Category Archives: mattsimpson.ca

Cuba At Peace

While my wife and I were visiting Havana, Cuba during our honeymoon in 2006 I happened to snap this shot while traveling through a small village. It is a simple photograph of a slender Cuban man sitting peacefully in the shade on a beaten up park bench.

I suppose to me this image symbolizes the shadow that US President John F. Kennedy cast on Cuba in 1962, and the struggles that Cuban citizens have had to endure while they wait peacefully and patiently for the attack on their economic resources to cease.

A Real Christmas Vacation

Christmas is and has pretty much always been a hectic and chaotic event in the Simpson house. My wife and I usually have only a few days to complete the full “Christmas rounds” (i.e. father’s, in-laws, extended family in-laws, mother’s, extended family, etc) 450 kilometres away and then head home to head back to work. Not this year!

My wife and I had just moved into a wonderful new house this past summer (no not this house, but that’s a story for another time) and invited our full “Christmas rounds” guests our way for the holidays.

We had originally planned to have everyone down at the same time, like a good old fashioned Griswold family Christmas, but it didn’t work out quite that way as some had to work, some had travel arrangement problems, and some were well, tired.

Never-the-less we ended up hosting and enjoying a very nice Christmas, and got to see much of our family in the comfort our own home, which is one of the best Christmas presents we could have received.

Open Letter to Rogers

I am a Rogers customer and have been for 4 years now. I have been anticipating Apple’s iPhone launch in Canada for well over a year, and I even held out on buying a hacked iPhone from the States, because I wanted to buy an “official” one from you guys to celebrate the Canadian launch. Heck, I was even going to wait in a line to buy one… that is until last week.

To my incredible surprise and disappointment, your iPhone plan pricing is in my opinion a complete joke that not only does not benefit me the customer, but also does not benefit your share holders. You are hindering your own long-term success with Apple, by trying to capitalize on your short-term monopoly. I believe your iPhone plans are undermining what Apple is trying to do in the cell phone industry, and I would be surprised if Apple just let you do it.

I just wanted to let someone at Rogers know (even though a human will probably never read this) that I hope you enjoy the 100 iPhones Apple has sent you for your big launch (joke re: Apple sanctioning Rogers), and that the GPS feature is not attractive enough for me now (because of your plan pricing) to not buy a hacked 1st generation iPhone from the net.

Disappointed Customer,
Matt Simpson

I Need Your Discipline

I haven’t had a favourite song of the moment in quite a while that was of any sort of quality, so I was very happy to hear NIN’s new Discipline single. What a great song and the video is a perfect match. To top it all off, NIN was giving the MP3 away for free on their website. The song also comes with a bit of a teaser in the comment of the MP3’s ID3 tag, which states “Go to www.nin.com May 5”. Interesting. I hope that means there is more of this to come.

Zaaaaap.

Apple KeyboardOkay I don’t know who the “smart guy” was at Apple who thought it would be funny to design a keyboard that conducts electricity so well, but I want them to know that they have caused me a great amount of psychological trauma. Fine, well not a great amount, but enough that I am literally afraid to touch my keyboard at certain points because of the massive static shock I am going to receive if I get any where close to the metal.

*ponders* I’m reminded of a scene in Office Space, one of my favourite movies.

Dammit, if didn’t love everything else about that keyboard… *shakes fist*

Home Sweet Home: Sold

Karla and I are very excited (scared, delighted, and a bunch of other things) to announce that we have officially sold our house this evening! I know! Sold! Our very first house, and it’s sold. We have had four really great years of really great memories here on this street, and we will very much miss it. This has not only been our house, but also our home, and we will be very sad to leave.

Fortunately, that won’t be for a little while. Our official closing date is not until July, so we have some time to really prepare ourselves. I would imagine that there will be a lot of reflection happening here between now and then.

“So Matt; So Karla… what’s next?” you ask. Well…

Matt & Karla’s House Plan Karla and I are very excited (scared, delighted, and a bunch of other things) to announce that we will be building a new home. Yes, not just a new house, but a new home. It will actually be built not that far from where we live now, less than 10 kilometers away. We have been searching for that “right place” for a while now and we found it, just on the edge of the city of Kingston. Close enough to enjoy the city amenities, but far enough away that we don’t feel cramped. To the right is a picture of what our home will look like when we are finished. It will be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison when we are actually done. Stay tuned for that.

During the next several months I will likely be blogging about this quite a bit. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to leave comments. We plan to make this a “smart house”, completely tech’d out, so for the geeks out there you may be interested in how I am planning this, what I am using, how I am doing it, and how it works out. This will be completely documented from beginning to end, so if you are interested in this sort of stuff you should find this interesting.

I have feeling that 2008 is going to be an exciting and eventful year!

Cell Gone AWOL

I used to be proud that I could say I had never lost a cell phone (I was close once, but I got it back before I knew it was even missing thanks to a nice cab driver). Well on Friday I decided to clip my phone onto my pocket instead of my belt loop (stupid), then I gathered up a bunch of junk in my car and took it to the city dump. You can probably guess where I’m going… yeah, I ended up losing my cell phone at the dump.

