The Squamidian Report – Oct. 25 / 03
Also in this issue:
Sheri in Bosnia
North Nova News
The Ontarion
Hi All,
I had to replace the CD ROM drive in my computer. (Opps, I forgot to warn Karin that this paragraph was about computer stuff). Anyway, it had packed it in. No real problem as I have a burner installed as well but I didn’t want to just ignore it or disable it. The local computer store carries that kind of thing. They sure are cheap now that burners are so commonplace.
There was certainly no problem installing it. I set the ROM as the slave and the existing burner as the master. However, when I hooked everything back up and tried to boot, the system was dead, just some beeps and that was it. I had run into the same symptoms once in a while in the past with this machine but a second try would always get it going. This time it stayed dead. Some quick checking and I found that the power supply connector to the motherboard was a bit loose at one end. Once snapped back into place, away it went. So the lesson here is whenever you muck around inside your computer, double-check all the connectors and cables. In fact, check the seating of any expansion cards and memory chips as well because thermal creep can work them loose too.
One of the byproducts of Whistler being cut off from the world is that there were a lot of tourist types there that needed to leave. Get back to work, catch a plane, whatever. The neighbour couple next-door, Ken and Lisa, both work at the Whistler Resort Hotel. He was home when the highway washed out but she was at work. Lisa was stuck working double shifts, as fresh staff could not get there. Most of the labour force in Whistler lives in either Pemberton or Squamish. By Sunday there were 300 guests in the Whistler Resort Hotel that needed to check out but the only way to get back to the city or the airport was by helicopter.
Sunday was a break in the storms with some sunny breaks so the sky was filled with the constant buzz of helicopters passing overhead. I would imagine that there were a lot of rental cars left in Whistler that would have been returned to the airport. The work force stranded in Whistler is stuck there until the road is put back and the restaurants etc have to be careful not to run out of supplies. In fact, some did have to shut down due to empty cupboards.
Pemberton is an almost total right off. The trains that run through the corridor are at a standstill until all the bridges can be checked. There were several train bridges that were washed away and some tunnels that collapsed.
Because Sunday turned out nice, we got a bit done on the second phase of the deck project. Just the frame but it’s a start.
Oh, by the way, the authorities had declared the drought and forest fire danger to be over. We were never in any danger from flooding where we live up here. We are 800 ft above the valley floor. When we were house hunting we looked at the low valleys and decided we wanted to be has high as possible. I think you would have to be born out here to be comfortable in the valley bottoms and flood plains.
We are now back to beautiful sunny warm fall weather. I’d try to describe the way things look but that would just bore you. Of coarse, that means I have no excuse for not getting deck stuff done so I’d better get back at it. We had to pick up some 2x12s for the stairs. Yogi had insisted in coming along for the ride to the lumber store. He was quite put out when he found that he had to share his spot in the van with a bunch of boards.
****
Sheri sends greetings from Bosnia.
Their weather seems to be much like Ontario with some days warm and sunny,
others just plain crappy. She has been told that the crappy part will go
on until February, with approx. 5 weeks of snow in an average winter. (I
can handle that!)
Their job is to secure the area so that the
home owners can return. Some are back now and have started to fix up
their homes with new siding, while next door, the people are not back and their
homes still have many bullet holes
along the walls.
Where we have lawns, they have gardens and
large piles of firewood.
Before the war the economy was very good and you can see evidence of that
today.
While in their homes they dress like
peasants, but out on the street their clothes look like they were purchased at
Saks 5th Ave. Mercedes and satellite dishes grace their homes, but their
children are in school with flip flops and
socks on and the foot hangs out both ends. Go figure! There are still
alot of mines in the area, but the residents don't seem to take the care they
should. It is just a way of life, while they military personel MUST stay
on hard surface and never walk on grass or ditches.
During her "off" time there isn't
much to do if you are not into computor games or videos, so she is going to
take up their folk dancing. She said it will be quite a challenge since
the music she has heard so far, she can't find a
melody to get her toe tapping. Her first R & R is next Tues until
Friday the 31th. I'll let you girls know how she found the
shopping. The Hotel (hot baths, clean fluffy towels, privacy, formal
dining rooms, room service, bar etc)
is located in the heart of the market area of some big city they are going to.
She may not want to go back to camp.
She gets to call Jordy anytime, Mon
to Friday while he is at work and she talks to the children every Saturday
morning. She calls here about every two weeks. With the slight delay
because her calls are through a satellite you tend to interupt each other and
some long words sound like she is having a silent burp in the middle.
