The Squamidian Report – Feb. 7 / 15
Issue #663
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
If you look at a calendar, you will see something that does not happen
very often, and can only happen in February....this month displays as a
rectangle, all the days fitting within the four sides of the month
layout and with no days sticking out either end. Cool. No partly filled
rows at the top or bottom, just four full rows. Interestingly, because
of how that works, all the dates in March are in the same place as in
February, or at least until those last three days that spill over into
the next row and spoil the whole thing. You will notice that there is a
Friday the 13th in February, and therefor a Friday the 13th in March as
well, in exactly the same place, naturally.
Now, some of you may groan and some of you will be quite pleased. You
see, I've been at it again. Got started on a new music project when
'The Wife' was in Ontario in early January and just finished it up this
week, again, when she was out of town, this time being down in Maple
Ridge to baby sit one night. As you should remember from previous
conversations, it requires a quiet house to facilitate trying to write
a song, and it takes an even quieter house in order to record said
song. It also seems to take a lot longer to record and edit than it did
for the first numbers I had put together. The writing of a given song
can take a day or an hour our a month but once it gets started, it
seems to fall into place. The recording and editing process is another
thing altogether. Especially when you spend a fair amount of time on a
given track only to realize it was a waist of time and needed to be
deleted. Sometimes it turns out 'nothing' can be better than
'something' within the mix of a song. Funny how that works. But anyway,
this could well mean that I'm on my way to starting the next CD. I
guess that would be Volume 3 if it ends up happening. By the way, I
have a couple of copies of Volume 2 left over if anyone who didn't ask
for one, wants one. But of course, they'd have to ask because I'm not a
mind reader. Anyway, if you would like to listen to my latest creation,
just click on the link below, but unless your computer speakers are a
lot better quality than mine are, use headphones. It will sound closer
to the way it was intended rather than the muddy and small sound
through poor speaks, and even at that, its just in mp3 format for
Internet use, so it will always sound a bit muddy. The full, aif format
version is what would go on a CD. The song is called 'Avalanche' and is
about, well, avalanches, which is funny because we have almost no snow
in the mountains right now. Not even way high up, well, there is snow
up there but very little. Those endless, warm pineapple express weather
systems have been brutal on our snowpack. Much of this winter has been
basically a very wet spring. Just look at the flowers and buds in the
flower bed.
http://www.thedougsite.net/Songs/Lyrics/Avalanche.mp3
Now those who find my many time consuming but mentally stimulating
hobbies silly or childish or a waste of time or somehow unworthy, will
also find the fact that I mail myself copies of all the files each song
produces, as a way of proving they are indeed mine, to be silly, and a
waste of time as well. But, its a way of protecting my 'intellectual
property', so to speak. The chances of ever needing to prove any of my
original music is 'mine' is pretty low, probably none existent, but it
never hurts to have that safeguard in place. So, to that end I place a
CD or SD card containing the Garageband file of the recording, as well
as several formats of the finished product and a hard copy of the
lyrics into an envelope that is then sealed and stamped and mailed to
myself. It actually doesn't go anywhere even though the envelope is
stamped, the post office stamps the date over top of their postage
stamps and over the sealed envelope flap. The only way to make it more
'secure' as proof by date would be to then place the envelopes in the
care of a lawyer but that would be a bit of over-kill. On the very
remote chance I'd ever need to prove that one of my songs was in fact
written by me, I have the ability to prove that it was in my possession
as of the earliest date it popped into existence, and I have
undisturbed copies of the various tracks that were mixed together to
form the 'finished' product, as well as the finished product itself,
sealed in a dated envelope. So, anyone wanting to steal my stuff would
have to produce a copy that could be proven to be older than my
original materials, which would be quite difficult. You can alter
computer file dates easily but you can't really alter post office date
stamps. At least that the theory.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello Everyone!
Well, I must say, I’ve been having fun these past few days playing
around in the snow with my Toro! It’s still tossing snow like it’s
brand new out of the box and it’s about 7 or 8 years old now. As I look
around the neighbourhood at the other blowers they don’t seem to be
tossing their snow anywhere near as far as my faithful TORO and I know
for a fact that most of them are newer than mine. It seems that most
people go for models from Sears or Canadian Tire and of course most of
those models are made by the same manufacturer MTD that used to be
right here in Kitchener on Ottawa St S. I don’t know where that company
disappeared to but most likely they packed up and headed to the States.