I suppose there were a few reasons I was so perturbed by this incident:

  1. They’re expensive, so losing them is painfully annoying.
  2. I was 1 day away from no longer being stuck in a contract with my cell phone company. I could have been free, freeeee!
  3. I had a crappy 1st generation RAZR that I hated, but it worked and I was holding out for the iPhone to come to Canada (in approximately 6 months I’m told).

Sony Ericsson w580iI decided that I did in fact need a cell phone, so I went to Rogers and “wheeled and dealed” my way into a Sony Ericsson w580i, which for the record is a really nice phone. I’ve only had it a few days, but I’m impressed with the functionality, style and general usability of the phone. It has some really interesting features such as a built in pedometer (which sadly shows me just how little I actually walk / move over the course of a day), built in AM/FM radio (neat but generally useless here in Kingston), 8GB MP3 player (the 8GB card you get free right now from Rogers as a promotion), Bluetooth, and more. Very nice, highly recommended!

No “K” in Cuba

I haven’t written a blog post in a while, but I thought I would hop on tonight and express my mixed emotion about my upcoming holiday.

Since, erm… December Karla and I have been planning on going “somewhere warm” for a holiday the end of October / first part of November. I have been excited for quite a while, and when I found out there were actually five or six people game for a vacation, I was uber happy.

Well three weeks ago Karla found out she got a new job!!! YEY FOR KARLA! I am so proud of my wife!!! The down side to this amazing career opportunity of course is that she can no longer go away on our vacation.

Karla was gracious enough (after a minor bribe of the cost of the trip in new clothing) to be understanding and “let” me go away “somewhere warm” without her. So off we go, all four or five of us… oh wait, we had to switch the week we were going because the original date no longer worked for me, which means now two traveling companions also can’t go when we were going. So off we go, all three of us… oh wait, who was the third person anyways?

In summary, the vacation dwindled down to just two of us; myself and my friend Andrew. Which is totally awesome!!!! We are going to have a friggen fantastic time in Cayo Coco, Cuba at the Nh Krystal Laguana for 7 days, all inclusive. I totally can’t wait, I’m so excited.

Oh don’t worry there will be pictures… I will post them when I get back.

A Hockey Matt-ch

IMG_5190.JPGAny close friend of mine will tell you that I am far from a sports fan. In fact I would say that I work pretty hard to avoid hockey, baseball, football, etc. That said, when presented with the opportunity to attend an NHL hockey game I would likely take it. I’ve attended 2 NHL games this year actually, one in Montreal (Habs vs. Carolina) and the other in Ottawa (Sens vs. Pens).

The game in Montreal was my first NHL game ever, and I must say I was not overly impressed. Perhaps because I’m not actually a hockey fan, perhaps because I was some what intoxicated during the game (a la Huron County friends) or perhaps because our seats were so high up (like above the press box high up) that I felt as thought I should be harnessed into my seat.

This is why I decided to give the Senators a chance. This game was a heck of a lot better. It was moderately exciting and they put out the Penguins (game 5 of the Eastern conference semi-finals I’m told), plus the Scotia Bank Place is a nice stadium and I could actually see the players.

I managed to bring my camera into this game, feel free to check out the photographs.

Zero-Seven Random Weekend

Destination RandomThis is a message to inform Karla, Greg and Jocelyn that you have been chosen to participate in a random event, code-named Zero-Seven Random Weekend. While the details of the event will not be disclosed you will need to know a few things in order to complete the weekend successfully, safely and enjoyably.

  • The date of the event will be e-mailed to you separately.
  • You will not likely be getting a lot of sleep during the time that we are away. Please rest up before we leave and prepare yourself for a low-sleep situation as best you can. This means very early mornings and likely very late nights. This is not a relaxing event, be forewarned.
  • You must have a valid drivers licence and it must not expire before June 30th, 2007. If it does, you must renew it long before hand in order to attend. Please check your expiry date to ensure this.
  • You must have a valid health card with you (of course) in case of emergency. Again, please check your expiry date to ensure it is valid.
  • You must bring comfortable footwear as we will be doing a lot of walking and there are big hills. Not necessarily hiking boots, but something comfortable.
  • You need 3 days worth of your “normal” clothing. I recommend a backpack and / or small bag that you can carry with you without getting too frustrated if you need to carry it for several hours at a time.
  • You may want to bring a bathing suit (not required, up to you).
  • You will want to bring your camera.
  • You will need to have some money with you. Bring some cash, maybe $50.00-ish. You can use credit cards in some cases.
  • Make sure you bring your sense of adventure, it will be a pretty fun weekend.

The name of the event says it all… Random Weekend. I am sure that it is technically possible to figure out parts of what is planned for the weekend, but part of the fun is the unknown, right! Ponder it for a while, perhaps discuss it, but don’t overburden yourself. Let me take care of the details.