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Yes it’s true, I’ve been thinking. Often this is something scary as the end result and it just may be in this case. As you may or may not know I’m off on a bit of an Eastern European tour. I’m sitting in the small town of Hostinée, Czech Republic right now. It’s beautiful here and so I plan to take a lot of photos. Of course, there was the connecting flight in London’s Heathrow airport that I got to spend a little too much time in as I missed my connect flight by mere minutes. Well, I missed the chance to check-in for the flight by about three minutes. I was not happy at first but took the opportunity to spend some time taking some photos and thinking. I haven’t had a chance to upload the photos or come up with a complete post around it but I’ll definitely give you a bit of a preview. It’s basically Canada vs. UK (or even Europe for that matter) and things that I know I’ll miss about this part of the world or that they’ve done right.

Honestly something as simple as actually separating the toilet and the shower/washroom makes perfect sense. I’ve yet to be in a home out here (and I’ve already been to a few) where the sink & toilet live in exclusivity alongside a bathtub or shower. To me it makes sense because it works. Just like low-flow toilets. Back home in Canada we’ve got this Americanized sense of entitlement that there will always be fresh water and a bit of a “who cares” mentality. One other thing I love…people are polite. Not only are they polite but they dress nicely too. Hard to find ‘scrubs‘ over here, unlike home…even in the office some times!

Of course I do my best thinking on my runs and finally had a chance to get out for a quick 3 miles today (or I should say 4.8 km). Everything here is metric…and I mean everything. I can’t tell them I’m 6′ 2″ (188 cm) or they look at me like I’m on drugs. Though the elevation is lower here then back home in Calgary, it’s a little more challenging as I have to watch for cars (pedestrians are truly seen as obstacles) and there’s quite a mountain climb initially. I’ll be updating my runs page off and on. The plan is to not spend a lot of time in front of the computer while here.

Oh and definitely one last thing I’ll miss that I’ll write about later would be the awesome selection of dirt cheap local brews! This country definitely knows beer!

Some might say I tend to fly a lot — my daughter does too. Working for Canada’s number two airline definitely helps me do that. Tonight I’m off for a couple of weeks to Prague, Czech Republic and the surrounding area. I’ve got my passport, some money in the bank, standby tickets on British Airways and am counting down the hours until I hopefully (cross your fingers) make it on their Boeing 767-300ER to London Heathrow.

This past Monday I was flying back from Winnipeg to Calgary on one of WestJet’s aircraft equipped with live satellite TV. The unfortunate part was they were INOP so nobody could watch anything. What was I to do? Oh no…what would I have done 4 years ago before live TV on the aircraft? Well I reached for my iPhone that had some podcasts on it that I’d not yet listened to. There were some from the Get-It-Done Guy that I’d downloaded a while back based around a certain level of interest. One of them was about packing wrinkle free clothes and it mentioned OneBag.com as a resource. Last night as I was packing probably too much clothing, I wondered if there was a better way. I rarely simply fold my clothes and stuff them in a suitcase (error number one according to OneBag). I often thought I was smart by simply rolling them. There’s no doubt that compared to folding, rolling saves A LOT of space. I decided to try the bundle wrapping method detailed on the OneBag website. Luckily they even have a nicely illustrated guide displaying how it’s done.

I was hesitant at first as I was laying out my clothes in this funny stack on the bed. But as I managed to add more and more to the pile it started to hit me that yes, this might actually save more room. So I continued laying items out. Then came the fun part, the actual bundling. I followed the guide and created this nice little bundle that, quite honestly, fit perfectly inside my Samsonite carry-on bag. HOLY SMOKES…there was room to spare even!

Now the fun part is I’ve got to undo the bundle tonight when I get home to add my jeans to the mix and another pair or two of underwear. I’m definitely using the bundle wrapping method as well when I do it again. Since I’ve not got to worry about my clothing being all wrinkly (though it will be because it started out that way), I can focus more time and effort on enjoyable things like shooting some photos. I’m definitely looking forward to this trip.

I myself stand roughly 6′ 2″…a whole 4″ shorter then my younger brother. It sucks that I have to look up to him at times. This short is a different kind of short that I’m referring to though. The kind where I take a bit of a gamble on some stock that it’s going to go lower, then blow right passed another number and I’ll make some money on the difference. It’s quite exciting and an awesome opportunity to make some quick cash…if you know what you’re doing.

I myself am no self-professed expert. In fact, I’m a little naive and am extremely hopeful that analysts and gut reaction are correct. I’ve got a short sell account with TD Waterhouse and I’ve had it for quite some time. Now I’m going to use it…for the first time (I hope) to net myself almost $800 in less then an 8 hour period. I did some Google-ing to find out about various Stock Market Order Types and got some great examples and more information.

I’ve placed two orders. A short sell for stock X at $11.70CDN (it’s closing price) and one a Buy to Cover at $10.00 (still above it’s 52-week low by about $1). 500 shares on each. Now what? I sit and wait until the stock begins trading in the morning and hope to hell that I’ve set it up right. I’m contemplating calling the brokerage itself, but am too full of myself to do so. I guess within 24-hours we’ll all know how it went. Wish me luck…or skill for that matter.

With all the running I’ve been doing I’ve been trying to figure out roughly what my pace is. In theory it’s easy. Take the amount of time you’ve run, or walked, or biked, or ‘insert blank here’ and divide that into sixty to get miles or kilometers per hour. The issue of course is turning the seconds into a fraction. This too is easy, simply divide them by sixty, because there’s sixty seconds in a minute. My formula looks something like this:

pace = 60 / (minutes + (seconds / 60))

Initially I had made a little Excel document to do the calculation for me but figured I should be able to whip it up in JavaScript pretty quick and have included it here for your use. Let me know your thoughts.