They had a good Turkey dinner last week,
complete with cranberries and wine. The meatloaf still needs some work
though! I asked her what life on tour was like and she sent me a list of things
to do at homeso we can experience for ourselves.. Here are just a
few:
Sleep on a cot in the garage and replace the garage door with a curtain. Six
hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the
curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "sorry, wrong
cot"
Every time there is a thunderstom, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump
dit on your head.
Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of
water and set it on "HIGH" for that tactical generator smell.
Don't watch TV except for movies and have
your family vote on which one to watch and then show different one.
Leave a lawnmower running in your livingroom 24 hours a day for proper noise
level.
Buy a trash compactor and only use in once
a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.Make up your family
menu a week ahead of time without looking in you food cabinets or
refrigerator. The serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce
poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.Set your alarm clock to go
off at random times during the night. Then jump out of bed, head for the
shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out
into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.
Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night
stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And don't forget your gun
and flashlight.
I will save some of the other "suggestions" for next time as I don't
want to hog too much space in the "weekly"
Have
a great week everybody
Judy and Bryan
****
Dark and dreary is a good way to describe our weather this past week but I guess we really needed the rain. The pond has filled in nicely with all the rain and it looks beautiful once again. There is nothing attractive about a pond that is half full. It looks more like a crater. One morning on our walk Claudia found a very large trout laying on her driveway about 15 feet away from her pond. At first glance it looked perfect with no marks but when she turned it over it was obvious something had made a deep cut in the fish. Puzzled by this we figured a blue heron or an osprey must have grabbed the trout out of the pond and managed to lose it over the driveway. Later as I sat inside my father’s house we spotted a large eagle flying very low. This was probably the culprit. What a waste of a big trout, but come to think of it, there are likely more where that one came from.
Hunting season is almost upon us. That is when the city people come and invade our peace and privacy out here in the country for one month excluding Sundays (thank-goodness for Sundays). Most of them believe that they are free to roam on any property they desire with no regards to how close they are to homes that are often hidden in the trees. One clue for them would be the mailboxes at the end of each lane but then they are roaming through the woods and aren’t liable to spot them. There is a law that states they cannot be any closer than 500 feet from a home but their bullets can travel a mile. As you can tell I am not a fan of hunting unless it is much farther out where no one lives. And where would that be? Actually the hunters are their own worst enemy. Every year after the season the paper comes out with a list of all the hunting accidents. They usually shoot each other or themselves or fall out of trees or get lost. It’s quite entertaining to read. What with all the regulations and restrictions with guns there are always accidents. One year my Mom and I heard gun shots after dark and on a Sunday while playing scrabble at her house. There was no way to tell where it came from but it sounded too close. So I reported the incident and a warden was sent on his way to check it out. The officer called one of our neighbours (Barry) to see if he had heard the sound but his stereo was extremely loud and he hadn’t heard anything. Barry had no love of hunters either living beside a field where deer almost always grazed. One year a lazy hunter shot, from the window of his car, what he thought was a deer. What he really shot was Barry’s German shepherd dog in the leg. Meanwhile Barry, thought he would take a look up and down the road for a vehicle that might belong to the hunter and just as he thought there was one sitting not far from his home. He took down the license plate and rushed back to his place to call the warden. As he was reciting the license plate number over the phone the warden suddenly jumped out of his vehicle because the number sounded vaguely familiar. You guessed it, he had caught the warden not the hunter. I thought you might get a kick out of that story.
Well I’m sure I’ll have a few more hunting stories to tell you after November is over.
Until next time
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
October 23,
2003
Once again, Hello everyone! Man, these weeks are just flying by aren’t they? It seems like only yesterday it was October 22, 2003! Well, I guess now that I think about it, it was only yesterday. Oh well as Miss Scarlet O’Hara once said “Tomorrow is another day” and she was right too!
Sounds like somebody needs help! It’s one of those rare occasions when I’m not really full of ideas to talk about in The Ontarion. You’d think with all that’s been going on around Kitchener/Waterloo lately I’d be overflowing with news. Hey, speaking of overflowing, have you all heard about the flooding in BC? I’m sure Doug will have filled us in on that story so at this point there’s no sense in my going on about it. I just hope that Doug and Sue are high and dry. We’re expecting rainy weather for the next week here in Southern Ontario. Usually the week of “Octoberfest” is filled with lousy weather but this year’s celebration was actually quite pleasant. In fact, the whole 10 days of the festival went off without so much as a drunken brawl or horrendous car crash. I’ve been watching the paper but I guess everyone was pretty well behaved at this years beer bash.
