Merry Jesusmas!

Merry Jesusmas everyone! Perhaps you have snow.

Cracking Master Locks

As I was planning my trip to the hostels in Europe, I found that I need to have a combination lock to put on my locker. So, I dug out my Master Locks from high school, but the combinations for most of them were only written in one place and were stolen a few years ago. This left me with 4 locks without a combination.

Since I had nothing better to do, I thought I'd figure out the combinations and Kevin decided to help me too. At first, this sounded like a daunting task, as there appear to be 40^3 = 64,000 possible combinations. But, it turns out that there are only actually only 64 possible combinations for the first 2 numbers if you know the last number. And, with practice it gets easy to figure out the last number in about 1 minute. (That's true. We only guessed the last number incorrectly twice over the entire 4 locks.)

After cracking the combination for the first 3 locks, I had enough practice that the 4th lock took under 20 minutes to figure out. How is that possible? Well, the internet helps. Those links show how to break Master Lock combinations, but they claim that it also works on other manufacturers' locks as well.

You learn something new every day.

Icy Day

Today there was a bunch of ice that knocked out power to 450,000+ people (not us), canceling schools today and tomorrow. So, since I can't go Christmas shopping, what better thing to do than take pictures?

I liked the purple glow that the ice gave off on this small tree:

There was a whole long line of icicles along the wiggling branches of this tree:

A lonely pear hangs on tightly:

An icy branch reaches out:

The tree across the street was glowing white:

For the record, it was 12F (7C) warmer in Victoria today.

Downtown Lights

I went downtown a few days ago and took some pictures of the lights on the Empress and the Legislature. Here they are:



The high quality versions of these are in Winkflash.

Back to SC

After 4 buses, 1 boat, 3 airplanes, and 1 van, I'm now back in SC. It took me just over 23 hours to do the whole trip, but that was because I'm crazy. I decided to get about 800 more frequent flyer miles by inserting a stop in SFO between my flight from YVR to ORD. So that gave me a red eye, but it wasn't that bad. I'm impressed at how well I slept laying down on the seats in ORD for 3 hours with the annoying "Please keep all bags with you at all times..." message that played loudly every 10 minutes. (I managed to find a terminal that had no arm rests and wasn't used for the 3 hours.) Also, the last flight (ORD->GSP) was delayed only about 20 min as they de-iced the plane since there was 5 in. of snow on the ground and more falling (but none on the runways). But that was no big deal.

Sorry, no photos, mostly because the trip was cloudy and/or dark. I did get to see the golden gate bridge from the air, which was cool. It looks small. I also thought that SFO was flat, but it isn't. It looks like an interesting place to visit some day. I'll add it to the list.

Same War, Different Flavor

Being exposed to both the Canadian and American coverage of the GSAVE ("Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism") really gives an interesting contrast. Here's an example:

Over a week ago (Nov. 24), a Canadian soldier was killed in Afghanistan during what is basically a traffic accident. (I certainly don't mean to belittle his death.) Every day since then, he has been mentioned in the headlines covering the incident, his body's arrival in Canada, and his funeral.

Yesterday, the US headline read "Bomb Kills 10 Marines, Wounds 11 in Iraq." Today, there is no mention of the incident in the headlines.

In this case, the contrast is all about the proportions. This being the 8th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan certainly is a contrast to the hundreds of American soldiers killed in Iraq. However, the death of the 10 marines was reported to be the deadliest attack in 4 months. I'm reminded of the quote that is attributed to (ironically) Stalin: "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

I'm not trying to say that one amount of coverage is better than another, it's just interesting to see the difference.

Snow!

Today it snowed enough to stick on the ground, instead of just a little dusting that we had a few days ago.



I don't know what's going on though. I thought I lived on a Pacific island.