That was some thunderstorm

Wow, what a thunderstorm we got downtown a few minutes ago. We were all gathered at our window that overlooks Ste. Catherine street. The rain was coming down in sheets. The drops were the size of nickels and if you looked on the road, the rain splashing back up made it look like a low fog moving across the street.

And.. the wind. I thought for sure the trees on the south side of Ste. Catherine between Fort and St. Marc would fly off into the Provigo across the street, or even up into the second floor Toyota dealership.

And then… it was over. It was over as fast as it started. All told, the whole thing lasted about half an hour, from the time the sky first turned into a darkish yellow-brown, until the sky started to brighten a few minutes ago.

Long weekend

It’s another long weekend. Some people are off Friday, some are off Monday. Why don’t we get together and decide which one we should all take off. We should take the weekday closest to the weekend day that the holiday falls on. So, if the holiday is on a Saturday, like it is this year — we should ALL get the Friday off. If it falls on a Sunday, we should get the Monday. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Whichever day you have off, have a happy Canada Day. Get out to the parade if you can. If you’re moving, I hope it goes well….. and don’t forget; save the beer for last!

My love-hate relationship with blogging

I’m a notoriously bad blogger. I love to do it, and I think I’m pretty good at it, but I tend to start strong, posting lots and lots at the beginning and then I slow down to a trickle and eventually abandon the thing altogether. I hope that won’t happen to this blog, since technology lately is making it much easier to blog stuff. It’ll also give you the opportunity to talk back to me, something you don’t often get to do on a regular basis.

Moving day… dumb!

Why do we continue with this archaic tradition of moving an entire province on a single day, and on Canada Day, no less. There would be revolutions, if you tried to do the same thing in other countries.

From Wikipedia

“Moving Day started as a humanitarian measure of the French colonial government of New France. It stipulated that the seigneurs of the seigneuries could not evict tenants before the winter snows had melted. In law, this date was placed as May 1. Later this evolved into leases that had to start on May 1 and end on April 30.”

Why do we still do this every year. Every year tens of thousands of Quebecers change addresses on July 1st. A fixed moving day is just dumb. It creates insanity on our streets as motorists have to dodge moving trucks parked sometimes two three at a time on a street. It makes it hard to get a truck and because everyone needs a truck or a mover on the same day, the price skyrockets. It leaves people scrambling to find a place to live and it’s why there’s been housing crunches in the city of Montreal for the past three or four years, with many families living in shelters for days or weeks or even months after moving day.

Moving day is not a law, although it used to be. All it would take is a couple of landlords and tenants to go for 11 or 13 month leases to start the whole thing off. Do that for a few years and we’d have moving days nicely scattered throughout the year — or at least through the non-winter months.

Google Checkout

Official Google Blog: Find it with Google. Buy it with Google Checkout.

Google’s got a new payment system you can use to pay for a variety of things. In fact, eventually you’ll probably be able to use it to pay for just about anything. It’ll surely give the well-established paypal a run for its money. It’ll be interesting to see how fast this catches on, and how widespread it becomes. Will it become as ubiquitous in the online purchasing world as paypal is?

technorati tags:google, paypal

Lightning Photography

Lightning Photography – lightning photo index

Some very cool pictures of lightning. Lots of them. I have a great picture a rainbow I took, I’ll try to post it if I remember.

technorati tags:photography, lightning

What a great photographer

Found the blog of a really great photographer from Toronto. It’s amazing how sharp and crisp all his pictures are. I check out this photoblog every chance I get.

cell phone and the horse

times square, new york.