If you go there, I encourage you to stop by the bakery and taste a couple of sausage rolls. They were delicious and quite unique.

• If you have a fresh layer of snow, and you are still at work, be prepared to walk because the bus service will be impacted. Forty minutes walk by -10C (14F) is not that bad even with snow.
• When driving downhill and braking using ABS, don’t expect to stop without sliding for twenty yards or so.
• Plan for a meter clearance around your vehicle when manoeuvering at slow speed because your car is bound to slide even when you do a simple three points turn in a street. This make parallel parking more interesting and obstacle avoidance more fun.
• Don’t forget to plug in your car so that the oil does not coalesce.
• If you have some single pane windows because you live in an older house, expect ice on the inside of the window.
• You may not be able to open your back door fully because of the snow.
• Be prepared to shovel snow for one hour to comply with city bylaws.
• Expect a lot of static electricity when petting your cat.
• Don’t touch snow without gloves
• Enjoy the Subaru Outback, because it makes driving in cold weather and snow so much fun and safe.
• Calgarians start to consider -20C weather somewhat cold but explain to you that it will get colder.

Overall, I found those new experiences very enjoyable and the biggest drawback is the time you have to spend dressing up and down when you leave or enter the house. Once outside, you don’t want to realize that you forgot something inside.

Right now, Houston and Calgary have the same temperature outside if you ignore the pesty minus sign.

I have ordered my USB Wine right after watching this video and I sincerely hope you are going to do the same. For 9.95 euros, it is a bargain!

Last week I was in the Disney World for adults, namely Las Vegas. This was my first time there and I have mixed feelings about that town. Buildings are huge and everything is expensive if you are not a gambler. Some of the hotels are really architecturally beautiful and I have found there the best French restaurant I have ever had a chance to dine at in the whole USA. It is called Bouchon.

Anyway, we started to have some snow. In Calgary, you have to shovel your sidewalk within 24 hours of the snow fall so that pedestrians have a fighting chance to stay upright with all their bones intact while they are walking pass your house.

Snow fell yesterday and tonight I went out to clean things up. The only problem is that the snow was trampled over all day long by a lot of foot traffic and believe me, I had to remove ice rather than snow.

So, my first lesson is : Don’t wait 24 hours before removing snow on your sidewalk or the job will be more difficult.

Couples rotates every month and you never dine with the same persons twice for the duration of the program. I was impressed by all well travelled all the individuals at the table were. We talked about Egypt, Germany, Tanzania, Russia, Poland, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, France, Panama, and many others country that I don’t recall.

I was tasked with the dessert and not wanting to repeat my springform pan experience, I decided to got with another burnt dessert. Here is the recipe for your enjoyment.

For four servings:

• 1½ cup of heavy whipping cream
• 1 tea spoon of pure vanilla extract
• ½ tea spoon of orange extract
• 4 egg yolks
• ¼ cup of granulated sugar
• ¼ cup of brown sugar

1. Bring the whipping cream, vanilla extract, and orange extract to a boil. Let it rest
2. Beat the egg yolks with the granulated sugar
3. Pour the whipping cream into the egg yolks and mix well
4. Pour the custard in four individual dishes
5. Put the individual dishes in a pan and pour water between the dishes so they barely float in the pan
6. Cook for 30 to 40 minutes at 350F until custard is set
7. Let rest at room temperature for four hours
8. Sprinkle with brown sugar and broil (using the oven) for a couple of minutes. Make sure you keep you eyes while it broils or you going to burn more than the cream! In my case, I keep the fire extinguisher at hand but this may not be necessary in your case.

Serve cold.

