Canada Day 2005

Howdy everyone, and welcome to ActiveSteve 3.0! Yup, it was time to throw the switch on the things I’ve been working on in the background for a while with respect to this website. In celebration of the fact that ActiveSteve has essentially been reborn as a result of getting the clean bill of health, I decided to get my portal re-vectored in anticipation of my future adventures 🙂 Although I’ve always been pretty happy with the site that I had, it was time to try some new things. Well, that and the fact that my server host has been sort of trying to get me to upgrade my underlying content management system (CMS), Drupal specifically. Of course I’m sure you’re not all that interested in the boring techy side of this. You’re probably just interested in finding out what exactly I’ve changed, what’s new, and what you can do here at the new ActiveSteve. I’ll keep is relatively short, but if you’d like to actually read about what’s new, rather than just messing around yourself, click the link to read more.

I ask you this; Is there anything better than a nice relaxing weekend camping along a river in the summer? Well, although we only managed to get out for a single night of camping over the past weekend (and entire summer so far!), it was really nice. Jody and I headed out to Calabogie to camp on Jim’s property along the Madawaska river last weekend, with Jonah in tow. The idea was just to get away from the city for a quiet night on the river, with a nice campfire, some camp chow, and watery fun in the river. Mission accomplished. Although I had grander plans, which included night biking trips, maybe trail running, and hiking, we really didn’t move too far from our campsite. The only trips we made were up the hill to the cabin to visit our ‘neighbours’, Jim, Allie and Xavier. They were up for the weekend getting some additional work done on the homestead and just generally enjoying their property. Who can blame them? After his recent trip to Utah for Primal Quest, I would imagine Jim thoroughly enjoyed his beer, cigar and scotch under a starry sky by the campfire. I know I did 😉

Yup, as the picture suggests, I’ve now turned into one of ‘those’ people. I’m a pod person. I’m now the proud owner of a new toy, in the form of a 30 Gig, 5th generation video iPod. I came to own this little beauty in a spontaneous, roundabout kind of way. Last week, I showed up at work, and we were having a silent auction at lunch to raise funds for charity. There was quite a few unimpressive ‘prizes’ like logo’ed shirts from phone and broadcast companies, some dvds, cds, and sports tickets, but there was also this nice little iPod. Of course, I was well aware that it would fetch quite a few bids, and I wasn’t even convinced that I wanted it. In the end, I put in a bid of $250… and won! Overall, I’d say I did get a reasonable deal. They sell for $300+tax online and in stores, so I saved about $90.