After I had completed my B.Sc. in Computer Science in 2003 I got a fairly decent job. The pay was satisfactory and the responsibilities where, for the most part, fair as well. I felt I should of been content with my situation at the time; but, as it turned out I was often restless and questioning what my actions where contributing to my community and the world at large. I took up reading and studying a selective set of religions, philosophies and self-help techniques in an attempt to make sense of my purpose. I had over simplified my expectations and as a result was looking for an easy way to accomplish my goal of finding purpose and living a purposeful life. In the process I had made an honest effort to practice Buddhism for about 4 months. Many things failed to reconcile with me at the time and I ultimately blew it off as a idealistic philosophy on life with some disagreeable dogma.

At the end of my explorations I arbitrarily decided that I should teach English overseas. Seemed like everyone was doing it and nearly everyone came back happy and rich. I figured my service to others in this way would both give me purpose and compensation. When the decision was made, I quickly became discontent with my present situation (which was still just fine). Still not experiencing what I thought I craved, I was eager to get this moving and made a few mistakes (burned bridges, etc) as a result of my impatience. Not too surprisingly, I got quickly distracted by a chance opportunity to work in the video game industry. I immediately dropped my previously “noble” plans and jumped shipped to Winnipeg. I was convinced I would derive my noble purpose by doing this.

Not surprisingly, I did not find much purpose in Winnipeg. If anything, things got worse very quickly for me. Ultimately the company couldn’t continue and I was out of the job. Longing for what I had previously, I made post haste back to Saskatoon. I spent 6 months collecting employment insurance and looking for a job. I eventually got one 2 hours south in Regina. This time around, I had resigned myself to just doing the best I can do at what I do. I would let purpose “find me”; and so I had given up. I dabbled and volunteered a bit in teaching English. It was enjoyable and rewarding, but not my “calling”.

I again grew restless and started to make plans to do something extreme. I thought perhaps I had misread/misinterpreted Buddhism and needed a more direct approach. I looked for monasteries that taught in English in Inda/Thailand. Found one and started a dialog with them to arrange my studies. It wasn’t long after I started that process that disaster struck and they were part of the collateral damage of a local terrorist attack. Shaken by this, I dropped the idea of being a monk for a month all together. So I again looked for something slightly less extreme and more “local”. I found a few retreats in North America, but they were often expensive and full. Most also seemed to cater themselves to hipster business people as more of an “experience”. I grew frustrated and stopped looking for nearly two years.

This takes us to about 8 months ago, I was randomly googling for guided meditation audio files and happened to come across the site for Dhamma. I read about it a bit on and off the site; but more importantly noticed they had centres all across North America. This set the gears in motion for me. The hardest hurdle for me to jump was to find 10 (more like 12) consecutive days off to take the new student course. As a partner in a company, I felt I couldn’t take myself out of the operating picture for that long. In retrospect that was a silly notion to have, but it did drive me to do a few exciting things in the mean time.

While on vacation with my fiance and parents in Hawaii, I set in motion (mostly with resolve) three things:

• I would resign as partner at my job.
• I would start my own company, Sliced Projects.
• I would registered for the spring Vipassana course at Sylvan Lake.

All three if these events came to pass around the same time. I had to resign to feel like I could take the 10 days was the biggest part of all this. Again, in retrospect I could of done it without resigning. Starting my own company had motivations of it’s own as well, but ultimately the end result was that I felt I had enough control of my life to take 10 days off. That’s how I ended up going to a Vipassana meditation course.

The Course

My better judgement tells me that the best details of my experience of the course should be told in person. As a new student in the technique I’m not fully able to explain the more subtle aspects that are also the more profound. I should mention my state of mind immediately before entering the course, since I believe it played a very important role in the end results. I consider myself a skeptic about most things I haven’t witnessed first hand, so coming to this course I decided to come with not expectations and an open mind. By open mind I don’t mean willing to listen, but willing to following immerse myself in the instructions of the technique. Turns out in the first discourse video your highly encouraged to do this anyways, but I think I helped set myself up for the best possible experience.

Day 0

Having grossly overestimated the travel time, my ride share companion and I arrived many hours early. Fortunately, there were many people already there. Any interesting tension was in the air, many of us were new students and were not quite sure what to expect. It seemed like all the old students and originally taken the course over seas and had very interesting experiences to share. This fueled the general anxieties, but also removed some of the unknowns for us new students. Once registration was done, diner was served. A pleasant vegetarian meal (all the meals were vegetarian, since you take a precept not to harm another being while taking the course). The course technically starts on day zero, after taking 5 precepts as a group.