• In Calgary, my commute is so short that I barely have time to listen to my IPod. Houston is much better from that standpoint because I enjoy listening to my IPod.
• I have to commute by bike, this is not as comfortable as a car, especially in my body most sensitive parts. It takes me a while to change when I arrive at work. This is clearly not efficient and sometimes my legs hurt.
• My trousers are too loose, no longer fitting and I will soon need to add an extra hole on my belt. I clearly did not have this problem in Houston. Loosing weight can be troublesome.
• I now enjoy Sushi because it is very difficult to find a TexMex restaurant around here. I used to avoid Sushi because it was not nutritious enough. Now I love it. What’s wrong with me?
• Wasabi green color is not as nice as Tabasco red color. Which reminds me that I need to try Sushi with Tabasco.
• Chopsticks are not as convenient as your hands when eating.
• Last time I ate Salmon it had been caught in Alaska by the cook’s husband. This is less convenient than going to Rock Fish Seafood Restaurant.
• There are no Becks Prime in Calgary.
• I have trouble finding Tabasco in stores and many restaurant do not serve it.
• Food portions are smaller in Calgary
• There are too many pedestrians in Calgary and I have to stop for them when I drive my car. Houston is much simpler from that standpoint. You don’t have to stop for pedestrians and this greatly simplifies driving.
• I feel unsafe in Calgary because there are no police cars at every street corner.
• The sky is often without clouds and the air is quite dry. This is disturbing because I like clouds and humidity.
• You barely notice when there is a federal election in Calgary. In Houston, you at least know two years in advance that something is coming up.
• There are many political parties in Calgary and the Green party is growing in size. It is much easier in Houston where you only have the republican party.
• George W. Bush is from Houston and John Stephen Harper is from Calgary. I guess we have a tie on that one.
• Calgarians insists on recycling. In Houston, it is much simpler to trash your stuff.

Please comment if you have additional useful comparaisons that shows how Houston is so much better than Calgary.

But, let it be known that winter is not here quite yet and I am exorcising the dreaded season by posting some photos on my Flickr account. Photos were taken in October in Southern Alberta at an elevation greater than 1000m. I will insist on the fact thet there is no  snow on those photos.

If you have not seen StackOverflow, I encourage you to get familiar with it right away. It is a great resource for software developers among us. The site went in public beta two weeks ago and it is basically an hybrid between a wiki, a blog, digg, and a forum specifically dedicated to answer programming questions.

It is self-moderated and it works. Questions are answered in a matter of minutes and noise is quickly eliminated. It is fun to try to answer questions and it is certainly an humbling experience as many out there are much more savvy than I am.

With this experiment, Véronique Aubouy suggests that over 3,000 individuals from all over the world read a page from “À la Recherche du temps perdu” by Marcel Proust in front of a web camera. By the end of the experiment, all the words from this book would have been read in French by people from all horizons and recorded into a 170 hours movie. The shooting will take place directly on the Internet starting at noon GMT on September 27th 2008. It is open to all and she invites all of you to register on her blog and invite others to built the network map of “Baiser de la Matrice”.

I registered earlier and will see where this will lead me. I will attempt to record in front of a raging wood fire in my living room.

If you speak French, why don’t you just join us?

However, I must exclusively report that Ike has affected Calgary in unsuspected ways and I have unaltered photographic proof to illustrate my discovery.

This morning, Melissa and I traveled to the South East of Calgary and we came across a building stuck in the ground reminding me of the scene in the Wizard of Oz right after Dorothy arrives in Munchkinland and in which the ruby-slippered Wicked Witch of the East get smashed by Dorothy’s house.

I am convinced that Houston is now missing a church and that this church can be found in Calgary.

It appears that some people try to discredit my findings and have been too far in claiming that “Device to Root Out Evil, a work in steel, aluminum and glass by New York artist Dennis Oppenheim, looks like an upside-down New England church with its steeple planted in the ground.”

You will certainly agree with me and I need your help to locate the site in Houston where this church comes from. Please report your findings in the comments to this post.

This photo represents the very reason I wanted to move from Houston to Calgary. Lake Louise is a two hours drive from our house. This photo was taken last Sunday after a short 1.6km uphill hike.

Now, I can’t wait for the ski season to start.

Anyway, in addition of the Bœuf Bourguignon, and the Gratin Dauphinois, I decided to cook two Tartes Tatin.

