The Squamidian Report – June 26 / 04
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Also in this issue:
Vivyan
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Well, lets see what I can write about that won’t get me into too much trouble with Tina. Anyone remember ‘Tina the Tech Writer’? Tina the Tech Writer is a Dilbert character that has a very brittle personality and interprets all sorts of hidden meanings and agendas from the most benign of statements.
So, I could remark on how hot is has been here this past week or so but perhaps I should use the words ‘thermally abundant’. ‘Hot’ could imply some kind of gender innuendo.
I could ramble on about how we feed the smaller birds and jays but put a lid on the garbage can to keep the crows from making a mess but that would imply a bios against crows. Not worth the effort. I’ll just continue to be my same obnoxious self.
The ever illusive Sue, (you know, the dishwasher that went on holidays), gets a bit perturbed at me when she arrives home from any extended trips. I tend to have a relaxed way of looking at things in the fridge. To me there are items that can be consumed and items that are too old to be used but not old enough to be thrown out yet. She just can’t see that. Go figure!
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Oh, here’s a safe topic! Mt Garibaldi is the highest mountain locally, here on the coast. You have to go inland up to Whistler before you can see higher ones. Or, you have to look inland down into Washington State. The highest mountain there is Mt Baker which like Garibaldi is part of the Cascade Range that runs up from California.
Mt Baker is visible from most of the Lower Mainland Vancouver area as well as parts of Southern Vancouver Island. It sits prominently on the Eastern horizon, often poking above the clouds and is about twice the height of all the surrounding mountains. At 2 miles high it dominates the horizon. Glimpses of it can be seen from the Upper Levels highway as you drive into the city from the north. It can be seen easily from the Lions Gate Bridge and from the entrance road to the airport.
Mt Baker, which is about 110 km east by south east from Vancouver, is classified as an active volcano. (Garibaldi is classified active but dormant.) While there have been numerous activity events over the years the last major eruption was about 1870. The classic volcanic mountain cone shape was formed about 30,000 years ago. The whole upper area of the mountain is covered in glaciers and snowfields. It was named after Lt Joseph Baker, a member of George Vancouver’s expedition. Just thought you’d like to know.
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Fire precautions. While local authorities have not yet closed down the forests in this area, any construction activity must be done very carefully. We are using heavy machinery in tinder dry conditions. Each machine and vehicle on site has a water sprayer attached to it right now as well as a fire ax and shovel. I’m not sure what good an ax would be, chopping at a fire and I hope I don’t find out. The shovel makes sense for throwing dirt on a ground fire.
The same heat wave has caused accelerated melt up in the snow packs. The rivers are swollen and fast. Where we normally walk Yogi down at the river is flooded. Yogi still tries to wade out to where he normally would go into the water. One day this week the current caught him and pushed him out into deeper water. All that was showing above the surface was his head as he swam back to the shore. I didn’t know if he’d be freaked by that or not. He likes water but is very easily intimidated. However, when he struggled back up onto the bank there was a sparkle in his eyes and he turned around and headed right back in.
And lastly, now that it is summer here in the Great White North it must be winter way down there in Karin Land. Enjoy.
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GeekSpeek – USB Memory Chip Drives
As most of you know I tend to like computer related neat stuff. I also tend to wait until computer hardware or software has been out long enough for most of the bugs to be worked out before I bother with it. One of the things that have been available for a while now are the memory chip flash card type storage devices. Same technology as the storage card in digital cameras etc, these little units are small enough to hang on a key chain and just plug into your USB ports.
Unlike CDRW or that kind of thing, the O/S sees the device as a removable drive. Just like a Zip or Jazz. You can work directly on a file located on the drive. On systems running XP you just plug it into a port and it is recognized. Away you go. On Win98 you would need to install a downloaded driver but that’s no problem. The drives could be used for backup but they are too expensive for that to be their main purpose. They come in various capacities right up to 512 mg and are best used for file transfer between machines that are not connectable. You could use one to transfer copies of all your picture file from your home PC to your office PC. You can use one as a convenient method of carrying your data with you. Never know when you may need to access a file. Having copies of your data files on a USB card does create a backup which is a good thing but it also lets you access, create or alter files while at another computer and bring those updates home with you where you can replicate them back onto your system.
So anyone looking for a neat and useful component to add to your digital experience, get yourself a USB flash card such as the JumpDrive or similar product. You’ll find it both fun and handy. In fact no self respecting Geek would be caught without one.
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No wonder those years were
called the “Dirty Thirties”. There was
a bad recession and the summers were hot and dry and the winters cold and
stormy with blizzards. Horses were the
only way to get around and since my dad took the mail six days a week he kept a
winter road open through our farm. He
used gaps in the fences as the snow in the lanes would get too deep and on cold
frosty nights he would take pails to the river and flood the track to make it
thick enough for the team and sleigh.
The snow would completely cover the wooden fences so if it formed a
crust it was fun to run home from school on the big banks. When we would get out of school we’d run
across to the church shed to see if Dad’s sleigh or cutter was there,
especially if it was stormy.
