Blogs, Bookmarks, and BjornBulthuis.com

It seems that I am never happy in one place for to long. It has been nine months since I moved my blog to Blogger from its original location at Spymac. Blogger offered me many more features to work with and a more enjoyable reading experience for you. That migration added options like in post links, customizable sidebars, an RSS feed, and direct posting from Flickr. These are just a few and many I have taken for granted.
Well, in an effort to always be moving forward, I have made another move. Great, you might exclaim, now I have to update my bookmark again. How many more times is he going to do this? Well, I am pleased to announce that the answer is never! I have forked out the money and purchased BjornBulthuis.com. It is quite an exhilarating feeling to have your own .com, especially for a computer science student like myself. The new, and hopefully permanent, address for my blog is blog.BjornBulthuis.com.
I am using the opensource software WordPress to run my blog. Many more features have been added, and hopefully it will not be to confusing. To increase ease of use I have stuck with the default design, a pretty basic layout. In the future there will probably be tweaks done here and there (that is the beauty of opensource), but the basic idea will probably stay the same.
One feature that might be of interest to you is the addition of tags or categories. Much like Flickr and del.icio.us, I can now tag my stories. So now you can instantly find all entries involving my family. There is also a handy search field to quickly find an old entry.
Another thing I am excited about is that I was able to bring over all my blogs from my Blogger page, including comments. This took a little extra work and research, but it was well worth it. So update your bookmarks and RSS feeds, I am here for the long run.
(An interesting side note, I went out and got an iPod Shuffle this week. I have been eyeing them for quite awhile and finally gave in. The main reason I got it was because I was tired of not wanting to take my iPod certain place, for fear of it getting damaged. The Shuffle will fill a nice “off-road” niche of my portable music world. Activities where I will use it include work, skateboarding, mowing the lawn, running, snowboarding, bike rides, hiking, the beach, long walks…)

The Northwest Washington Fair

The guys wanted to get breakfast together before work on Tuesday morning. We went to Dutch Mothers. I got the Dutch Fry, which was huge and had a lot of potatoes. I could barely eat it all. After eating the guys decided that they didn’t want to work that day. So that left me to work by myself or go to the fair for the day, I chose the fair.
Every summer I want to go to the Northwest Washington Fair in Lynden. I haven’t been since I was a kid, so I was real excited to see it again. After my morning run I took my free ticket I got from my aunt and went to the fair. I walked around for a while looking for my cousins with their animals. I found some of them and said hi and then did a once over of all the booths. My cousin Bria was going to be showing her goat, so I went to the goat barn and waited. They were a long ways behind schedule, so I read for a couple hours. Mikal was also showing his sheep in the same barn, so I talked to him for a while. Marika was over in the draft horse barn working with our neighbor’s draft horses.
I didn’t really go on any rides, but I walked around everywhere and even got to talk to my curling instructor at the TWU booth. That was kind of cool. Uncle John, Zac, and I also watched a hypnotist’s show, which was pretty funny. In the evening I went to the big horse show in the grand stand and then made my way home for an early end to the evening.

Hinds Feet on High Places

The drive up to Mount Baker is a pretty amazing one. The road is narrow, has many curves, following much of the North Fork of the Nooksack River. I enjoy most of the drive, but when a slow car gets in front of you, it just seems to ruin everything. Ironically, on the way home we got stuck behind the same car. The road goes up past the ski area to Artist Point, which yields beautiful views of Shuksan, Baker and the surround Cascades. There were quite a few people up there enjoying the sun and many bicyclists resting from the cycle up. Jenny and I found a shady spot to eat our lunch before embarking on our hike. We decided to summit Table Mountain and then walk up its ridge to the other end. To get to the top is a steep mile hike up a cliff. The elevation gain is amazing. All of a sudden you are on top, looking down at the miniature version of your car below you. The mountain is correctly named, as the top is mostly flat. The trail across the top is much less traveled. We finally got to the other end and were looking down that side and saw these little alpine pools. After a short break we started descending this cliff to get to this hidden oasis. The trail was pretty steep and we had to do a little rock climbing at places, but we finally made it down. The pools were well worth our trouble. Secluded from the crowds we relaxed by one of these pools for much of the afternoon. I named the “High Places” because they reminded me of the book “Hinds Feet on High Places.”
On the way back to the car we watched this family trying to climb down this snowfield. The summer melt had revealed many rocks littered across it. As we watched this little girl slipped and started sliding on her back down the slope, screaming the whole way. She got turned around and ended up heading backwards, headfirst. She nearly hit some big rocks, but I imagine there was no way she missed all of them. After about a hundred feet a guy from their party grabbed her. She seemed to be all right, besides being a frightened, but it was quite the ordeal to watch.

Another Day with Matt

Yesterday we had to pour the second half of this patio at work. Matt wanted to hang out with me, so he came and helped so that we could get out of there sooner. The truck could not get to the back so we had to carry wheelbarrow loads from the truck to the patio. It was pretty hard work, but we got out of there quick and went home and played computers.
Matt just got Tiger, so he spent most of the day setting that up. We also watched a bunch of tech shows. In the evening we drove up to Jenny’s for Mexican food. I think I am going to be eating a lot of pizza and burritos next year. Not that I can’t do other food, but those two are just so good. We will see how long they are good for though.
After that we drove Matt to Pt. Roberts, because his parents were staying there with friends. Pt. Roberts is this little point that is part of the US, but only accessible by driving through Canada. As I was driving up this hill to the border I moved into the right lane to get around some cars that were stopped at this light. Well, it turns out the reason they were stopped is because they were in line for the border. The only way to turn around is to go through Canadian customs. So as we were in line Jenny was looking at Matt’s passport and then she passed it up to him. When we got up to the booth they told us to pull over so they could search us. I guess they were watching us and were trying to figure out what Jenny passed to Matt. It was all pretty ridiculous, especially because we hadn’t even been to the states yet.
When they let us leave they told us that we could cut to the front of the hour and a half line headed into the US. So, in the end, my mistake, which seemed to be a hassle, happened to save us a lot of time.
Once in Pt. Roberts we drove around for a while to see if we could find Matt’s parents car. When that didn’t work we drove around looking for wireless internet that we could use to get directions to the house. That plan ended up working and Matt and I were pretty proud of ourselves.
So I finally got to meet Matt’s dad and have a conversation with him and Matt’s mom. In the two years that Matt and I have been roommates I have only said hi to his mom once. This is because they have been living in the Middle East. Now they are moving to Manitoba and Matt is going with them. He will be studying engineering at the University of Manitoba. He is really looking forward to it and I think he will be really good at it. Matt’s parents are really great and very interesting to talk to. It is to bad that I was not able to spend more time with they in the past two years. Hopefully I will be able to visit Matt soon and then I will be able to get to know they more.

Roomate Reunion

Matt emailed me last night and said that he was going to be in Vancouver for the next two nights. He convinced me to ask for today off work and I might be able to get off early tomorrow too. So now I am waiting at the Tsawwassen Ferry for him to show up. After that we are heading to Jenny’s in Langley and then back to Lynden later tonight.

Well, Matt had a great time tree planting. He got to ride a helicopter to work like sixty times, which is right up his alley. Today we did a little shopping. Matt picked up a copy of Tiger, an inverter, and some clothes. Later on we had pizza with my relatives and played computer. Tomorrow he is going to come with me to work and help pouring concrete.