Banned From My Own Gym!

I have been banned from my gym for today and most of tomorrow. No, I haven't been behaving badly (no worse than usual at least). I've been convinced by my staff to compete at our SummerSweatFest competition Thursday evening, and that means it wouldn't be fair for me to be around the gym while they're setting for it. So I get a couple of days off, which I actually desperately need right now anyway.

Don't get the wrong idea here; I am not a serious competition climber. I'm a V1/V2 boulderer, and generally finish very close to the bottom of the Men's Recreational division, able to do perhaps a quarter of all the problems in a given comp. The point of my competing tomorrow is really to set an example for those who think they are not good enough to enter a competition. If you can do the white problems and some of the yellow ones in our gym, you'll be able to do enough of the comp problems to keep you busy for a while, and you'll have a lot of fun. These comps are friendly and the other climbers will be very supportive. If you have ever even wondered what a bouldering competition is like, come on out and "compete" Thursday evening. Think of it as a chance to come have fun bouldering with an enthusiastic group of like-minded individuals.

As added incentive, there will be some raffle prizes for the Youth & Recreational divisions, generously donated by some of our sponsors. We'll have about a dozen prizes to give out, so the odds are decent. Those in the Open category will be competing for a cash prize funded by their registration fees.

Full details about the comp are available at http://summersweatfest.com/comps.php.
We encourage you to register in advance and print out your scorecard. If this will be your first visit to our gym, you can save time by bringing a completed waiver form (signed by your parent if you are under 18). Waiver forms are available for download from http://truenorthclimbing.com/content/waivers.

Why I Will Never Again Shop With FrontierPC.com

I had a bad experience shopping with frontierpc.com that I would like to share. My goal is both to prevent others from running into the same trouble, and to keep my promise to frontierpc.com that if they didn't make things right, I would tell people what happened.

I'm starting a new business (maybe some of you have even heard of it). I needed some Point of Sale equipment to work with the software I'm using to run the gym (Rock Gym pro, which is pretty cool actually). I needed an Epson Thermal receipt printer to print receipts and an MMF cash drawer to hold the money. The two get connected by a cable so that the printer tells the cash drawer when to open (sounds a bit strange, but it's how these things work).

Somehow I managed to order the wrong version of each device. The printer I got had a parallel port but I needed USB, and the cash drawer had a serial connector and I needed an RJ12 (phone jack) to connect it to the printer. It was my mistake, though it was tricky to figure out the exact model I needed.

So I contacted frontierpc.com to exchange the devices for the right ones. I filled out the form on their Customer Support web page, explaining that the items were misordered, and were in their original packaging, unused. Their response was that they do not accept any exchanges at all, and I'm out of luck, stuck with items I cannot use. It turns out they do have a web page that states this awful policy, but it was certainly not brought to my attention during the course of ordering from them.

So I will never do business with this company again, and I suggest any of you who need point of sale equipment or any of the other technical gear that frontierpc.com sell find another vendor with a more reasonable policy of taking good care of their customers. Like perhaps directdial.com, who wound up taking care of me to get the right version of the printer.

I Sure Do Have a Dream!

I read something this morning that really got me going. Lucien Bouchard, the former leader of the Parti Québécois and premier of Quebec, was quoted as saying that the PQ's raison d'être - Quebec independence - is unattainable. It was the response from Bloc Québécois leader Gille Duceppe that caught my eye. He said, "(Bouchard) says sovereignty is a dream. I say we should realize our dreams. ... So we have a dream. Federalists don't even have a dream."

I am a federalist. First off let me say I respect the right of Quebec separatists to have their dream and pursue it. If there was ever a referendum on a clear question that could get the support of a clear majority of Quebecers to leave Canada, I would (sadly) respect that.

But how can Duceppe say that we do not have a dream? And how can he say it this week? We are living our dream every day, and no more so than as we host the world in Vancouver. I live my dream when I look at the scoring plays from the first period alone of last night's women's hockey game against Sweden:

06:58 CAN Meghan Agosta (Cherie Piper, Caroline Ouellette)
09:16 CAN Marie Phlip-Poulin (Meghan Agosta, Hayley Wickenheiser) PP/AN
13:00 CAN Cherie Piper (Hayley Wickenheiser, Colleen Sostorics)
15:27 CAN Sarah Vaillancourt (Rebecca Johnston, Colleen Sostorics)
15:57 CAN Tessa Bonhomme (Meghan Agosta)

I live my dream when I see Marianne St-Gelais celebrate her 20th birthday in style, and when I see Chris Pronger clear the net in front of Martin Brodeur. I don't count how many members of our team are from Quebec and how many are from "the rest of Canada". I cheer for them all because they are all Canadians. This country is the great place it is in large part because we are all in it together.

I have a dream of Quebec as an essential part of my country, and it has been reality for almost 143 years. It's about much, much more than French Canadians helping earn Olympic medals of course, but the ironic timing of Duceppe's display of ignorance of how federalists feel is priceless.