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I mentioned the 6 requirements for my new car in the last aricle I posted here.

Here is how the new RX-8 measures up point by point in my first 48 hour / 150 km experience.

1) Warrantee: It has one, by default 3 years 60,000 km bumper to bumper. I leased this car for 4 years, so I will at a minimum have to buy the addtional year, if bought within a year it's less than $400 CDN which is reasonable. It's only $2,500 for the 7 year / 180,000 km version, and based on my first 24 hours I may just keep this thing so it's starting to look good

2) Costs: I actually saved a few dollars a month on the payment / insurance combo with this move, so definitely a check on this one.

3) 4 Doors:    Hmmmmm

Check.

4) Attention to Detail: The interior ergonomics, useability, and safety features are shocking for the price range of this car. Everything is thought through in detail, right down to the way the sun visors are semi-transparent so you can see through them when pulled down. Wow, I'm really getting blown away so far.

5) Fun Factor: This has been the part that's been killing me. I have to take it easy on this thing for the first 1,000 km's and the process is just painfull. So far, when driving like a grandma, I'm very impressed. When under 4,000 rpm she is very refined, you can barely hear the engine at all and I keep having to tap the gas pedal to make sure it's still running.

I can barely hold back from going over 4,000 rpm though, that 9,000 mark seems sooooooo far away, maybe I can get a liiiiittttlllee closer…. NO! I have to behave. More on this section in a couple of weeks once I'm through the break-in period.

6) Uniqueness: In the last 48 hours of driving I've seen one Blue RX-8 on the highway, one black behind me on College street, and about 1,000 BMW's all over the place   ….So far so good…

Next Report…. 1,100 KM's so in about a month. Stay tuned!

I made the decision to trade in the 7 year old BMW I own for a new car. There were a couple of considerations I had to take into effect when I decided on the right vehicle going forward:

1) Warrantee…. the BMW has been killing me in repairs this last year. I needed something with bumper to bumper

2) Costs…. I needed the monthlies and insurance to be in the area they are today with the current car

3) 4 Door…. The BMW is a 2 door sports car. I'm in my thirties now and I have to take all things into consideration. Eventually kids etc…

4) Attention to detail…. the reason I have had a German make for the last 3 vehicles I have owned is the pretty standard great attention to detail. The way things are laid out in the interior, safety features, general reliability etc…

5) Fun Factor…. In all reality I am a big kid trapped in an adult's body when it comes to driving. In my youth I raced amateur with a tricked out Datsun 310 I owned for a wonderful 2 years. I have never been able to let go of the need for a sporty, fun to drive vehicle that puts a smile on your face.

6) Uniqueness…. One thing about driving a BMW in Toronto, is that there are almost more BMW's than Honda's on the street in this city… definitely not unique past my choice of Boston Green as the paint color.

After about the last 6 months worth of research, I have come to only one conclusion for the car I have decided to acquire….

Zoom Zoom

What does that symbol mean? It's a reflection of the rotary engine, which is a completely different design than the typical piston engine that you see in 99.9% of all cars driving down the street. This is an engine with only one or two big rotors that rotate in a circle as opposed to a pumping action like a piston engine….really cool stuff, very unique, and allows a listed 238 horsepower out of a measly 1.3 litre sewing machine.

This engine is so small it rests almost directly under the dashboard and is housed inside of the 4 squares of the wheelbase. I won't even go into the details of how this positively affects handling and performance from a braking and traction perspective due to the perfect 50/50 wieght distribution. I'll wait until the test drives turn into a longer term reality to report the true experience.

Here is the kicker, it has 4 doors! Butterfly, but more than enough to get a 6 foot passenger or even a baby seat someday…. I just picked it up last night, I'll share my experiences and upload some more photos once I have had some time to really experience the ride

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At least this time….. I do!

Week 1, day 4, tons of candy so rushing on the sugar, but stable and strong. Loving the clear lungs and not missing the being a 'nicotine slave' thing at all.

I am officially a non-smoker now and proud of it.

I wanted to know if all of you could do me a huge favor. A fellow Blogware blogger has one of the best blogs I have ever read dedicated to the formerly antiquated and thanks to Podcasting currently resurgent radio industry. Tod and his I love radio blog have been nominated as a finalist for Best Media Blog at the 2005 Business Blogging awards.

When I voted last week Tod was in the lead, but he is competing against a juggernaught of a Blog created by Fast Company. Due to their volume of visitors to their website all they had to do in response was post a link on their homepage and they have now taken the lead. Do the right thing and help out a fellow Blogware user by voting for I Love Radio! You can find out the instructions on how to do so on Tod's blog here.