Day 1, 2 and 3

I won’t bore you with the details of the schedule, but I will mention that this is no “vacation” or “retreat”. It’s a course and it has long hard hours. You essentially are meditating 10 or more hours a day. The first three days you practice a through the nose breathing meditation that trains your mind to be aware of the subtle sensations you are capable of feeling. This got painfully boring for me by the third day, since I’ve already done this form of meditation for years. I had convinced myself that if something new didn’t present itself on the fourth day I’d leave the course. The evening discourse presented what we would be doing the next day and it was surprisingly not what I expected.

Day 4

During day 0 there was a brief mention of “Sittings of Strong Determination”. Turns out today was the day you start those (actually it could of been day 5, I wasn’t keeping the best track of days). I was once again tested in my resolve to stick with the course. My advice to anyone on their first sitting of this type is to keep your mind busy with the technique as much as possible. Your given just enough instructions up to this point to know what to do, but the evening discourse pulls it all together. Every sitting afterwords was a cakewalk compared to the first and I learned a few interesting things about myself as a result.

Day 5 to 8

Practice, practice, practice. There is a very strong emphasis in this course to practice seriously and diligently. I took it to heart on all but the 8th day (my snow day). As each day progressed your use of the technique is expanded in small ways. The discourses generally pull together the theory of the technique and impart general nuggets of wisdom to you. There was a few Buddhist dogma’s brought up that seemed out of place in a non-cecular course (mostly about reincarnation). The instructor and assistant instructor both urge you to think for yourself and ultimately told me those parts of the discourse were not important to leaning and applying the technique. Generally time went fast with the exception of the 8th day. For whatever reason on the 8th day my mind insisted that I purge all the creative ideas that had accumulated since the start of the course. I basically wrote the first 1/4 of an amusing sci-fi in my head most of the day. I thought of a few interesting products for the iPhone and Wordpress as well during the day. The down side was that my sittings dragged on because of my distraction.

Day 9

Letting myself go on day 8 turned out to be the best thing I could do. With my minds buffer emptied I found a new found resolve to concentrated and apply the technique. The day literally flew by and I meditated for about 13 hours this day alone. I experienced the more advanced stages of the technique multiple times and came out of meditations with swells of emotion and tears. It was this day that many insights about life came to me. It was also the day I acknowledged the value in practicing Vipassana, even if I don’t currently agree with all of the topics brought up in the discourses.

Day 10

After mid morning meditation we are released of our vow of noble silence. It’s somewhat ironic that after 9 days of not talking you have nothing particularly insightful to say. The men exited the hall and kinda cheered (one of those lame half hearted ones). The ladies had a much more emotional exit from the hall with hugs and tears. It didn’t take long for everyone to do introductions again (how do you remember the names of people you can’t talk to for 9 days?). During rest periods everyone would form large groups and talk about their experiences so far in the course and the usual mixer conversations. We were warned meditation would be hard now that our minds had this extra source of distraction, but I actually found my meditations where a nice break from all the chit-chat. We learned the last and final step of the Vipassana technique that day, which is a little hokey to be honest; but at this point I couldn’t say it wasn’t worth doing based on my experiences so far.

Day 11

This day starts like all the others, but they throw in an audio discourse in the middle of morning meditation. At 7:15 or so we were “free”. Breakfast was served and volunteers had started to tear down the site and pack things up. I left with great feeling of rest, joy and general balance.

If you are interested in more details about the course or my experience, just ask me in person. So far I’ve been a very passionate about in sharing my experience to the people I’ve seen. Jolene has noticed a “glow of joy” about me. I generally feel “better” both physically and mentally. Most importantly, I don’t have this yearning for something more or feeling that I have no noble purpose.

First things first: booking. I booked by phone as I had some questions about the various types of rooms available and the laundry service. My call was answered promptly with, “Can you hold? *click*”. A local radio station came on the line before I had a chance to say a word. This is unfortunately very common these days, as most people will just say yes anyways; but, kinda rude to not even let me speak. Moving on…

I booked myself into a business class suite. These suckers have nice big chairs and high speed internet (every room has high speed and wifi btw). That was $10 more a night, but it was also on a secure floor, which I was assured was never “loud”. I also confirmed the existence of self serve laundry.

Two days later I arrive after a long day of driving and working on-site. Check-in was nearly painless, except for the standing around part. It took 5 minutes for someone to show up to front desk… not exactly presenting yourself as a leader in hospitality here.

Get to my room, which was adequate in size and features. I proceed to setup my laptop so I can continue working on my clients project. I left my spare cat5 cable on-site, so I had to room service myself one. No big deal, but it took 30 minutes. After getting a cable, I discover the internet does not work. I call front desk who tells me to call the wireless support number for the wired internet support.

