I know, I know… It is a bit late to be posting about halloween and it is terrible that it took me so long to get the pictures up. I guess it all speaks to how crazy the last few weeks of our life have been.

At work, we have done a limited beta launch of our software and are preparing for the full public beta. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, we are working on calendar software called SherpaSuite. It is pretty cool. You can create and work with as many calendars as you want. Each of them is over-layed in the software in a different colour
and the display can be turned on or off at will. You can also publish any of your calendars to our web service where they can be publicly viewable or password protected.

The best part is that you can subscribe to other people’s calendars. You will always know what your friends or spouse is doing, it will be right on your calendar and always up to date. You can even use our online event search engine to find events that you are interested in and subscribe to those calendars. You can always know when movies are released and playing, what is happening at local galleries, when and where your favorite team is playing, the possibilities are endless.

So, as you can imagine, pulling all of this together with a small team and a tight timeline has been a daunting task. Added to this, my grandmother’s house has sold and is closing this Friday. My dad, aunts and uncles have been doing the lion’s share of the work sorting through everything and packing, but I have been helping out as I can. This weekend was the final push. Everyone was over Saturday for the final packing, then we rented the truck and a storage unit on Sunday for the move. It has been a difficult and emotional time for everyone, but it is finally nearly over.

And that is not all… A few weeks ago, Juliette and I went out in Toronto on Friday night. When I picked up the van on Saturday morning, I had trouble starting it which quickly progressed to barely running. Looking under the van revealed that a fuel line had burst so I was soon sitting by the roadside waiting for CAA. I went against my better judgement and had it towed to the VW dealer and pushed my keys through the key drop with a note.

Monday morning while riding my bike to work I received a call from the dealer. My van had been broken into. I arrived to find the window broken, most of the stereo equipment missing or destroyed and my van a mess. They had taken CDs, bike tools, a socket set and other things. It was the beginning of a couple of weeks of back and forth hassles with the insurance company. Then to make a bad day worse, the dealership replaced the broken hose – $10 for parts, but the total bill was $200. I had been robbed twice in one weekend.

I must admit, so far the insurance company (Western Assurance) has been pretty good to me, despite the $300 deductable and the 50% depreciation on stereo equipment AND the fact they don’t cover the tools or CDs! I was much more pissed off with the insurance adjuster for 2001 Audio Video that the insurance company sent me to. He would never call, I would always have to find him in, then to top it off, two weeks ago the insurance agent called to say everything was sorted out and the adjuster would call to set up an appointment to get the new equipment installed. Of course he didn’t call, so I called him and set up an appointment for this saturday. He said that all he needed to do was fax the paperwork over to the installers, but that I should call him to make sure it was done. I was so busy at work that I didn’t get a chance to call him and of course he forgot to do his job!

So, I spent Saturday morning driving into Mississauga to deal with the extremely unhelpful and seemingly uninterested sales people at the 2001 Audio and Video store. I offered several alternatives, all of which involved me paying for everything up front and getting re-embursed later, but they would have none of it. I walked in planning to have my complete system replaced and a new one put into Juliette’s car and walked out so pissed off that I vowed to never give them my business. So much for customer service.

Now, back to Halloween. The pictures from the party are now online, so head over to the photo albums to check them out.