged and the woman never actually apologized. She seems like a rich middle aged women who had everything given to her and drive around in 700 series BMW but thinks the world owes her a favour.

Don't think I'm a a misogynist..because I'm definitely not...I think the world would be a much better place if women were in charge. Just some crazy people who think everyone owes them a favour...they need to wake up.

Motley Crue - Toronto Feb 23rd

Last night myself and approx 15 other friends attended the Motley Crue concert at the ACC. All I can say is they don't make'em like they used to. Here's a recap:

The show starts off with some strange looking circus characters coming out of a box in the middle of the stage. Behind the translucent curtain a line of fire start and as the curtain went up the Crue launched into "Shout at the Devil". At this point they let off more pyro than I have ever seen at a concert and it was almost unwatchable due to the brightness of the fire. The Crue played a bunch of older stuff and some rare oldies as well such as "Red Hot" after Nikki Sixx told the crowd they we not going to be like other bands and play all the same shit. They also played Live Wire, Looks that Kill, 10 Seconds to Love, Louder Than Hell, Too Fast for Love.

After approximately 10 songs there was a short intermission. The ACC was jammed with all sorts of characters...Crue look alikes, business people..etc. I returned to my seat just as the 2nd half kicked off. They launched into some newer stuff in this half including Wild Side, Girls (x3)Dr. Feelgood, Sick Love Song, Kickstart My Heart. There was a short package of ballads including Home Sweet Home, Glitter, Without You, Don't Go Away Mad. Tommy had an excellent drum solo which them turned very weird when he was pulled to the roof of the arena and played some techno stuff on two suspended drums sets. He was flying between drum sets attached to a wire. Seemed like a cool concept but the techno drumming wasn't really going over with the crowd. Later in the show Tommy also broke out the "Titty Cam" and was filming girls flashing..too many overweight women showing their breasts here.

Show ended off with a 3 song encore includig Helter Skelter, White Punks on Dope and Anarchy in the UK. During the encore we tried to get closer to the stage and managed to sneak by a couple of guards but when we finally got closer the show was ending.

Overall it was a great time and a good opportunity to hook up with my buddies which we rarely do anymore. The Crue are amazing although the show I saw a few years ago at Massey Hall was much better since it was a smaller venue at we were right at the stage.

Michelle and I are painting the bathrooms this weekend so I should have some good stories about that adventure.

Commentary on Folksonomy

So I signed up for the following sites today:
43things.com
vimeo.com
flickr.com

Each of these site rely on tagging of content by individuals to build a relevant taxonomy of data. This is extremely beneficial since as a former AOL employee I was challenged by the question as to how to apply a meta data taxonomy to the vast media library of Time Warner. It's a simple solution...let the netizens do it. It will be more relevant that any algorithm or existing taxonomy.

Problems
- Will this work globally. I don't want links about Man United if I'm searching for football tags...I want NFL.
- Tag spamming...this could be quite ugly an there needs to be measures to prevent this.
- Adoption....will the average person want to proactively use these features? Certainly not manhy people I know.

We'll see how this one goes over the next couple of years although I suspect it will end up being used by a very niche market.

Lance out.

PS. Crue at 8pm today! Yeow.

Rock and Roll Circus

Drinking KickOff in 27 hours!!

Circus Begins in 29 hours!!

Toronto Weather - Feb 22

I promise this is the only post ever about the weather.

It snowed Sunday night with about 10cm of accumulation. The first half of February was beautfiul and was actually starting to feel like spring. Now, the whole city is a total mess, slush everywhere, my dog gets covered in snow when we go for a walk, salt stains all over my pants. I am sick of winter...if we didn't get that dose of spring I might be ok. I'm going to try and enjoy a little more snowboarding but I want to take the bike out soon. I can't wait much longer.

1 more day until Motley Crue at the ACC! YEOW.

Lance out.

Texas Hold 'Em

Super Bowl Sunday I went to a friends house to watch the game. Prior to kickoff he suggested that the 4 of us play Texas Hold 'em poker. I had watched this on TV before and found it quite simple and also intriguing. We proceeded to play for approx 1 hour and it started to run a little boring...once I blew all my money I proceeded to watch the game.