One day about 3:30 my Dad came to the school and told the teacher (a one room school house) he wanted us kids to leave as it was stormy out. The teacher said we couldn’t leave as it wasn’t 4:00 o’clock. My Dad had a lot of respect for teachers but that day he told her he was taking us then and there and she had better get the rest of the children on their way as fast as possible while they would be able to see to get home. By the time we got into the cutter and headed home the storm was so bad we could only see the horse’s tail and once in a while we would get a glimpse of his head. My Dad just left the lines loose and the horse found his own way home. Because we had to cross the river in the right place we had to depend on the horse to know where he was going. If you hit the river on the upstream side the banks where too steep and on the downstream side there were rapids that often didn’t freeze solid. The horse always knew where he was and would stop when he got to the barn door. How happy we would be to get into the house where my mother would have a great wood fire going and, very often, fresh home made bread warm out of the wood stove oven. How good it tasted loaded with home churned butter. Looking back now I can appreciate how hard my parents had to work and how tough life was but as children we saw the fun side.
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THE ONTARION REPORT
JUNE
26, 2004
Hi everyone!
Well, here we are, another week deeper into summer and another week closer to the elec… ooops! Sorry, I promised not to mention that subject again. OK, here’s something else to think about. Many years ago I was asked by my cousin’s husband who happened to be a schoolteacher, to take an IQ test. I think I was around 15 or so and had never been tested for my Intelligence Quotient. I sat at his house one evening and answered several pages of questions. This test was unlike any I had taken as a student. The questions were a mix of mind benders and strange math teasers. When I finished Norm told me that it would take a few weeks to get the results. I said I didn’t want to know the results if they showed that I was a mental dud! LOL! He chuckled and said he was sure I’d do just fine. As I recall, it was about 2 months later that he finally called and wanted to talk to me. I went to his place after school and we sat and had a good talk about school, my future and what he thought I should aim for in life. He then told me that the IQ test showed that I had scored 129 on the IQ scale. He went on to explain that this was actually quite a respectable score. He said it indicated that I was quite intelligent. I had a real hard time believing this since I always seemed to have a difficult time in school. Don’t get me wrong, I did ok in school but according to Norm, my marks didn’t support the results of the IQ test. My marks were always average or slightly above except for math, which was a total disaster and was always my lowest mark.
According to Norm, I was not working anywhere near my potential and should put a little more effort into my studies. I figured I’d make one big effort for my last year in High School and see what would happen. I worked my tail off for that year and my marks were significantly higher than in other years. I still had trouble with math but attributed that to being so shitty at it in previous years. My grade 12 math teacher Selma Schmidt told me that I had waited too long to try to improve my math skills but she was still proud of the increase to around a 70% average. I figured I’d made a helluva big effort and deserved a 90% but she didn’t see it that way. LOL! Grade 12 was a big change for me all round. I even ran in the school elections for “Head Boy” of the student’s council. I lost out to a fellow by the name of Steve Calma by a mere 24 votes. That was ok by me as I knew I had a lot of drinking and partying I wanted to do and if I was Head Boy, I’d have to set an example for the younger students and that would mean I’d have to forego my night life! Steve Calma joined the Kitchener Police Force out of high school and spent 34 years on the job. He finished his career at the rank of Detective Sgt and retired from the Waterloo Regional Police about one year before I retired from WFD. I hadn’t given much thought to IQ tests since that time until this week when I found one on the internet that’s free for the taking. I sat for a good hour the other night and answered their questions. When it was completed, I had achieved a score of 135. I’m not so sure that this means I’ve gained in intelligence over the past 40 years. However, it was a nice surprise to see that it is possible to maintain ones numbers over that time span. I figure it just might mean that the onset of Alzheimer’s is that much further into my future. Hopefully I’ll be able to stave such a terrible disease off altogether by remaining mentally active if not physically. LOL!
Speaking of health, I spent the morning in the examining room
of a London Ophthalmologist. He’s the specialist that saved my eyesight 3 years
ago with a special procedure he developed. It’s a laser procedure that stops
the separation of the layers of the retina. This disease is called
retno-schisis. It’s where a bubble forms between the layers of the retina,
which lines the inside of your eyeball. This bubble forms over many years and
if allowed to grow in size will eventually blind you by interfering with the
lens focal point in your vision. For many years the medical profession would
just reexamine your eyes every year and tell you that the bubble was getting
bigger. They could and would do nothing surgically to try to stop this
progression. Of course there were doctors that tried to actually correct the
problem by cutting into the eye and stitching the bubble closed but they had
virtually no success. This Doctor in London by the name of Lee Siebert decided
to try to fuse the layers of the retina together at the leading edge of the
bubble with a laser. Others thought he was nuts to take such a risk with the
remaining vision in retno-schisis patients. He tried it and on his very first
attempt was successful. He’s been performing this procedure since the mid 80’s
and has successfully operated on about 1500 patients. He has also taught about
150 doctors worldwide how to do this amazing operation. If he hadn’t helped me
3 years ago, I’d probably be blind in my left eye today and approaching
blindness in my right one. He’s an amazing guy and I’m immensely grateful for
his skill and pioneering efforts in the field of laser eye surgery. He checked
my eyes today and said that the surgery is holding perfectly and I’ve got
another year before I have to return for another checkup. By the way, Dr
Siebert also successfully repaired a detached retina for me.
As far as I’m concerned, doctors in this country are worth every dollar they request for their services. I know from personal experience that the heart surgeon that repaired my heart in London is a true miracle worker and I place Dr Seibert in this category as well. Of course there are duds in every profession including medicine but for the most part these men and women are priceless!
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Oh ya, belated HAPPY FATHER’S DAY TO ALL THE SQUAMIDIAN DADS!
Better let you go for now. Talk to you all again next weekend.
Bye for now….GREG.
PS: Something to Think About>
Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way.
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the
doug
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