It's official, an epic struggle has taken place over the weekend, and my adversary was armed to the teeth and extremely dangerous.

After 4 days of constant conflict, the victor has been decided and the battle goes to Peter, but there were casualties… about 5 pounds of body weight, 4 lost days, and delays to a couple of posts I have wanted to make since the Blogosphere has been such a busy place in my absense.

Today is a celebration of triumph and the much needed catch-up on my blog…

We finally completed our move up to the additional office space we took upstairs in the building next to the main office. The environment really has a neat vibe to it. We even have a garage door for our meeting room for what it's worth but I definitely like it.

2005 is off to a great start, a slew of email to catch up on and some big implementations have taken up the majority of my time but things are great and there is a beautiful energy developing in all of our teams as we head off into what I think will be a very prosperous year for the Bovine crew. I can't wait to see how some of our efforts turn out over the next couple of quarters… Stay tuned!

Holidays are almost done with a return to the office on Monday, but purposefully ignoring your email inbox can result in tragedy.

Forget to fund your reseller account? Well NO DNS FOR YOU!

Thankfully we have online credit card payment options, so estimated downtime? about a couple of hours until I noticed and a few minutes post that.

The Tucows DNS service is really good and I have never had any issues with it. It has a really easy to use control panel, and here is the kicker in emergency situations like this once you have noticed a problem…. 5 minute TTLs

Wrapping up the year would lead most people to think things have been slowing down. With the amount of work on my plate unfortunately this hasn't even been close to the case for me. I've been so busy with work and shopping and generally getting ready for a couple of weeks off of work that I havn't had much time to even blog.

I haven't even finished the holiday shopping yet. Todays agenda includes trudgeing through the snowfall to the malls for an evening of fighting over half decent gifts for the family and in-laws. Hopefully it won't be as messy as my first attempt last weekend since most sane people usually complete their shopping more than two days before Chrismas unlike myself.

Prefessionaly this has been an amazing year for Blogware. The early adopter stage of this new industry is finally starting to enter the mainstream. We have recently finished inking some deals with some major players which has led to all of this work so it's not necessarily a bad thing at all. Of course I can't mention any names yet, but you may see a press release or two early in the New Year if you're paying attention.

Either way, it looks like Blogware is in a good shape to become one of the most successful new services Tucows offers in 2005. I will obviously do my best to contine to evangelize the Blogware word, and so far things look absolutely exciting.

I wanted to make sure that I thanked all of the great people that have helped make Blogware as successfull as it has been in 2004 and will be in 2005. This includes, Ross, Kim, Tanja, Tom, Rahat, Jessica and all of the other amazing sales, support, development and management level staff that have supported the service since day one.

Stay tuned for my two week break since I'm going to start playing with a few new toys I have been wanting to incorporate into the blog for quite a while.

A Merry Holiday and best wishes to all!

I personally know people afflicted with Multiple Sclerosis, and I was pointed in the direction of this encouraging announcement which is very exciting and offers allot of hope to those that are suffering.

“RPI-78M reduced the clinical symptoms by more than 80%,” remarked neurologist Mitchell S. Felder, MD “There was also more than an 87% reduction in the number of EAE histopathologic lesions. If these results are duplicated in the human trials it could possibly revolutionize the treatment of MS. The results from an EAE model indicate that this drug may also have therapeutic potential for a great number of other neurologic conditions such as Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis, Transverse Myelitis, Krabbe's Leukodystrophy, Alexander Disease, Canavan Disease and Adrenoleukodystrophy,” he concluded.

More treatments like this need to be developed and more awareness needs to be created so please support your local MS Society Chapter since the more help they get the more they can help those afflicted.

Ok, so we had some issues with the Mortgage where they wanted a bit too high of a DP than we wanted to put down. As we were trying to fenagle an in-between I had to revoke my offer and someone else matched us. The girlfriend and I thought about this long and hard, although we loved the place we do expect a dip in the market in the coming year and this is really an investment more than a vanity purchase, so we decided to hold off which IMHO was the smartest thing for us to do.

So, we will continue to keep our costs down, save up even more for the DP, and pay off someone else's mortgage for another year or so . Depressing I know, but that's life and you have to look at the bright side of it… which is a better place with a bigger DP and lower price next time

So I did it, I finally jumped in. The girlfriend and I bought some property.

It's a condo on the west side of Toronto, nice location and overlooking a golf course. My game can finally receive the much needed attention it's been screaming for . That's a pic from the balcony of the unit.