This past weekend at a friend's Jack & Jill party another game a Texes Hold'em broke out. THis time I also lost all my money but did enjoy myself while having a few drinks and observing a drunk girl pulling chips from her clevage.

Now, I'm finding myself craving Texas Hold'em...I even sent a email to friends about playing this weekend. Is Texas Hold'em that addictive? Is it saving Canadian males from sheer boredom after the hockey season was cancelled? Please explain this to me?

I'll leave you with three words..........

"I'm all in!!!"

Mom's Background

Hello,
This past weekend Michelle and I visited Kingston to celebrate my Mom's brithday. Kingston is approximatley a 2.5 hour drive from Toronto and is located at the point where the Great Lakes feed into the St. Lawrence river.

On the ride down Michelle suggested we should ask my parents for some old wedding photos of themselves and if possible my grandparents (both sets are still alive). I was a little skeptical since my parents had moved around quite a bit and did not seem to keep a good inventory of nostalia. To my suprise, my Mom had recently vistied her parents and scanned a number of old photos and had copies along with an old album. Amazingly there were photos of my grandfather as a young man in the 40's but also even older photos of his grandmother. That would be my great-great grandmother...she was born in the 1840's and there was actually a picture of her that looks to be taken sometime in the 1890's based on her age in the photo. This was absolutely unbelievable to me and we have borrowed the ablum to make some scans.

Most facinating however was in the album was my mother's childhood photos. Everything from her as a baby up until her wedding to my father. I had never seen any photos of my mother older than her wedding pictures and this was amazing to me to see her as a young girl. The album even included old report cards from grade school. I realized when looking through those photos that I had never even really asked or wondered about my Mom's life before meeting my father. I'm not sure if that was ignorance or selfishness on my part...although I am certainly happy to have seen them know and will ensure this history is kept closer to me.

Lance out.

I'm getting Married

So another important thing to mention is that on July 2nd, 2005 I'll be tying the knot. My wife-to-be is named Michelle and is obviously a very important part of my life. I'm really lucky to have met her and it's amazing she puts up with me...in fact she even likes "The Darkness" due to the constant loud playing on the CD in the car.

The wedding planning has been going quite well and aside from a few minor things the entire event is planned. Should be a great time and I'l really looking forward to it. We are spending 2 weeks in Greece for our honeymoon which I actually booked earlier this week. That whole process was painful to sort out hotels and everyone has an opinion on Greece.

ie. "Athens is dirty" , "Mykonos is a party island", "You need to stay at Hotel x".

Eventually we went with a package that seemed to meet out needs and does a bit of island hopping but also good relaxation time. I'll provide complete coverage of the trip (parts anyway) in July 05.

Lance out.

Canada

Quick pet peeve observation. Why is it when creating an address or profile on the web (including on Blogger) and selecting "Country" does the United States get defaulted but to select Canada I type:

"c" - Cambodia
"c" - Cameroon
"c" - Canada

Seriously...3 key stokes...(I know it's alpha ordered) how many people in those 3rd world countries are online? Please re-prioritize Canada.

Signed
Canadians.

Opening Ceremonies

Hello,
Welcome to my new blog. It's been a while since I last told the world about my ongoings....I am a former AOL employee who used to use the AOL Journals service but now have upgraded to Blogger. I'll post my last blog entry that should tell you a bit about on portion of my life and will continue to document my mis-adventures in Toronto. Enjoy. BTW...I quite enjoyed my writing style in this entry but don't expect that level of detail all the time.

