The
Squamidian Report – Feb. 5 / 11
Issue #454
Including:
A Joke From Ron
The Ontarion
Hi All,
The last time we went up to Whistler for breakfast was near the end of the riding season and we were on the bikes. Somehow most of the winter has slipped by without us heading up that way. Ryan found himself doing a gig in Whistler last weekend and suggested we join him for breakfast before he headed down on the Sunday morning, so we did. Obviously we went in the car, not on the bike because it while it was bright and sunny, it was a bone chilling +2 here in Squamish and a numbing -4 up there. Now I know I’ve said this before but I’ll repeat myself. The drive up is incredibly scenic, but the drive back down blows the drive up right out of the water. When travelling north on the Sea to Sky the Tantalus Range is behind you. Cloudburst and the mountains around Whistler fill the horizon and grab your attention. But when heading south you are confronted with the massive, snow covered wall of the Tantalus mountains and they are spectacular. This is truly world class scenery at its best.
Now here’s the thing I find puzzling. The very scenery and majesty that draws people up to Whistler seems to be forgotten and ignored when those same outdoor seekers are in their vehicles and rocketing up or down the highway. Have you ever watched the start of a Nascar race? Zero to a hundred and eighty miles per hour in a few seconds while jockeying for position. That’s what its like and it makes no sense. As they drive back to the city through towering snow-covered mountains and vistas of towering trees and rock cliffs they forget the very things they had headed out to enjoy. Tunnel vision seems to take over and all they can see and are willing to see is the asphalt in front of their bumper. The very thought of someone being ‘ahead’ of them drives them to take stupendous risks as they fight for position before the next curve or blind hill. Not that they even care what might be beyond that curve or hill. They are more than willing to sacrifice anyone in the ‘other’ vehicles in order to dash unimpeded back to the noise and gridlock of the city.
Some poor schnooks such as myself tends to drive about ten over the limit. I like to enjoy the scenery I came out to enjoy. But that’s not a welcome situation for the crazed drivers bent on blasting their way down the highway. They’d like to either run you off the road or drive right up over top of you. Vehicles puddling along at a speed barely fast enough to land a speeding ticket are a source of annoyance and frustration for them. Boggles the mind. The satisfying things is that these are the same drivers who find themselves in the ditch or upside down when things turn a bit slippery. They drive those expensive SUVs and BMWs etc with the ‘all wheel drive’ and traction control and stability control, and because of all those ‘safety aids’ they have no feel of the road at all and end up over-driving the ability of the on-board computer to control the vehicle. Looks good on them.
That’s my rant and I enjoyed it!
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Some of you who follow my ramblings closely will remember that I switched my main computer system to a Mac just over a year ago and that has gone smoothly and without much pain. My reason was that the motherboard on what was my main system was showing signs of occasional instability. I could no long depend on it to be reliable. So for the last 14 months or so I’ve been doing most of my computer stuff on my Mac, and the PC has been used as a backup machine and as a machine for ‘the wife’ to do Email, surf, play games and whatever. Well, that poor old PC finally kicked the bucket. It began to freeze up and quickly reached the point where it could not be re-booted after it’s final freeze. I could not even get into BIOS. Bummer.
I pulled open the case to have a look around and found to my embarrassment that the fan and heat sink over the CPU were completely clogged and blocked with dust and dirt. That’s what had pushed the poor thing over the edge, it had died from a heat stroke. I’ve always preached regular cleaning of these rather delicate electronic contraptions but I guess I was a bit negligent this time. She was on her way out but it didn’t have to be quite this soon or gruesome. If you remember far enough back, this was the computer that I built shortly after we moved here so I’ve had a fairly close relationship with the old girl and seeing her give up the ghost was not easy.
Now we had to decide what to do about it. First thing was to retrieve any data on the hard drive that was not backed up to somewhere else. We have our old (relatively speaking) laptop that ‘the wife’ could use quite nicely as a desktop. It already contains most of the programs and data files that were on the PC. All I needed to do was pull the hard drive from the dead machine and set it up as an external USB drive. I needed to purchase a cradle for it that could house SATA drives but they are inexpensive and available almost anywhere. So, our data is safe, our ‘stand-in’ computer is up to date and all is well. We are now down to 3 working computers in this house so there is no need or excuse to go out and buy a new one. However, I have a line on some used hardware that could be updated and built into a working system very easily and inexpensively. So, that might be a topic for sometime in the near future.
doug
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A Joke From Ron
A tough looking group of bikers were riding when they saw a girl about to jump off a bridge so they stop.
The leader, a big burly man, gets off his bike and says, "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to commit a suicide," she says.
While he did not want to appear insensitive, he didn't want to miss an opportunity he asked "Well, before you jump, why don't you give me a Kiss.
So, she does and it was a long, deep lingering kiss.
After she's finished, the biker says, "Wow! That was the best Kiss I have ever had. That's a real talent you are wasting. You could be famous
Why are you committing suicide?"
"My parents don't like me dressing up like a girl......"
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Ontarion
On Vacation!
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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.