I call Sasktel’s special hot line and we go through some real basic stuff like: Is the light on? Which just so happens to be whats wrong with the magical box. So they advise me to get the hotel to swap the box for another box.  So another call to front desk and 30 minutes later a new modem (which honestly did not look very new… but they assured me it was “new”).

It took about all of 2 minutes to discover that modem didn’t work either; so, I called Sasktel back and they told me they would send someone to fix it… in 4 days. I briefly pressed the issue, but understood that it just wasn’t in the cards to get them out here any faster. I called front desk again.

This time they send the “manager” up to try to work some magic on my computer. This amused me, but sadly I had packed my laptop up in anticipation of being moved to a room that had working internet access. After explaining the problem was not with my computer, but with the modem and/or the line, he conceded I should be moved to a new room.

After 30 minutes of him trying to find the cheapest available room for more than an evening in the hotel, he took me to the “spa” suite. We tried the internet there and it didn’t work either. Well, most perplexing, but he suggested that he could reset the Sasktel stuff and give it a try. So he does that while I stand in the spa room turning the modem on and off every so often. At some point it started to work and I checked my email. He came back and was happy it worked, but not wanted to try it back in the room we just came from.

So… back to the old room. Internet still didn’t work on there, so he once again stood there and haggled with front desk for the cheapest possible room. Which apparently was the room we were just in. So, a free upgrade he says! Off to the “spa” room.

“Spa” room is a room with a bathrobe and microwave. It’s also slightly larger and appears to contain a hide-a-bed with no sheets or blanket. It’s also double the cost of my business room and did not have a comfy chair. Of course, it was the same price as the business room for me… so score !?!

Not much exciting happened between that Thursday and Sunday. Room service seemed to take a disturbingly long time to come. House keeping ignored my DnD sign twice… On Sunday I needed to use the free laundry facilities.

Threw my load in at 5pm and came back 45 minutes later. Still washing my clothes apparently, so I took a swim. Came back 30 minutes later and it was obvious the washing machine was stuck on the finial spin and rinse cycle. I caught it before another rinse and then had to leave while I waited for the dry to free up. Came back an hour later and the dry was still in use, the timer put back to 80 minutes. Came back 80 minute later and met the guy who had his laundry in the drier.

As this point, it was obvious the dry was not working. This poor guy had a small load of socks and underwear in there since 4pm. It was now 9:30. He stuff was still more than damp to the touch and barely warm. The dry was obviously broken. Which left me with a pile of soaking wet clothes (two sweaters to boot!). I called the front desk and asked if they had any capacity to help me. She was less than helpful with “umm… aahhhh… errr…” and “gee, that’s not good”. I inquired about getting access to house keeping to use their driers, but she assured me that was impossible since she didn’t have keys.

Apparently Sunday night, the hotel has no staff except for this one girl at front desk. I guess that’s plausible, but I decided to test it. I called front desk from my room (previously called from the pool) and asked if I could get a set of cutlery and a plate. “Sure”, she says. 30 minute later (I swear they time it to 30 minutes on purpose…) I get myself a plate and cutlery. Well, proves she was at the very least lieing about any other staff… and I still have my doubts no one on staff could of granted me access to the driers. Oh well… moving on.

I managed to tell my story to Dean who picked up my clothes and run it threw the drier for a while. Brought it back and I let it hang dry the rest of the night. So, in the end it worked out I guess; but, no thanks to the hotel.

Checkout was possibly the saddest part of the experience. I was checking out a day early, but past checkout time. Understandably there is an “early” checkout fee. I’m fine with that, but I wanted something for the laundry fiasco I had to endure. Front desk staff themselves couldn’t help me and all the management were in a meeting behind in the room behind front desk.

Now, if I was in the customer service industry, I’d feel it would be okay to knock and ask a manager to help with a client. I dunno, maybe I’m crazy or something; but, it seems so simple… Anyways, they made me wait 12 minutes (I stood there staring at the clock…) until the meeting was done. The manager came out, looked the situation over and said there was nothing they could do. They already upgraded my room for free. I was understanding that the room was upgraded for “free”; but, also explained my position that it was for the lack of working internet and not the laundry fiasco. She insisted there was nothing she could do and started to turn away.

At this point I was tired and about to let go; but I instead said, “How about you waive the early checkout fee?”. Which, to my surprise she said, “Fine”. She turned away without another word and left. Kinda rude… but victory I guess?