Having sold most of our pans in a garage sale last month, I went to buy some new ones on Saturday afternoon but since I was not sure which one to use and given my tardiness and available choices, I picked two very nice springform pans.

I started to melt sugar and butter on the stove and noticed a small leak at the bottom of the pan. This was not a big deal, the stove is actually easy to clean.

I peeled and sliced twenty apples and stacked them in the pans. I then covered the pans with fresh made crust and shove them in the oven at 400F.

There was more caramel leaking at the bottom and some smoke. This was not a big deal. the oven is actually easy to clean.

The smoke detector went off in the foyer. This was not a big deal, the fire alarm is connected to the burglar alarm and it was not a big deal to silence it on the wall panel.

Six o’clock arrives and one of my guest calls to tell me he is in the neighborhood looking for the house.

I hear sirens in the distance. This was not a big deal, must be some firefighters late for tea.

It turned out that the fire alarm is in fact monitored and the alarm company called the fire department. My guests arrived on one end of the street while the three fire trucks (a full box in their jargon) arrived at the other end of the street. Everybody stopped at our house and for some reasons, our guests were hesitant to come in.

The two firefighters were not so hesitant and they kindly checked that everything was ok before going on their merry way.

Our kind landlord was surprised to receive a phone call from the Alarm Agency.

No tarte tatin that evening but we had a nice chocolate cake brought by one of the guest and I need to buy the proper pans. Springform pans are evil…

Set in Nova Scotia, it tells the story of a photo-journalist who is fighting corporations for Nature rights. There are many surprises along the way. I liked the way the story was told. I will not say more so you can enjoy the movie.

I also enjoyed the following Canadian movies that you can easily find in the USA:

• Away from her
• Juno
• Les Invasions Barbares

I also learned that there is a Calgary, Banff, and Airdrie in Scotland and I am guessing this is where the name of our local towns are coming from.

I also suspect, looking a the license plate below, that there may have been other nationalities enjoying the games.

Last Saturday, a group of twenty two colleagues and family members went rafting on the river that goes across Calgary and which is called the Bow. Okay, it was more floating that rafting since there is no white water but it was certainly a nice way to spend a few hours. This was fun and we ended up all wet. I fought with a six year old named Michael to see who would be the toughest. Some embarrassing photos were taken and I hope they will never surface on the Internet. I cross my fingers. The temperature was above thirty degrees celcius and I managed not to burn. This was a first for me. Sunscreen is usually a disappointment.

On Sunday, I spent six hours emptying the moving truck. I mean, I watched the movers unload while I was checking off items on the list. I helped a little but given their efficiency, I was mostly impeding their work. We received all the items and we only got one item broken that we will be able to repair. I suggest you go with Allied if you need to move. They were extremely professional from A to Z and I would not go with another company.

The house looks great and seventy percent of the boxes have been unpacked. Melissa is doing wonders with the furniture and accessories.

This week, I have continued to implement Scrum at work with one of my teams and it is quite fun. There is of course more work and learning to do but I will certainly recommend you give it a try if you have a chance.

This week end, Melissa and I are probably going for a bike ride. We acquired two road bikes a fortnight ago.

I am now commuting daily by bike which reduces my commute time from forty minutes to fifteen. I still have to try the bus for the “cool” days of winter.

In other news, I will probably go to SEG in Las Vegas next November and I hope to see you there.

We took the long way out, road 1A, all the way to Canmore, where we stopped for a quick lunch. Then, after entering Banff National park we took the scenic route via Baker Creek where we found a restaurant serving a very nice apple pie with blackberries and ice cream. We drank our tea and coffee outside, enjoying the sunny weather.

Arriving near lake Louise, the temperature was 23C (73F) and we noticed a few dark clouds.

I just had time to park the car before the temperature instantly dropped to 11C (52F) and we found ourselves in an hailstorm that lasted for a good ten minutes and was followed by dogs and cats falling from the sky.

Let’s just say that canoeing will be for another day…