Aug 2004

Subject: K-Town Tri 2004Time: 4:59:35 PM EDTAuthor: martellm Mood: Happy
So K-Town 2004 is done with and I'm back at work with some very sore legs. It was an interesting month leading up to this race and I found myself both excited and nervous to compete in the longest event of my life. Preparing for this race was very difficult to fit into our already very busy schedule but I felt very prepared heading in to the weekend.
We spent Sat at Elissa's place and enjoyed a nice BBQ that evening. I couldn't eat any corn although due to how it would digest :-) After dinner I wasn't much fun to be around due to the anticipation of the next morning and mostly kept to myself. Went to bed around 10:30pm and slept pretty well.
Race Morning
Woke up at 5:30 AM and ate my usual oatmeal breakfast. I headed down to the race site alone and began to prepare my transistion area. I ran into Bill (who I swim with in Toronto) and it's was good break from the nerves to chat with a buddy. As race time approach I put my wet suit on and saw Mom and Michelle arrive. It was nice to see them both and they gave me words of encouragement..I felt confident that everythings would go fine.
The Swim
I started the 2KM very slow trying to avoid traffic and get into a rhythm. The weather was perfect and I felt great around 500M. I planned to take a break at the half way point but to my surprise I was very energetic and feeling like speeding up. The second half of the swim was a blur and I came out of the water in approx 38 mintues....an unbelievable time for me. I knew I had a long way to go but the nervousness had left me and the race was going smoothly.
T1
I took my time at T1 and actually had a short chat with some other competitors. Relatively fast but not a blazing transition. Probably 2 mintues total..crosses the timer at 40:46.
Bike
Took it easy at the start of the bike even though I felt like pounding the pedals but knew 56KM was a long way. I noticed there would be a head wind on the way back so decided to conserve some energy. By the halfway point I was starting to feel some fatigue but still held a good pace. At about 40K we merged with the short course, I blew by a bunch of the short coursers and felt really good. Unfortunately, in doing this I was also usinga lot of energy. Finished the bike at 1:45 and averaged 32.0km/h....exactly my goal.
T2
When getting off the bike the race was already 2h:30min old and I could feel the stiffness in my leg. I again took it easy in this transition and almost fell over putting my socks on. I estimate about 2 minutes for this transistion.
Run
Heading out for a 15KM run was mentally very tough and now is when the emotional and physical pain really started to hit me. The first kilometer I just couldn't get going..no energy at all. It was also very discouraging seeing the short course athletes finishing when I still had 1 hour or more left. After leaving the short course my attitude improved knowing it would be a lot quieter and those other racers were likely having as much pain as me. The first 5km was about on pace of 5:30/KM ..roughly 27:30. I began think that at that pace I could substantially beat my 4 hour goal...little did I know just how difficult it would get. By the turn around I felt ok and had a chat with a nice guy but the sun was hot and I have having lots of difficulty cooling down. Around 10k we hit some short step hills, I decided to walk them and conserve energy..to my dismay even walking them was extremely painful. By 12k I was a wreck..the legs were barely turning over but I was still ahead of my 4 hour goal. The hill in front of Kingston Pen was definitely the low point as I struggled up it knowing that I was almost there. Those last 3k's must have taken me almost 20 minutes but as I ran towards the finish I saw Dad and Emma...they gave me some motivation and Dad shook my hand...moments later Michelle, Mom and Elissa were yelling at the top of their lungs...I recall wanting to smile but not sure if I was actually able to move those muscles..Michelle yelled encouragement to beat 4 hours and I looked at the clock 3h:58min.
I crossed the finish line at 3:59.02. I didn't stop at any point of the race and proudly wore the medal aroumd my neck.
After the Race
Strange feeling after finishing that race...not sad, not happy but another emotion..I suppose it was relief. I guess any strong emotion can bring about a strange reaction ...when I saw Michelle I almost broke down..she sensed it and consoled me. Strange to feel such a way after such a great accomplishment but I guess that's what happens when you do something you never thought you could do and experience a lot of agony while doing it. The entire family was very supportive as I told them the story of my race. Shortly after Mom and Dad went home as did Elissa and Tyler ..they had been outside for 4 hours so I understand they wanted to leave. I was in no mood to party so Michelle and I quietly packed up and headed back to Elissa's. That time was very somber...I reminded myself of the accomplishment but relief was still the prevailing emotion.
Today is 2 days later and although very proud of myself I don't feel the need for another race of that distance. I'm going to take triathlon less seriously and still compete for fun in shorter distances..it's a great hobby.