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The Squamidian Report – Nov. 2 / 13
Issue #597
Including:
The Ontarion Hi All, My riding season is over. The bike has been bathed and fueled and tucked away along the back wall of the garage. This is always a sad time for me. Putting it away means a long winter wait till spring when the first sunny days of March will permit bringing it back out. There might still be a few nice riding days left this year but my insurance has run out, forcing the issue. Here in BC, we can purchase our insurance by the year, or by the month. And because we are stuck with ICBC, our registration is tied to our insurance. The expiry date is related to the purchase date. For instance, I had put the bike on the road back on March 27, so, I could have put a full year of insurance on, or I could choose a lesser amount of time as long as it was in full month increments. The catch is that there is no sense putting on anything less that 3 months because they will charge as much for 1 or 2 months as they do for 3, plus a short term penalty. I had chosen to insure the bike until October because by late October we are usually into rain if its rainy, or black ice conditions if it is clear out, so the expiration date was the 26th. I’m kind of wishing I’d gone with Nov. as the expiration but who am I kidding. Just because there were still some nice sunny days doesn’t mean that by a week from now we won’t be into the cold November rains. In fact, by early next week it will be single digit temperatures and the rain is here so I guess the timing isn’t too bad. But it is always a bummer. This riding season was a bit of a disappointment. I only managed to put 14,980 km on the bike. There just was not many opportunities to go anywhere. The irony is that it was quite a nice riding season once it finally warmed up in early summer. We didn’t do any really good road trip. Best we could do was the Cache Creek weekend with my riding group and an over-nighter in the Kootenays where I hooked up with an old friend. The rest was just short rides and single-day rides. The bike is my therapy. No matter how bad my shoulders hurt, or my back hurts, once on the bike with the open road ahead, all those aches and pains seem to go away. I guess I’ll have to sneak down to the garage once in a while during the off-season and peak under the cover just to check on her. Several of my riding friends in the city will ride all winter, but winter is different there than it is up here. We are just an hour up the Sound and inland from the city but we get ice and snow. They get rain. When the sun comes out, it dries up there. Here, it can still be slippery and on a bike, that’s not a nice thing. So, between slippery roads made more slippery by winter sanding, and salt that is not good for anything except melting ice, the bike is better off put away. One thing about the bike being put away for the off-season….the poor old pickup truck gets to park back inside again. It probably thought it is unwanted all summer as it sat unused and neglected out on the parking spot by the road. During riding season I use the truck’s side of the garage for the bike. Now that the bike is parked, the truck gets to be inside again. Renew old friendships with the car, stay warm and dry when the cold rains come, that kind of thing. I assume its happy again now. *
This next item is rather long winded, so if you are not interested in
computer stuff just ignore it and skip on down to Greg's column.Changing computers is a real hassle. And very time consuming. 'The Wife' had been using a very old Windows PC that was giving all the signs of motherboard failure. It was a slow old machine with minimal RAM and could only output its video via VGA. I had resurrected it from the almost dead a few years ago. Like I said, old and tired. So, we needed to decide which direction to go. She was still using good old XP which as far as I'm concerned was MS's best O/S, but is no longer supported and with the hardware giving out on her old system, it was time to upgrade. We could have gone with a new Windows box but she'd have had to learn Windows 8. We were under pressure to switch her over to a Mac, which incidentally, I agreed with. Mac has a lot of thing going for it these days. I've been using a Mac for several years now as my main system and it is stable and easy to use once you put Windows out of your mind. But thats the key, you must let go of 'Windows' and the Windows way of doing things. The game plan was to get a nice new Mac Mini with more processing power than my old one, and more HD space as well. Then, we'd set the new box up on my desk and she would inherit the old Mini. I know, that does not sound fair but there is actually a reason for going that route which in fact created quite a lot more work than simply setting up the new one for her. The reason for putting the more powerful, faster unit on my desk is that I do both video and audio editing. The heaviest stuff she gets into is some minor photo editing. First step was to make sure we had good backups of all our data from both machines. I was able to fit all her data on two USB sticks, photos, iTunes and all. My data is backed up on an external drive. The hardest thing and most work would be finding and installing new versions of the software programs we each use. I would have to move my old Mini over to her desk and make sure the network was still up and running. Part of this whole thing was that we switched from our old, wired router to a nice tiny Apple wireless router. So, I removed her old dusty system box and hooked up my old Mini to her monitor. She needed her old keyboard and mouse replaces as well as the old ones were, well, very old. Then I set up the new wireless network. Thats actually very easy to do with Mac equipment. Getting Windows machines to talk to each other is like pulling teeth, getting Macs to talk to each other just falls into place. Our USB printer actually plugs into the router and is instantly available to all computers on the network. The idea was that with her up and running on my old system I would set up the new one. Once the new one is up and running with everything in place I would completely wipe the old Mini clean and do a fresh install of the O/S and her programs and data. It basically makes it just like new again. We picked up the new Mini on Monday. By Monday evening