Dice Emulator

Well.. everyone else seems to be doing it nowadays..

int getRandomNumber(){
return 4; //Determined by a completely unabited
//roll of a dice. Guaranteed Random.
}

Adventures in Pain - The Saga

After coming up with the title for this one, I decided I needed to look up the definition of saga. Now that I know what it means, I will attempt to write it as defined in the spirit of icelandic settlement!

After Battling the Grueling tortures of the voyage to the weekend, and the rough rocky wrong coast of Saturday, which was spent attempting to murderously hack away at the drywall in the nursury armed with wallpaper and a paintbrush, the trials and tribulations of exploring the inland were upon me. I had decided to Conquer an unpeopled trail known as the Bruce in the land maps refer to as Caledon - no doubt a Saxon named relic of previous failed settlements.



I rode my steed, famed Swift+, to the base of the escarpment that was before me. Knowing full well that the rough trails would not allow for his particular footprint I let him graze while I traversed the hilly peaks, and valleys above.



Included in my assortment of navigational tools was a map of 12 treasures, no doubt left by the Saxons of Caledon to tempt wrong coastal settlers such as myself. I worked my way through the mountains, and to my own suprise I did not fall from the escarpment (which is a personal best! I don't think I have ever walked the bruce without injuring myself!). I conquered the 20 kilometer stretch finding all the treasure and looting it fullheartedly. The Trek however was not without it's toils.



After my collapse at Swift+'s manly hooves, I gathered myself into the stirrups and assessed my situation. The hike may have been only 20 km laterally, but the vertical terrain range must have been much more then that. My feet were bleeding quite badly and I was in no shape to carry on. Swift+ however had another idea! While I was gone he had collected maps of other treasures!



We carried on for another 6 hours or so, until the point at which I could barely walk. Swift+ had had enough as well, and we decided to call it a day. Back to the wrong coast, and some time off my feet!



Despite being so very tired, I did not rest well that night. The Pus draining from my feet was quite disconcerting, and actually quite ticklish. All is fair, i guess!

The End

Surely, There must be a better way..

So, I asks Google, I asks "How does I get from Lefroy to London"

And Google says, 'e says
Use this map and follow the directions

Step 27 is a bit much for me, but dont you think they could come up with a better place then Boston harbour to go swimming?

April Fool, and The horse who got jiggy

Finally a weekend worth mentioning!

This Sunday was the much anticipated April fools Geocaching event that is held in Stouffville every year. I actually decided to participate this year instead of just coming to the pub, because I was invited to join a team "dedicated to winning" it, so I did! The Team Consisted of Myself, Tequila, AdventureRat, OwlNebula and Barnies Band Of Gold. Normally the April Fools caches are meant to expose the political boondogles of the Ontario and Federal Government, and take you to places that really show how messed up the situation is - But this year it was pretty straight forward, implying to me atleast that the cache owner is a conservative. :)

FOOLED YOU!
We started off in Markham at 10pm on Saturday for a strategy meeting (which is quite difficult because the rules of the game wouldn't be announced until midnight). We headed out to Stouffville for midnight, and parked the vehicles in the Go Station Parking lot while we set up the wireless laptops and blackberries in anticipation of the publishing of the rules for the midnight series. At midnight the much anticipated coordinates were published, and off we went.

The coordinates took us to a country intersection, which would normally be pretty quiet at midnight on a Sunday morning, but tonight it was swarming with geocachers turning over every rock, and inspecting every roadsign very carefully. After a short search the container was found, we gathered the coordinates and bailed out of there to the second stage. We gained an early lead after anticipating how access to this stage would best be attempted en-route. After that we had our lead all the way to the final. Despite what we were hopeing for - there was no helpful information in the cache - It was just an attempt to make us loose sleep by the cache owner so we would be more edgy tommorow when the real marathon started. We had guessed that this is probably what was going to happen, but didn't want to risk loosing potentially helpful information for the race tommorow.

On the walk back to the cars I lost my GPS. That is what happens sometimes, especially when it is loosely strapped on, and you are trudging through thick forest and swamp. I went to work after that (for 2am) just in case something bad was going to happen to the servers after the "Original" Daylight savings time switch - Nothing did! So I went to the teams house, got 2 hours of sleep, then got up to start the next round!

We arrived at the trail again around 6am to look for my GPS. I had a suspicion where it was.. Somewhere in an 800m trek through the forest may seem vague, but I have dropped my GPS a few times and always managed to find it. AdventureRat lent me his BFL while he gathered some breakfast from the local Timmies and waited at the GO station launch point.

At 7am the second round began, the owner released 2 sets of coordinates from which to start, we chose to go to the south checkpoint due to its proximity to the Go station. From there we began doing stage after stage, each one being a First-Find, which was great! We didnt see anyone else until we started doing the stages that began at the north checkpoint.

After finding 14 of the 15 stages we were pretty sure we knew the equation to determine the final stage. We went for it, and turned up a prank cache left by the owner. We decided that we needed to find the last stage, and found that as well - but it gave us nothing new, so we returned to our original suspicion of where the final might be. It was hidden very well, but to tell you more would ruin the suprise to those wishing to find it. We were first-finders, and quite happy about it. But we were also quite exhausted (no where near as much as the guy who rode his bike though).

While I was doing that, Wife was going on an expedition trying to prove the vetrenarian wrong! She has a stud colt that has been diagnosed as "Psychologically Emasculated", meaning he still thinks he is a baby horse, and doesn't want to grow up. In this case it is because he is so far down the social heirarchy at the farm that he just doesn't try to climb it, despite being the only horse on the farm with a pair of testicles (which are quite small due to his condition). Vets didn't see much hope of the horse ever mounting another horse, let alone being able to breed.

Crystal went on a mission to try and find a young horse that was so submissive that the young stallion would have to feel higher on the social pecking order. Apparently it worked. As soon as the young mare got to the farm she got quite the welcome!