Let me see, Hmmmmmmmm? Oh yah, the final report on the RIM Park enquiry is available now. You can purchase a copy from Waterloo City Hall for a mere $30.00 + taxes. I’m sure you have all heard one way or another about the terrible financial mess that the CAO and city council in Waterloo got the taxpayers into 2 years ago. If not here’s a brief rundown. A proposal to build a huge sports complex and recreation park in the northeast corner of Waterloo was approved by the CAO, Mayor and Councilors. The problem was that they trusted the company that offered to finance the deal to put the numbers together and neglected to check on their figures to see what the final cost to the taxpayers would be. Well, what was supposed to cost the people of Waterloo about 112 million over 30 years would actually cost them well over 200 million by the time the debt was repaid. The KW Record newspaper did some checking after the deal was signed and found out the bad news.
Needless to say, they published the facts in their paper and the shit hit the fan. The CAO and the Mayor passed the buck quicker than you could say compound interest! An inquiry was called for and after about a year of review, the judge has published his findings and made some recommendations as to how to handle the debt. In all fairness to the City administrators, they did launch a lawsuit against MFP financial and Clarica Insurance the holders of the lean and managed to get the amount reduced by about 32 million. Still, the debt is much larger than the taxpayers should be saddled with, due to the slipshod way the whole thing was handled. In the meantime, the CAO has dodged the bullet and retired with a huge lump sum financial package as well as a hefty $94,000.00/ year indexed pension. This deal in itself shows that the CAO has a brain if only when it comes to signing contracts that protect he and his retirement package. It appears to me that he won’t have to cough up anything more than the other taxpayers when it comes to taking responsibility for his blunder. The final and major blame rests on the VP from MFP Financial who sold the administrators of the city of Waterloo this deal in the first place. The judge has made suggestions as to how to get a good handle on the paying off of this debt and put the majority of the tax increases behind the citizens as soon as possible. However, the Mayor (another brain dead fat assed politician) has already spoken out against taking the judge’s advice. She said a one time tax infusion of approximately $129.00/household plus proportional amounts from each business and industry in Waterloo would place too much of an immediate burden on the citizens. I guess she’d rather drag this assessment out in the form of a yearly painful reminder with the tax bills. I know that nobody will ever forget the situation but the judge had a good idea that would put it out of the minds of most citizens by not dredging it up on an annual basis. I think the Mayor wants to make one more mark in the history of Waterloo before she gets the boot in the ass in next months election. She was a councilor during the RIM decision and then took the Mayors job next. She’s hoping to be reelected but I doubt the voters will take another chance on her this time. The saga continues!
More news! Dateline Niagara Falls: I guess you’ve all read about the idiot that took the dive over the Canadian Falls eh? Well, now he’s saying that he wanted to end his life. Oooops! Did he forget about the fellow that he had record the event on video to help make him famous if he lived? I don’t doubt for a minute that this guy isn’t all there but c’mon…did he really expect to live through the landing? I think he’s just incredibly lucky! We go to Niagara at least once each summer and I’ve taken many a picture straight down from the brink of the falls and I certainly wouldn’t’ take the plunge while in my right mind. Being a former emergency/rescue worker, I’d kick the guy’s ass when I got hold of him for making me and my fellow teammates risk our lives to recover the sorry bones of such a fool. He faces a $10,000.00 fine if found guilty of diving over the falls without a permit. We’ll see if he winds up on Jay Leno or Letterman in the next couple of weeks. I wouldn’t doubt that he’ll garner some hefty fees for his story. Who knows, he just might make a killing after all if you’ll pardon the pun. When you look at the base of the falls, it’s nothing but rock. I can’t imagine how he managed to land in a deep pool of water and not strike his head on the rocks. Like I say, he’s just damned lucky I guess. We’ll all have to keep an eye on the continuing story of this guy over the next couple of weeks.
I guess that’s about all the news I have for this week. Take care and stay safe!
Bye for now!
GREG.
PS: Something to Think About>
Here’s
one for the guys…..
”Remember, no matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of
putting up with her shit”!
****
http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/
Have a good one..
the
doug