The Squamidian Report – Aug. 20 / 05
Also in this issue:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
I wanted an excuse to go out for a nice ride on the street bike, and I needed to visit the Green Machine and since the closest TD ATM to here is in Whistler I had a reason to go there for a ride. At the same time, the Squamish Valley has been blanketed by forest fire smoke. In fact, I’ve had to close up the house windows to keep the stuff out. In the mornings, we can’t see the mountains across the valley. Completely hidden. There is a fire burning up in the Elaho which is a tributary valley to the upper Squamish. At night the valleys cool down and the ocean stays warn so the air mass moves outward drawing the smoke with it out the valley systems. This fills the lower valley and Sound. Then, as the air heats up during the day, the wind direction switches to inland and pulls all the smoke back into the valleys. So it is smoky all the way into the Whistler area and beyond.
I headed up the highway, it was very smoky as far as Alice Lake and then the air cleared up. I stopped in at Warren’s to see if he wanted to go along for the ride. He gets to do lots of trail riding but no highway riding. While at his place we walked up to the Chalet to check out the view of the smoke. It lay between us and the Tantalus Range, giving those mountains a far-away look, like they were floating on a sea of cloud. Also made them look bigger because while they looked further away there were obviously still their normal size. We headed on up to Whistler enjoying the ride and the scenery. Whistler itself was cloaked in smoke. Did my transactions and headed back down the highway. I’m not much interested in hanging around in Whistler. Don’t much care for the place.
The highway to and therefore from Whistler takes you along the Cheakamus River. It climbs up over ‘the canyon’ while the river flows through ‘the canyon’. It was down in there that the train derailment took place several days ago. It is rather interesting and disturbing that CN, and the federal and provincial environment people have been keeping it as quiet as possible. The section of river affected is now virtually sterile.
By the time we got back down to the lookout below Warrens the air was pretty thick and the smell of smoke was everywhere. Ironically, most of the tourists at the lookout didn’t know that this was not the normal situation, that they should be able to see across the valley and out the Sound quite clearly. Warren headed up his road feeling very motivated to check out his fire suppression equipment and I headed home to change the plugs on the bike. One of the cylinders had been miss firing a bit. Just another interesting weekend morning in the land of Squamidia.
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And for anyone who wants to see a picture of Peanut the wonder dog, click here.
http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b2/Misc/peanut.htm
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Those severe storms that shut down Toronto, most of Southern Ontario and Pearson Airport made it hard for Sue to get home on Friday. She had been in Saskatoon all week and her flight back took her to Calgary where she would connect to a Vancouver bound plane. Because most of the planes heading for Vancouver were grounded at Pearson there were no Vancouver bound flights flying. They finally were able to get onto a flight that was headed for Pearson with a stop in Calgary but was being turned back to Vancouver. She got home kind of late.
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Geek Speak! – Bart’s Pre-installed Environment.
As some of you know, and some of you don’t and the rest quite rightly don’t care, there have been Linux and other lesser O/S live CD’s available for years. However, there has never been a live CD version for any of the Microsoft Windows variations. A live CD is a bootable CD with a self contained O/S (operating system) on it. The computer boots off the CD and nothing is loaded or installed onto the computer. No changes are made, nothing is affected. The O/S loads into memory and runs from there. There are two main purposes for this. One is for a way to test an operating system to see if you like it and want to install it. The second is a way of booting the computer to do diagnostic work, such as when the O/S loaded onto the machine has become unstable or won’t even boot. By booting from a live CD you can make repairs, move or copy files rather than chance loosing them if a re-format where to be necessary. While the Linux community has made live CD’s available for years, Microsoft has not.
Repairs to an installed but unbootable version of Windows XP, 2000 and other flavors that do not have DOS support and / or may be running NTFS have been a major problem. Simply accessing the disk to salvage files has been a problem. But now there is a way of creating a bootable live CD that is running XP and therefore can read and write to all the FAT and NTFS variations. It is called Bart’s Pre Installed Environment and you use a small utility written by Bart to create you own ISO file that you burn to CD and there you are. Needed is your XP installation CD (SP1 or higher) and your CD burner to burn the ISO file with. You install the utility and have it create the ISO file from the contents of your installation disk. That simple. They you can boot from the PE CD you have burned. Most people will never need something like this but on those rare occasions where it is needed, it would be a bacon saver.
It is not a replacement for an installed O/S and can’t be used as one. So no copy write issues arise. It is a very good diagnostic and repair tool. So there you go.
d
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Hi everyone!
It’s a crazy world we’re living in isn’t it! They
have been talking on Canada AM about all the guns and gun violence on the
streets of our Canadian cities these days. They say at least 50% of these guns
are coming across the border from the US. In the US, guns are a fact of life
and it looks like the movers of these items have found a market in Canada. I
listen to the reports every day of shootings in various cities across Canada.
It seems the police are saying that the majority of cases are perpetrated by
gangs in the bigger cities. It’s interesting to me to hear the names and
nationalities of origin of the gang members. Have we imported our own problems
by opening our immigration flood gates to Asian criminals that we have no way
of screening before they enter Canada? I think that is a big part of the
problem! It seems that Canada’s immigration dept has no access to or
cooperation from law enforcement services in foreign countries to allow them to
screen potential importees. It’s a huge job I know but I think our government
should undertake such an initiative to at least make an attempt to prevent the
importation of criminals that are seeing Canada as an easy mark for crime. I’m
tired of listening to all the problems landed immigrants are causing in Canada.
I think its time to STICK A FINGER IN THE DYKE, or is it DIKE and stem the
flow!
I was watching a comedy act the other night on CTV
and I don’t remember the guy’s name but he was the funniest thing I’ve heard in
years. I used to get a charge out of George Carlin with his frank and forward
style but nowadays comedians are truly “Out There” so to speak. This guy’s
funniest line came when he was telling a story about having sex with a girl he
met in a bar. He said she invited him back to her place for a drink and they
wound up in bed. He said when she insisted he use a condom he told her he
doesn’t use them “because they irritate my sores”! LOL! I’m sorry but this line
struck me as one of the funniest things I’ve heard in along time. I don’t know
why but I had one of those fits of laughter where you just can’t stop. I think
it literally lasted for 5 minutes. My sides were so sore I had to go take a
pill to calm down. ……………….hmmmmmmmmmmmm……….I guess maybe you had to be there
but do any of you ever have those
moments of shear chaotic laughter? I hope so because everybody needs to release
their pent up emotions once in a while. We seem to be a society of people that
let stress build and build until we can almost explode. It’s a fact though that
most of us don’t realize how stressed out we really are until it’s too late. It
culminates in the form of strokes, heart attacks, drinking binges and domestic
violence. Surely there’s a cure for this type of buildup. Maybe a visit once a
month to the local Yuk Yuk’s would do something for the stress level. I don’t
think we laugh enough in today’s society. I’m going to make a point to lighten
to my stress level from now on. I enjoyed that comedian’s routine so much and I’m sure as they say, “Laughter is good
for the soul” not to mention one’s health.
I know there’s a Yuk Yuk’s in Kitchener and I’m
going to take Carole there sometime this month. If nothing else, it’ll be a new
experience for both of us to go to a professional comedy club. Anybody ever
been to one of these clubs?
Gotta go for now! I’ll talk to you all again next
time in The Ontarion Report.
Bye for now…. GREG.
PS: Something To Think About>
Never invest in anything that eats or needs repainting.
Billy Rose – NY Times
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The Family and the Squamidian sites:
http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/ and http://www.thedougsite.ca
Have a good one..
the
doug
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