The
Squamidian Report – Sept. 14 / 13
Issue #590
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Funny how we all think of summer as ending on Labour Day. I guess that’s because everyone’s world changes that weekend, back to school, back to work and so on. Even after being out of school for 45 or 50 years that ingrained, hard programmed feeling still lingers that summer is over because school is back in. But the weather doesn’t necessarily pay any attention to what people are doing. It does not, all of a sudden, start to drop the temperature. In fact, on the west coast it has been warmer this past week than it was during the middle of summer. But, autumn is just around the corner. Fall can be great, or it can be the pits. Either way we will just have to take what we get and make the best of it.
I took ‘The Wife’ to the airport bright and early Wednesday morning. Well, actually it was dark and early. She headed back to visit her family. The pre-dawn sky was incredible. The winter constellations are all visible, Jupiter was blazingly bright and the Milky Way sprawled from horizon to horizon. Poor Willow had seen ‘The Wife’s’ suitcase being packed and went into depressed mode. She hates when she see’s suitcases because that means someone is leaving. She also hates early morning drives to the airport because it means someone is leaving, and when she puts the two clues together, it really means someone is leaving. Once she figures out who, she sticks like glue to the other one, in this case me. Anyway, there is construction in down-town Vancouver and on the Granville St bridge. Our most direct route to the airport is to go right through the core of the down-town. I was advised by several of my friend who live in Vancouver to avoid doing that and perhaps either cut off through Stanley Park and follow the shoreline to the Burrard St bridge, or take the Second Narrows and follow Boundary all the way down to the Fraser and then cut back over toward the airport. I’ve taken that route home in the past when there has been traffic problems in the down-town. The solution was actually quite easy, we simply left an hour earlier than we would have, which was why it was still dark, and avoided any traffic problems at all. We cruised right through the city barely having to slow down at all. She was at the airport by 6:45am for her 9am flight. It gave her an extra hour to wait but that can be a good thing, no stress, not rush and lots of time to relax with a coffee or just wander around looking at stuff. I was still just ahead of the morning rush as I headed for home. Just ahead by a minute or two because the traffic reports were starting to indicate busy streets and hold-ups by the time I crossed back over the Lion’s Gate. From there is was smooth easy sailing back up the Sea to Sky. Now I’ve got the house to myself for the next 3 weeks, I’ll have to make good use of that.
This Squamidian won’t look different to you but it does to me. My trusty old computer monitor died and I had no choice but to replace it with a new one. Any of you with good memories will remember that during our first winter living here, I had built a computer system and had purchased a nice LCD monitor to go with it. It was that monitor, now well over 10 years old, that crapped out and bit the dust. I’ve been using it with my Mac Mini since I made the switch to Mac. So, I can’t complain. It lasted several years longer than the one I had bought for ‘The Wife’s’ computer. It was from the era when computer screens were almost square and even though it was a 19 inch, there was not near as much screen area as the newer, wide screen ones of the same ‘size’ have. However, this new one isn’t a 19 inch, it’s a 24 inch LCD and yet cost quite a bit less than what I paid for that old one. Now I can have multiple windows open and actually see them at the same time. Cool.
The native resolution for the new monitor makes everything a little bit smaller than on the old one, but everything is much crisper and cleaner looking so that’s not a problem. Also, the factory set brightness was so bright I had to adjust it way down, it was like looking into a search light. It was easy to make the necessary small adjustments and now all is good. Interesting, the monitor came with instructions for installing it to a Windows type computer, and included a CD with the necessary installation files and drivers. As always, Windows is not truly ‘plug and play’. However, I’m using it on an Mac and the only instructions included and / or needed were, “plug it in” to your computer. That simple, the Mac takes care of everything else instantly. The way it should be.
doug
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ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Once again we meet
on the pages of the Squamidian on a lovely Saturday morning for a chat! With
all the wild weather that’s been happening around Canada and the USA over the
past couple of years I’m surprised we don’t have a foot of snow already! Yikes!