I’m not sure where TORO is made but they are likely an American product
as well. At any rate, TORO make one heck of a good product and no
matter where they come from, I’d be happy to buy another one if I ever
need to replace the one I have! I’m sure that this blower will keep
doing the job for as long as I need it and what the heck, it may even
outlast me! LOL! Hopefully that’ll be at least another 25 or more
years!
Speaking of winter fun, I’ve been enjoying trekking around in the Jeep
with all the snow we’ve finally had falling over the past week. It’s
every bit as much fun as the old Liberty we had but it’s definitely a
plushier model! My fave feature in this one is the heated seats!
Keeping my old bum warm is of great concern since the new Jeep has
leather seats and they are hard and c c c c cold on the winter days.
We’ve been having some very, very cold days this winter even when we
didn’t have very much snow at the start. There have been times when
I’ve been tempted to drive up and over the top of some jerks when they
are in my way and driving like they’ve never seen snow. Sometimes I
think it would be fun to buy an old clunker of a Jeep and do just that
to teach them a lesson. Of course I’d also have to have a huge bankroll
to pay for the damage and possible lawsuits that would result but damn
it would be fun! I guess I’ll just have to behave myself and settle for
cussing at them in vane!
Last week I received e-mail from a friend of ours who lives out in Salt
Coats Saskatchewan, that’s in the southeast corner of the province and
boy do they get cold weather out there! He said their average
temperature has been -25c this winter and on many days and nights
they’ve easily reached -40c and with the wind chill factor much colder
yet! For a good part of the winter they’ve not been having very much
snow and his comment was that he figured it was just too cold to snow,
if that makes any sense? Anyway, he sent me some pictures of what he
called Spring out their way and the one that choked me up was the one
that showed the top 6” of a stop sign sticking out of the snow and not
a sign of any roads or other road level objects for as far as the eye
could see, just snow! I guess they finally got the snow he said was not
showing up because the weather was too cold! Hahahaha…… With snow
coverage like that I’m sure they won’t be having any shortage of ground
water out in Salt Coats this coming summer!
Guess we’ll just have to wait and see if the city of Kitchener places a
ban on lawn watering or car washing this Spring because with the snow
we’ve got on the ground so far, we should also have an abundance of
ground water in our region!
I was just out back yesterday to clear a pathway to the Gas and Water
meters that are located on the back patio of our place. It took me a
good half hour to make a path along the side of the house and also to
clear the patio. The snow wasn’t heavy but there sure was a heck of a
lot of it! It’s too bad I can’t get the blower out back. I’ve got a
cast iron gate between our house and the neighbour’s on one side and a
wooden gate that is totally snowed in on the other side. The iron gate
is too narrow to drive the TORO through and the wooden one is buried
and I don’t want to drive the blower on the lawn to clear it out so I
can open it! Oh well, the meter person will just have to wade through
whatever snow is there if I don’t happen to have a pathway cleared when
he/she arrives to do the reading! Maybe they can ask our letter carrier
how he wades through 3’ of snow on our lawn to deliver the mail since
he doesn’t seem to want to make use of the lovely cleared sidewalks
I’ve worked my ass of to clean for him! Yet, our son Adam has a letter
carrier that bitches and leaves him notes saying she couldn’t get
through the 3” of snow he neglected to clear from his drive on a
winter’s day! Yet, he says there are days when he can clearly see her
boot prints across his lawn through a couple of feet of snow leading to
his neighbour’s place. He says he can’t win with this woman! One day
she’s unable to make it through 3” of snow on the drive and the next
she’s cutting across his lawn through 2 feet of the white stuff taking
a short cut to the neighbour’s! Hard to figure people sometimes!
I guess that’s it for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
A rabbit runs and hops and only lives 15 years, while a tortoise
doesn’t run and does mostly nothing, yet it lives for 150 years. And
they tell US to exercise? I don’t think so!
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Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.
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