The Squamidian Report - Dec. 7/02

Hi All.

Things have pretty well slowed down at work as they are now geared up for snow removal in Whistler. That means I have time off now. A lot of that time is used up working with Warren on the carving restoration job on top of Grouse Mountain.

Had to do a small repair on our old 586 PC. It's the one that Sue uses to play tetrus and I use for Minesweeper. This old girl (the computer, not Sue) has a Cyrus CPU running at 133Mhz which makes it a dinosaur. It has (get this) 24 Mg of the old 32-pin ram. Because it's running a bare bone setup, it has no problem with Win95 and is actually quite zippy. Anyway, the CPU fan has gotten very noisy and needed to be replaced. The only spares I have are way too big and would require that I re-position all the cards and cables. So I removed the little sticker over the bearing shaft and put in 1 drop of machine oil, replaced the sticker to keep the oil in. Don't know how long it will extend the fan life but it's running smooth and quiet for now.

Getting back to Grouse Mountain, it's interesting watching the weather out here. Vancouver has been socked in with fog for days now but it's bright and sunny up on Grouse. The fog is a thin layer forming over the ST of Georgia and the Fraser River delta. Everyone living in the city thinks we are having miserable weather but anyone living above the fog has nice bright sunshine. We tend to get the sunshine in the Squamish area.

The tourists think we are the carvers as we work on the statues on Grouse. They keep snapping our pictures and bugging us. When Warren fires up the chain saw they congregate like moths around a lamp.

Sue got in from Saskatchewan via Winnipeg Friday evening. Picked her up at the airport just past 7 our time. She was pretty pooped from 2 weeks on the road and constant travel. True to form, she slept all the way home. Driving home on the Sea to Sky highway at night can be an adventure. Unless you know the road, the winding hilly route could leave you quite stressed. But if you do know the road, you get to enjoy the trip. At night you can see lights out on the islands and along the coast where you didn't know anyone lived. Always something new.

Ryan gets here today, we pick him up at the airport just past noon. He will be the surprise guest at Yogi's 10th birthday party. Yogi's birthday is tomorrow, the 8th. Did you know that Yogi still grabs his most prized possession, his teddy bear and heads for the car when I vacuum? He started doing that when we were having house showings back on Hidden Valley. His idea of 'protect your valuables'.

We still have nice mild sunny weather here but that is supposed to change this week. The ski hills are hoping for a good dump of snow and we could use some rain again.

Have a good one.

the doug