What a horrible thought that is and it even gave me the shivers just to think
of it! Boulder Colorado is being washed away down the mountain side just as the
floods washed Calgary Alberta down stream a few miles a couple of months ago
and the rain just seems to keep on a comin’! Other
parts of Canada have been subjected to tornados and severe thunderstorms as
well but as northerners we tend to snap back into shape shortly after we get
hit. I guess it’s just the built in toughness of living in “The Great White
North”! Only in Canada can you see record setting high temperatures one
September day and record setting lows the next! Makes one wonder what clothing
to set out to wear tomorrow! LOL! Maybe our dogs are smarter than we are when
they wear a fur coat all year round! Who knows?
Once again we had a
Friday the 13th and Port Dover was overrun with motorcycles as
usual. With my bike up on stands and secured for the rest of the year in the
garage, only my thoughts were in Port Dover yesterday! It’s always fun to
attend that gathering and look at all the different and custom bikes that show
up but when you don’t have your ride ready on the day of the event it’d be a
bummer to have to show up in Dover on 4 wheels instead! SO, just decided not to
bother going down to the Port this time. Maybe if we hit it right next year
Adam and I will attend the event again! Pretty much the same old same old
anyway but always fun to walk the streets for the day. The times we’ve been
down to bike day it’s been excessively hot and down right uncomfortable but still
interesting to see how many bikes show up.
Speaking of cycles,
I read an article the other day about re-cycling in the Region of Waterloo that
caught my attention. It stated that glass items that are placed by taxpayers in
the blue boxes are not recycled here in the region. In fact over the past few
years the region has not been able to find anyone that will take the glass and
recycle it. Let alone pay the region for the glass we send them. The Region has
been paying other areas to take our glass off our hands. All this to the tune
of more than two million dollars a year in costs to we taxpayers! What a stupid
assed way of running a recycling program! The article said that the Region
crushes some of the glass and uses it to mix with pavement for the roads in the
landfill site on Erb St W but pays others to take the
rest of the glass off our hands! What a dumb assed administration we have
running our recycle program! I’m not so sure the recycling program here in
Waterloo Region isn’t being run by the Liberal Govt
that ruins (oops) I mean “runs” the rest of this province! Paying someone to
take glass off our hands is akin to paying windmill generator owners NOT to
produce hydro for our power grid! What the hell is that all about? That’s
another situation that galls my rear end! If you are producing a product for a
customer you should get paid for the product you provide. If you do not produce
said product for that customer there’s no way in hell that customer should pay
you for not producing that product! This situation is once again akin to the
Bruce Nuclear Plant problem I talked about a couple of months ago in the Ontarion. They said on the news last night that Ontario
Hydro is paying windmill owners the same fees they normally receive for
producing and supplying hydro to the Ontario Grid to NOT run their windmills
while the grid is at full capacity! That means that whether or not the windmill
owners produce, they still get paid! I say, “What the hell!” I’m not producing
any power for the Ontario Grid, where’s my cheque
from the Liberal Gov’t for sitting on my behind
watching a static windmill? This situation reminds me of the Liberals paying
the foreign owners of Bruce Nuclear $1,000,000.00 per week per reactor that
they have shut down because the grid is at full capacity! I’d say, “No consume,
no pay!” it’s the basic law of supply and demand. If there is no demand for the
product, there is no payment required to the supplier! On the other hand, if
the government can afford to pay for non-production of power, why can’t they
give the consumers of this province a rebate on the power we do consume? It
stands to reason that that $1,000,000.00 per week per shut down reactor would
be better spent divided equally among the taxpayers of this province than sent
in a huge lump to a foreign conglomerate for doing nothing! At least we’d be
getting some of “our” own money back in our pockets!
I know I’ve gotten off on a bit
of a tangent here but if no one speaks up, how will anyone hear?
Enough said for this
week!
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>
Two Meaning Words:
Vulnerable (vul-ne-ra-bel)
Adj. Female …. Fully
opening up one’s self emotionally to another.
Male …. Playing
football without a cup.
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Have a good one..
the doug
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