I had the old unit working just fine on her desk but obviously still running my old setup. Getting the new one running was easy. First hassle was trying to get the Email program to work. I ended up spending over an hour on the phone with tech support from my Internet provider, Shaw cable. The account settings posted on their site just weren't working. I could receive mail, but not send it. They finally found a solution that required a port setting change. Apparently, they are having this problem with new Mac computers and have not yet figured out if it is on their end or Apples end. I suspect that the problem is on their end because there always seems to be ongoing issues with them no matter what hardware of software is being used. Anyway, eventually we got the Email working. Put it this way, if you received this, its working. Finding and loading all the programs you take for granted, and getting them installed and configured was a big job. Then came the O/S upgrade. Apple has come out with a new version of it's operating system. Too new to have been pre-installed on the new unit. The new version is free which is something Microsoft would never do. Anyway, it was a 5 gig download but installed seamlessly. Several programs needed updating as well but that went just fine. Once the new machine was up to date with all the backed up data in place and all programs happy, we completely wiped the hard drive on the old machine and did a clean install. We actually had to install with the last Mac O/S version downloaded onto a USB stick and then update to the new version from there. That went smoothly too. All her data is now in place on that unit. However, she now must learn a new operating system, and we both need to either find a new graphic editor, or, start using Mac's iPhoto program. Other than that, we are now up and running on both machines and it was a very big job. Getting one computer up and configured and loaded and running is a big job, doing two doubles the time and work. There was one other snag, besides Shaw cable's email issue. I missed backing up some stuff from 'the wife's' old PC. All it should have taken to go back in and get it was hooking the monitor up, as well as the old keyboard and mouse. However, I couldn't get the video to work. The old motherboard was that close to total failure. I tried again a couple of days later and actually got the screen to come up but it went out halfway through the process of transferring the missed files to a USB stick. I left the machine running blind for another hour in hopes the transfer would work. It did and I was able to retrieve those files. So, aside from some Garageband plugins that are needed before I can fully access my recording projects, everything now seems to be up and running on both computers. We could both use a graphic program for things that iPhoto doesn't seem to do the way we want, but otherwise, everything is now working just fine. doug
**** **** THE ONTARION REPORT Hello and Happy Halloween everyone! The ghosts and goblins were out and about despite the rain that soaked their little bags of candy! At least the weather didn’t win out this year like it has many other years. I bet there was a run on see-through plastic rain gear the last day or so before Halloween. The rain didn’t seem to stop the little ones from making the rounds. I wonder how many razor blade spiked apples the “Meanies” gave out this year. I’m sure we’ll be hearing a few horror stories on the news! With all the rotten things that people do these days I have no doubt there will be some nasty tricks played on the little treat seekers again this year. What happened to Devil’s Night or Doorbell Night as we used to call it when I was a kid? I noted that most of the houses in our neighbourhood left their outside lights on this past Wednesday evening in an effort to ward off the little buggers that roam the streets looking for easy targets! I was vigilant and kept an eye on the street and the field out back to make sure nobody was lurking about with the idea of tagging our fence. I am surprised indeed that nobody has made an effort to graffiti it with those handy spray cans! We’ve been here for 15 years now and only once did I find some totally illegible markings in black spray paint on one section of the fence. I made short work of removing this poor effort at graffiti with my handy dandy pressure washer. Two minutes and the fence was just like it never happened. I guess, at least this year, the graffiti artists figured the paint would only run in the rain anyway so it wasn’t worth the effort. No doubt there were a few bus shelters that had shattered panes of glass early Thursday morning. They seem to be the easy target at least around this area anyway! I’ll be watching the news this weekend for pranks played! With a few days of sunshine this past week, I managed to pack all of the summer outdoor furniture in the shed for the winter. I cleaned up the lawn mower and Adam helped me take the snow blower to be serviced in Waterloo with his truck. I guess it’ll be a while before I get a call telling me that it’s ready to go. The shop that I dropped it off at had at least 26 machines ahead of me waiting to be serviced. I say this because the tag the lady tied on my blower had a big #27 on it and she chuckled when I asked when they’d have it ready for pickup. I guess that meant I’ll just have to be patient! Despite all the cold temps and strong winds, we’ve still got plenty of leaves on our trees out front. I figured they’d be bare by now but they’re hanging in there! Oh well, maybe it’ll snow the same evening the last of the leaves fall and I won’t have to rake or use my leaf blower after all. I do think I’ve cut the grass for the last time this year but like I’ve said before “Never say Never”! Well, I hope you all had a fun Halloween or at least a nice weekend! That’s it for this week folks! 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> Instead of bagging your leaves this year, try burning them along the curbside and make your neighbourhood smell like most of them did each fall back in the 50’s and 60’s! That is one of my favourite memories from when I was a kid, the smell of burning leaves and guess what, nobody complained about it either! ****
Have a good one.. the doug http://www.thedougsite.net The Fine Print! The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such. |