Activesteve.com is Born…

Well, a mighty congratulations goes out to Rob and Anna, who tied the knot just over a week ago at Watson’s Mill in Manotick. I was lucky enough to be one of the four best men to take part in the wedding, and share in their special day. As a result, there was a fair bit of partying to be done as well, which included not just one, but two bachelor parties, as well as the wedding itself. And all this a mere week away from my Iron-distance triathlon! This post will share a bit of the fun that we had over the week before the wedding, as well as the wedding itself. The fun was multiplied by the fact that we had some special guests come from out of town that we hadn’t seen in a while, which made it all the better. Namely, Tanya, Troy, Duane and Boris made the trip from their respective corners of Canada to celebrate with us. Read on to hear a bit more about this once-in-lifetime event for Rob and Anna. If you’re so inclined, you can also head over toflickr to paw through the many pictures that we took.

Wow, to think I call myself a music fan and didn’t know about this fantastic service available online! Have I got your attention yet? I decided that I had better write a blog post about a most excellent music service available for free on the good ‘ole cyberspace. I’m talking about Pandora, and my best advice to give any readers right now is to just go there and learn about it. What’s that? Not enough information you say? Okay, how about this in a nutshell: Pandora is a music-matching service of sorts, call it musical ESP. You like a certain song or band? Well, pop in that name, and instantly, the service creates a ‘radio station’ for that kind of music. First, they play you a tune you likely know very well, then the fun starts. Pandora will follow that up with different songs and artists which fit into the musical genetics of the song or artist you input. How is this possible you ask? Well, the roots of this service has to do with the Music Genome Project. To quote wikipedia:

The Music Genome Project, created in January 2000, is an effort founded by Tim Westergren, a 1988 graduate from Stanford University and spearheaded by a group of musicians and technicians to “capture the essence of music at the fundamental level” by using over 400 attributes to describe songs.

Yup, each an every song in the database is catalogued on many different levels to classify it, like a unique living creature. This enables the new stations you create in Pandora to play music you are highly likely to enjoy.

Well, as a reward for going away to New York City for the weekend, we let someone come over to our house and install our new carpeting on Monday in the basement! Finally, what I thought would be a day off. Well, the carpet has been laid out, and it looks fantastic. They did a good job (Giant Carpet). The new carpet is much lighter, so it doesn’t show Jonah’s hair as much, but will be prone to show dirt. Oops, can’t win them all I guess. Of course, now that the carpet is done, I have to work on putting quarter round trim along all the walls at the floor. Pain in the ass. I also started wiring the speakers up. They have been mouted on the walls, and I bought a fish tape to get the speaker wire through the walls / ducts to conceal the wiring. Again, major pain in the ass! But worth the effort, as there are no wires criss-crossing the floor. We’ve also got word back that the new couch may be in by Christmas, so now I’m gonna have to hurry up and get the bar built. That way, the whole basement would be done for Christmas! Yay! Hopefully I’ll have the whole home theatre set up soon, and I’ll post pics of what that looks like. Next purchase for me: wireless controller for the xbox. I’m also hoping I win a 52″ Toshiba HD TV at work. I bought 3 tickets for $10, with proceeds going to the United Way. Boy, would that TV look good in my new basement!