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I just uploaded my first video to facebook!

We have uploaded a few to youtube in the past; this is the first to facebook.  I like in facebook I don't have to tell everyone I know that there is a new video up and where to find it.  

Has anyone else had video on the web experience?  What do you like?

- Brian Verkley

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Merry Christmas !

Our year in review:

Early in the year, Hadley correctly predicted the sports upset of the
century (it has only been 7 years) by choosing the banana representing
the Giants over the banana representing the Patriots.  Cort was
especially happy as he bet with Hadley and finally won something at his
annual party.

Leanne instituted Scrapbooking Nights.  Roughly monthly, she invited
people from her mommy groups over to have a night out without kids and
get a page or two of scrapbooking done.

We took Hadley to her first Leafs game, where the Leafs won in OT 4-3.
She only cried with the Flyers scored.

In March, on her birthday, Hadley turned 1!  We had a small party,
complete with sick parents and child.  Still, there were some good cake
photos, but nothing too messy.

We took Hadley to her first Blue Jays game; the home opener.  Later in
the year we went again with Adam and Krista, again with uncle Paul,
Julie, and Joe, and again with Steve and Brent.  Leanne also joined a
slowpitch team in Whitby.  Although we did go to her first and last
game, Sunday night became Daddy Night as Hadley and I would hang out alone.

Hadley ate a pickle.

July 1st, Canada Day, in Ottawa!  Shaye had the dream and we were
excited to join her.  Dad, Patti-Jo, Patrick, and Julie joined us as
well.  The crowds were CRAZY.  From Parliament Hill in the morning to
the fireworks at night, and the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court
in the wee hours, I'm glad we got the chance to enjoy a Canada Day in
our nation's capital.

For vacation we took a two week road trip East.  The highlight was
visiting Lisa and Jeff in Nova Scotia.  We also visited a number of
UNESCO World Heritage sites, camped in a few Canadian National Parks,
visited Joe and Pat's new PEI summer home, and took part in Quebec
City's 400th anniversary.  6000km in our little Saturn Ion.  Hadley was
great at car camping.  She didn't mind the hours in the car seat and she
seemed to like sleeping in the tent.

Leanne turned 30.  Or maybe she stopped turning 29, I'm not sure.  I
think having a kid makes you feel not young anyway, so the milestone is
less scary, but we celebrated with a nice party anyway.

One day mom was visiting and we were mentioning how "someday" we would
like to walk the waterfront trail from Ajax toward Toronto.  She
insisted to come along, and that it should be tomorrow.  So, without any
more preparation thank packing lunch and a GPS, we headed out.  17.06km
later, and very tired, we arrived at Rouge Hill Go station.  "Someday"
we'll finish the rest.  The parts that are a trail rather than a street,
really are lovely along Lake Ontario.

Congratulations to Mandy and Jason.  Their first born son, Jayden, is
Hadley's only cousin.  It was wonderful to watch Hadley care for Jayden
with soft hugs and kisses.

On a work note, I was forcefully retired from Bell.  My pension doesn't
kick in for a while though, so I've decided to write a Facebook game in
the meantime.  If you haven't already, join Facebook and give Fable
Island ( http://apps.facebook.com/fableisland/ ) a try.  I hope you like it.

And of course there were a hundred other trips to the zoo, birthday,
wedding and anniversary parties, and toddler day trips.
We hope you had a wonderful year and like us, find some time to relax
this holiday season.

Looking forward, I wonder if this will be the end of the email
tradition.  With more and more people sending Facebook messages rather
than email, blogging about their life instead of writing email, and grow
more tired of spam in the email inbox, I can see a day where being on
the internet once again doesn't necessarily mean you have a regular
email inbox.  Fear not though, as I'll just migrate to a new form as we
evolve.  The note below is in fixed width fonts with shortened lines
because that is how Pine displayed email on the screen at the time.
That was the full width of the screen too.  Times change, and yet the
tradition continues. Hadley still can't read...

Brian Verkley
Leanne Verkley
http://ajax.verkley.com/blog/brian
http://ajax.verkley.com/blog/leanne

Lisa Marie Verkley wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 17:04:51 -0500 (EST)
From: Kaushik Aneel
To: Ben Yoskovitz
Cc: Thomas Hood ,
Mark Cecchetto ,
JAY MCDONALD ,
Laura Thompson ,
Ben'sfriend Rebecca
Subject: Santa Claus: The Brutal Truth (fwd)

Santa Claus: The Brutal Truth
by Anonymous

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000 specices
of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are
insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer
which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18). But
since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist
children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the total -leaving 378
million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average
(census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes.
One presumes there is at least one good child per house.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different
time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to
west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second.
This is to say that for each Christian household with good children,
Santa has 1/1000 th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down
the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under
the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney,
get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that
each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth
which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our
calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per
household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do
what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc.

That means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000
times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest
man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, move at a poky 27.4
miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, at tops 15 miles per
hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
each child gets nothing more then a medium sized lego set ( 2 pounds ),
the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is
invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can
pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting the 'flying reindeer' can
pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we cannot the job with eight, or even
nine, We need 214,200 reindeer. This increased the payload- not even
counting the weight of the sleigh to 353,430 tons. Again for comparison
- this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth

5) 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous air
resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair will
absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second. Each. In short,
they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the
reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake.
The entire reindeer team will be vaporized with 4.26 thousandths of a
second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces 17,500.06
times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa ( which seems ludicrously
slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by a 4,315,015 pound force.

In conclusion, If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas eve, he's
now dead.

P.S. this will be something you can tell your kids someday!

- Brian Verkley

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Fable Island passed 100 users today.  56 of which are playing at least daily.

I've had two successful updates.  If there are any Bell people reading, you may find it humourous / interesting that I basically use the Bell change process to do my changes.  test / mop / notify customers / complete and log change in a middle of the night change window / log success in a public forum.  And I approve all my own changes!  So far so good.

- Brian Verkley

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The facebook game I have been working on for the past three months is now alive.  Check out http://apps.facebook.com/fableisland/ and let me know what you think.  

As I hope for this to become a full time job, your support is GREATLY appreciated.  Please try it out, please let me know what you think (good or bad) and please, if you like it, invite your friends.

- Brian Verkley