It's a nice decent sized two bedroom with a pretty big balcony. I don't close till February 1st and the Mortgage and paperwork is a headache, but it's much simpler than purchasing a house so I definitely feel for all of you actual landowners. The deal for me was the condo fees, I get all of my bills included in one nice little amount except for telephone. Personally I don't care about the phone due to my dependance on my FIDO, but otherwise it's really nice and there is NO yardwork (I curently rent a house and as you all know it's Fall now and Winter is coming).

More pics to come later today, I already have some from the MLS listing, but just so everyone knows it's not my furniture in them and NO, my place is not an IKEA magazine ad

Back in August I went on a trip to the Cayman Islands. I have waited quite a while to post the pics due to the horrific damage caused by Hurricane Ivan not 2 weeks after we left.

The pictures posted are beautiful, and display a joy and happiness I had not ever experienced which I do not want to distract from the sadness and suffering that those trapped on the island have experienced after we left. There are many examples of horror stories that those on the island experienced, and I want to make sure that although this is a strong reminder of the beauty that once existed there, there is still basic infrastructure lacking months after the hurricane and the damage has been horrific.

Please do what you can to help those in need and to help bring this paradise back to where it was. There are many charities and organizations trying to help all the poeple of the Caribbean who suffered, please do what you can as well.

Off to < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Nottingham today to do some training for our Website Builder Tool and with only a 2 and a half our train ride this time. Two days in a row up at 5AM and arriving back at the hotel after 9PM and you can understand why I haven’t posted as much.

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I moblogged a couple more pics but I wish I could get a few of the touristy sites, London is so beautiful. Unfortunately I still haven’t had a chance to really get out for the non-work related stuff so far. Hopefully before I leave but my itinerary is pretty booked up. There’s always next trip….

What an amazing trip to < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Lancaster. After training roughly 25 sales reps on Blogs and Blogware, I have to say it was absolutely fantastic to see so many eager sales people looking to offer the service to their customers.

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The positive feedback and intelligent questions were refreshing, and I think this will mean even more sales of Blogware to happy SME UK customers before the end of the year. This trip was definitely worth the over three hour train ride each way and I personally think the day was a huge success. We have some great customers over here!

I've been here a full day now and it's been great! Past the hotel room for the little people (Definitely won't be doing that again next time I come) and getting used to the Tube system, the people and sites have been amazing.

I've already had some great business meetings that have all been very positive and will result in even more Blogware offerings out here in the UK and abroad, plus a planned Blogware training trip to Lancaster tomorrow means things have jumped to an amazing start. Only thing I am dreading is the 3 1/2 hour train ride each way

I'll keep moblogging my travels, so stay tuned….

 I’m flying to < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />London tonight on a 7 hour red-eye. I actually don’t mind the late flight at all; I personally think it’ll help with the jetlag.

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It’s my first time to the U.K. and I’m really looking forward to it. Half of my family is from there so it’s been a longing I’ve wanted to fulfill for a while, plus I hear it’s an absolutely amazing place with great people.

It’ll be nice to get to use my camera-phone and Moblog more often, there are definitely more things to take pictures of so stay tuned for updates and posts along the way. I’ve setup a specific photo-album for this trip as well if you want to subscribe to it separately.

The tech will allow people with disabilities to control the environment around them, from chores to recreation. Amazing.

John Kerry, speaking about his friend Chris Reeve, yesterday said.

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable. And then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”

Caught him!

Ok, so you now know what RSS is… but how can you use it?

Take a look at Chris Pirillo's article, simple and efficent for all those wishing to learn to take advantage of RSS to enrich their online experience.

Oh… and don't forget to check out his Blog… Full of all kinds of amazing information and insights on the Internet to software, and even some personal epiphanies. As a great value it should be one of the first you subscribe to, well other than mine as a pitty offering maybe 

Finally!! Got it to work. Very cool, very easy to use. Check out the results of some quick stuff around the Barn.

A couple of issues with the provider setting things up aside, it is really damn easy.

Why you would use this on a regular basis not so sure, but due to being tied via ball and chain to the office as of late I'll probably discover what the real apps are as I start to travel more on business. Off to the UK in October so I'll keep posting them

Ok, missed the one last year, but am partacing in this year's event which consists of posting some pics of your kitties to your blog and linking to Ross's Blog here.

I already had a bunch of pics up of my boys on my blog, but I'll throw a couple I think really shine in this article. This is my Boy Thunder and….

Thunder and Thor together.

Brothers till the end, just wish I could catch Thunder when he uses the toilet, and believe it or not was NEVER trained! He just figured it out himself somehow, either way if I can catch him with my camera - phone I'll moblog an update pic.

Caught him!