The weather was excellent last weekend. I was on-call but, fortunately, the world is not without nice people. My colleague Virgil was very kind to cover me for couple hours so that we could enjoy our first skating experience in Ottawa.
There were impressive number of people:
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My son Alex is a hero. He spent couple hours outside and by the time I could finally force him to go home the temperature went down to -15 with light breeze and somewhat high humidity. According to the local weather network it felt like 25 below zero.
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Couple weeks ago we went skiing for the first time in Canada. We choose Camp Fortune for few hours of night skiing - it’s only 15 minutes from downtown Ottawa.
I’ve got one shot to share. It’s not the best but hey my Olympus C-5060 is quite old. I guess I have to think about proper SLR camera at some point.
The mountain is not comparable to European Alps in Austria - it’s more like hills but location is very handy for couple hours skiing. I noticed that -10 C in the evening feels way colder than -20 С during the day in Alps.
This weekend the weather is excellent here in Ottawa - a bit below zero and sunny. Perfect time for skiing and skating especially now that Rideau Canal is fully open. Unfortunately, our whole family is a little sick and outdoor activities are no go for the next few days. 
Today we had a “bye-bye Doug” dinner at Lone Star Texas Grill. From left to right - Alex Jr., me, Paul, Nicole, Olga and Doug (already switched to UK time zone as you can see):
They have excellent Fajitas. Of course, they serve Corona which is my second favorite beer after… eh… well, you know. They even keep pepper and salt in Corona bottles:
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Finally, I have some time to post few photos for those of you who haven’t seen Ottawa at night. I wish I had a better camera and wide angle lenses to capture certain scenes. Maybe next year…
You can see the the full album here and few highlights below:
My life is much better here in Canada since few month ago when I discovered that LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario - the only Liquor Store in Ontario) caries Guinness in cans. Coupled with salt and vinegar chips - it’s a perfect dinner for me. 
It could be the ideal breakfast as well but I’m not sure if my colleagues and Pythian customers would understand my passion.
It looks like finally the weather is “nice” enough for skiing. Recalling our skiing trips in Austrian Alps last year I can’t stop thinking about my favorite food there - Knoblauchrahmsuppe. Yum-Yum! I think I can translate it like garlic cream soup. I had to find some local substitutes here in Canada. Nevertheless, it tasted really good just like back in Austria.
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Last weekend we went to the Canadian Museum of Civilization. We liked very much the Canada Hall. The Grand Hall and the First People Hall were not that interesting mainly because Alex Jr. was pretty much bored there. Obviously, he enjoyed more the Children’s Museum area.
Very impressive was IMAX theater where we watched the Deep Sea movie. It was really cool on the big round screen. Highly recommended!
I wrapped up some photos here. If flash is the problem than here.
UKOUG 2006 is over and I was planning to finally provide a bit more details about it especially now when wireless internet is usable - during the conference there were way too many people connected and it was difficult to get in. It’s really nice that they left a Wi-Fi access point working after conference closing.
While sitting around “Oak” Table (or how it’s called this year - Bloak table), I got a reminder that today is the last day to send IOUG abstracts. Since I planned to submit an abstract there - I rushed in and filled out two proposals based on responses I’ve got from my UKOUG presentations.
One abstract is about block change tracking internals. I saw that people were interested and Jonathan Lewis even mentioned it on his blog. So I thought that if this sir enjoyed it then others must be interested as well. I will probably redesign it a bit and remove some details but cover few more things that are unknown so far. Thanks to Tanel’s presentation on advanced research techniques, I have few ideas where to look now.
The second presentation will be (if accepted) on Extensibility of Grid Control. I saw that there was interest but I packed way too much in the presentation and rushed through it. So my plan is to cut some bits from it and organize a demo instead. I learned quite a bit from my first presenting experience so next time I should be even better. ;-)
Now the most important message of this post… I know the story behind this picture taken by the Hubble telescope. :-) Do you?
I’ll give you a hint - it’s a member of the OakTable Network on this picture - nothing to do with Uranus. By the way, Anjo Kolk is a very nice and entertaining guy as well as bunch of others I’ve met here at UKOUG. If you really want to know the secret of that picture - ask Anjo. I’m sure he’ll be happy to provide some insightful details.
By the way, he had quite interesting presentation “CPU Stories” and showed how to decide between faster CPU’s or more CPU’s. Actually, I’m really impressed that he was able to deliver it so well after such a long night (again!).
Since I started to speak about the last night, I can tell you that it was very entertaining and lots of fun. I collected quite a few nice photos and should post soon. Interesting fact is that this morning everyone (except me) knew that I went to bed at 5:20. How come? I’ll go and check if there is a hidden camera in my room. To get you guys jealous - I’m going to a nice Indian restaurant today. :-P
Here is another detail from the evening. The name of this beautiful detail is Hana.
Hana, you promised to read my blog. The picture of you that we have is really poor in quality. Please send us a good one! Me and Anjo are looking forward to it!
PS: Hm… is my darling reading this blog?
Doug Burns posted a long awaited Cow today. This is quite different from what I see here in Munich.
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PS: Others on the pix are my son, wife and sister.
PPS: To many TARs updated last days - I just realized that I put dots on empty line just like on Metalink to avoid it eating up my empty formatting lines.
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