I’ll keep this short and simple, so point form it is:

• After the first few transistions in to direct sun light the do appear to transition in less than a minute.
• Takes a while in indirect light, which is fine.
• Transitioning back to normal takes considerably longer. By my count, about 2.5 minutes (see quote…)
• Function “ok” as shades, but my shares definately provide better reduction in glare
• Price for this feature on lenses is reasonable ($100 CAD), considering custom tinted glasses would cost about the same lens wise.
• Personally, while a cool feature, I would not get transitions on my lenses again. I’ll stick with actual shades next time.

The end.

Right now I have my 300mm, 35mm and flash in the bag. I store the battery charge in the top, along with an extra usb cable and some cleaning supplies. Having the ability to swing the bag under my arm and swap lens is very liberating. Getting used to the way the bag opens up is a bit of a learning experience, so practice on your bed or something. Dropping a lens is never an amusing situation…

This bag has enabled me to causally bring my camera with me places I wouldn’t normally consider taking a camera. In that sense, I feel more opportunities to take pictures, even if they are of non-sense stuff that no one cares about. Experience composing pictures is experience composing pictures. Anyways, I give it an arbitrary two thumbs up.

I first read about Mandylion in… IRC. I didn’t really pay much attention, since they looked kinda cheesy and toy like. It wasn’t until about 6 months ago I noticed them again. This time these key fobs were looking mighty nice for all my password needs. What I want it for is simple, keep track of around 15 passwords I currently use. All of them are different, but I don’t tend to change them very often. Mandylion’s device can help me manage these passwords AND remember them. I’m always forgetting these pesky passwords and doing resets.

The problem for me is that Mandylion sells 5 key fobs as a kit now for about $250 US. I have no… pracical use for 5 Mandylion’s, but I bet there are some people out there that do. If you come across this page and think you’d like to split a kit with me, let me know. I’m not gonna order a kit until I have 4 other people. I don’t care who gets the basestation, since they can operate independent of it anyways. My only worry is if you forget your entry sequence and need a reset. They don’t really mention how a reset is done, but I bet you need that silly station. It looks easy enough to hack your own connection anyways, so maybe you should only get ahold of me if you are able to do such DIY type things. Anyways, ThinkGeek sells them here and you can check out their website here.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/security/7573/

Being the skeptic I am… I called a few more places to see what they said. They all basically said the same thing: “If you wax your car, you don’t really need it.” So there you have it people. If you plan to wax your car a few times a year, then skip the clear coat deal on your car. It’s a complete waste of money.

I found one that goes by CIS World Wide, but they seem to be a complete scam as far as I’m concerned. They claim unlimited lookups, but really you get 5 credits to use some really poor searches. If it doesn’t turn anything up, well your out your credits. They link to a bunch of other services that do searches as well, so I supposed that is a sort of service. I’m inclined to make a page that has all the links to those services for free, see how they feel about that. If anyone is interested in doing any sort of background check on someone and wants a link to a bunch of resources… let me know.

I did manage to get a list of all the property and phone numbers for Steve Jobs thou, that was mildly amusing.

• Sonorix UK offers them for about 84GBP, or $125 Canadian.
• Blue Unplugged, again a UK store. Slightly higher price.
• My favorite Expansys. $240 from them, and they actually ship from the UK, to the USA, to Canada… So… ya.

For the most part the only store to bring them in and sell them AFAIK is FutureShop and BestBuy. They must obviously know it, because they charge a fortune for them. Anyways, it is definitely possible to get them cheaper than $300 like I paid, but… they still don’t fit right and the charging is awkward. I’m still skeptical about the battery life as well. Thou some people have messaged me to say they get plenty of listening off them… so I dunno.

If it doesn’t play you will probably need… this DivX.

Also had some useless features like 128mb built in for listening to mp3′s and such. I could never see myself using that really, but you never know. The charging system is an amazingly well designed “UFO shaped” device. Right, as if that makes it work better or something. Really, what made me return this product was the charging system and battery life. 2 hours or so of headset use. Thats right… thats about 8 or 6 or 4 less than what they say it is (they can’t make up their minds on the the website, box and manual). At any rate, thats way too short for any practical use. Maybe if I could charge them while using them… but that would defeat the purpose a bit. They do include two batteries, so you can always swap when one goes dry. Funny thou, they obviously figures out that was a problem, because in the next model of their headsets, they allow it to be charge via usb.

Verdict is to not buy these, especially for $300 bones plus tax. You can get a Motorola HT820 headset for $100 CND these days. Not as much crap comes with it, but then again… it lets you buy a separate bluetooth adapter that has a range of 250m. Making them really really good for walking around the house. Motorola HT 820