My dad volunteers with a charity called STRIDE. They clean and repair used medical equipment such as wheelchairs, electric scooters, walkers and hospital beds, and make them available to individuals and institutions at a reasonable rate. Their van, which included a special wheelchair lift, was stolen recently. Its loss is causing them a lot of problems because many of the things they refurbish are bulky meaning that they often don’t fit in an average car, so they are having problems delivering them to the people who need them.

The vehicle is a white 2007 GMC Savana 2500 Cargo Van with licence plate number 722 5YT. The organization is asking anyone with information on the whereabouts of their van to contact Ottawa police. The van has been recovered so if you see it driving around, you don’t need to call the police. 🙂

A tip o’ the hat to the Ottawa Citizen for reporting on it earlier today.

So, 2010 was another busy year.

Blogging

Apparently, I posted 103 blog entries in 2010.

2010 opened with the brief reappearance of the illegal radio station Jayhaed Saadé was operating out of his family’s hotel. After ignoring several cease-and-desist orders from Industry Canada, the RCMP and Industry Canada finally showed up and forcibly removed an estimated $80 000 worth of broadcast equipment. He hasn’t been heard on the air since.

I wrote about reality television shows that were on the air at the time. Of the shows that I liked at the time, I still watch most of them from time to time.

February saw a couple of posts related to the Olympic games and one about excessive amounts of salt being used outside a building in my neighbourhood. As it turns out, this building spent the summer having massive amounts of work to deal with leaks done on it. I bet that the damage from the salt didn’t help the situation.

March saw a number of posts about the Gatineau Park Ecosystem Conservation Plan that was announced by the National Capital Commission. In a nutshell, the plan describes how the NCC intends on managing Gatineau Park. Unfortunately, because of its approach of conversation conservation before recreation, many users have been adversely impacted by it including the climbing and geocaching communities. The climbing community, in particular, mounted a comprehensive campaign over the next few months that included a climbing management plan based on best practices used at other managed sites around the world. Unfortunately, the NCC chose not to accept this proposal and went ahead with closures based on the poor science in the GPECP. The Climbers’ Access Coalition was able to negotiate a few additional routes beyond those initially offered by the NCC, but in general the climbing community is incredibly frustrated and disappointed in the National Capital Commission.

I also looked at the enforcement statistics for Ottawa’s Idling Control By-law. It turns out that the number of warnings dropped by almost half between the first and second years it was in effect.

While most of my posts in April had to do with the GPECP, I did write about correcting colours of photographs taken at night and also a walk I took along the Rideau Canal.

May saw just three posts, including one about a very closed minded individual and another related to the overreaction by a geocaching reviewer to the GPECP.

June saw several posts including some about the earthquake that hit Ottawa and what not to do in an earthquake, and a short photowalk (actually photoride) I took.

In July I posted pictures from the B-52s concert at Bluesfest, talked about graffiti, and posted the first entry about my trip to the UK.

All of my posts in August were about my trip to Scotland and England, including seeing Hadrian’s Wall. I tried to blog the whole trip, but the blogging got in the way of enjoying the trip, so I only ended up blogging the first part.

September saw me write about, among other things,  camping in my new tent, and the problems with different CAPTCHAs.

Ottawa’s municipal election in October led to a couple of posts about voting. It also saw a post about World Statistics Day, in addition to a few other topics.

November saw an entry about poppies, another about lamp post caches and a suggestion for a new home for the Canada Science and Technology Museum.

I wrote a number of entries about the weather in December, fur coats and giving away a car.

Travel

Being an even-numbered year, I didn’t make that many trips (in odd-numbered years I tend to make a number of trips for work), but I did get down to Toronto several times, including twice in the fall and I made a trip to Scotland and England where I did some geocaching, camping and visiting with friends. I also popped across the border into New York state to do some camping and geocaching.

Work

It was another busy year at work. I spent most of the last part of the year analysing the results of survey I manage and working on the report that’s going to be released in a couple of months. (That’s probably one reason I didn’t do as much blogging in the fall.)

Play

Fortunately, 2010 wasn’t just about working. Once again, I steered for the Algonquin College Singapore Slings at the Ottawa Dragonboat Festival and the Fall 400 in Carleton Place.

I logged 86 geocaches in 2010, with about a third of them while I was in the UK, including cache number 500 (Barts Road (GC2AF63)) and the Mega Scotland 2010 event cache (GC1XDQ0) in Perth, Scotland. I met a lot of really nice people at the event and I’m thinking about returning to the UK for the Mega Wales 2011 (GC2921G) event in July.

As I mentioned earlier, I went to the B-52s concert at Bluesfest. I have been a big fan of theirs for years, so it was a real treat to see them on-stage again.

I also got out golfing a number of times, though not as many times as I’d have liked. Because the weather in early-April was so mild, I was able to take my dad golfing for his birthday on the second of April.

I did some camping this year, both in Scotland and England and in northern New York state. It had been several years since I last went camping and I think I’ve been bitten by the camping bug again. Having purchased a new tent while I was in the UK and a new sleeping bag and other gear from MEC, I’m looking forward to doing more camping next summer.

Looking ahead to 2011

So, what’s in store for 2011? Good question!

I’ve already committed to steering for the Algonquin College Singapore Slings and we’re thinking about going to some other races besides the ones in Ottawa and Carleton Place, so I’m looking forward to that.

It looks like I’m going to be going to be escaping to Florida for a week or so in March – a healthy dose of sunshine will be nice!

There’s another geocaching megaevent in Wales (GC2921G) at the end of July that I’m thinking about attending. I haven’t been to Wales, yet, and it would be nice to see some of the people I met last summer at the event in Scotland. Time will tell whether that’s going to happen!

The severe restrictions imposed by the NCC on climbing in Gatineau Park has made it more necessary to know how to lead climb, so I’m hoping to find a course/instructor to learn this style of climbing.

So, what are you looking forward to in 2011?

So, it’s officially Winter.

But why is it Winter today? Why not yesterday or tomorrow or next Tuesday?

It has to do with the tilt of the Earth’s axis relative to the Sun. Specifically, when the angle reaches 23° 26′, Winter begins.

The Winter Solstice occurs on the day with the shortest sunlight hours and the longest night. Up to this point, the days have been getting shorter and the nights longer. From now until the Summer Solstice, we’re going to start seeing more sunlight each day – something that I’m quite happy about!

Many cultures have traditions based on the winter solstice. As I wrote a couple of years ago, the Norse celebrated Yule from the 21st of December through January, giving us our 12 days of Christmas. The ancient Greeks celebrated the festival of Cronus, Kronia, which the Romans rebranded as Saturnalia. Wikipedia has an extensive list of the various cultural celebrations based on the winter solstice that’s worth checking out.

In the mean time, Gledelig Jul!

A tip o’ the hat to NASA for the graphic by Dr. David P. Stern. You can find out when the various solstices, equinoxs and other astronomical events happen on the USNO’s website.

So, yesterday I blogged about the impact of a recent WikiLeaks on the people who had their information leaked. While surfing the ’net yesterday evening, I came across another WikiLeaks release that’s causing a fair bit of stress in some northern countries and another that probably means Julian Assange is going to find industrial amounts of coal in his stocking this year.

Will the insanity never end????

Ok, so in the past WikiLeaks has released Afghanistan war files, 9/11 pager messages, emails sent by researchers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, Sarah Palin’s email, the Guantanamo Bay operating procedures and, of course, thousands of US diplomatic cables. This has caused much fuss but people eventually moved on.

But their most recent leak is crossing the line, even for them, and causing a huge backlash among the people who had their secrets leaked: (more…)