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Issue #1036
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From Russ

The Ontarion

Hi All,

While rummaging through some of my music stuff, I came across an interesting item. Way way way back, like 50 years ago, in 1972, I had an idea. I probably had some ideas before then and assumably have had a few since then but I still have the results that particular idea. And believe it or not, its something that I still find useful once in a while. Back in those days I wanted to come up with some way of making it easier to transpose music chords. For the most part I just do it in my head, on the fly as needed these days but back then I was still struggling with some transposes, like if a song were in ‘E’ but I wanted to play it in ‘C’ or some such thing. The main chords were never a problem but some of the outlying chords could be, and still occasionally can be. I wanted to come up with something similar to a slide rule (remember those things?) that could show which new chord would replace a given old chord. So, back in 1972 I invented my handy-dandy Chord Transposer.

What I came up with was two disks, and outer and an inner. I used red for the colour of the outer circle as it would represent the chords I did not want to play, as in ‘stop’. I used green for the inner disk as it would represent the chords I did want to play, as in ‘go’. I then arranged the 7 major chords around the disks, with the flats in between and yes, I accounted for the E-F and the B-C steps. Minors and sevenths etc could simply be assumed. And it made it so easy. Just line up the name of the key the music is in, with the name of the key you want to play the music in, and all the chords within your music become lined up with the chords of the original. It works that simple. Going back to the example of a song in ‘E’ that I want to play in ‘C’, we line those two up. Where the original shows a ‘B’for that assumed ‘B7’, a ‘G’ lines up on the green disk and the ‘7^th’ is assumed. And so on. This little gizmo was something I could carry in my guitar case and use as needed. These days there are web sites where you copy your sheet music in, tell it what key you want, and it spits out the transposed music. There could very well be apps that do it too, I’ve never checked. I do know that you end up learning to transpose on the fly but it worked back then, it still works now, and after 50 years I’ve never had to change it’s batteries, it’s cordless (pardon the pun) has zero USP ports and never needs upgrading. Oh, I know I made this thing in 1972 because I wrote the date and my name on the back and they are still there, a bit faded but still there.

I mentioned the slide rule up above, or slide ruler if you prefer. They were refereed to both ways. Even further back in time, when I was in grade 12, we had to learn to use those rather ingenious things which were basically analog computers. At the end of the school year we had to endure the week of exams and one of the exams for us was a slide rule exam. Being in the Tech stream, it was part of our course and had to be learned. I personally liked them and could use them with no problem at all but some of the guys in the class didn’t do so well with them. Anyway, we all turned up for our slide rule exam, walked into the assigned class room and got out our rules. The attending teacher took one look at our slide rules and began to confiscate them, telling us that we could not use our slide rules as that would be cheating. We tried to argue with him but to no avail. We pointed out that the exam was intended for slide rules, it was not a normal math test, but to no avail. Eventually the doggie-do-do hit the fan and the whole class simply got up and walked out, taking our slide rules with us. In anger, the teacher told us that he would make sure that we would all fail our year, and that this would be on our ‘permanent records’, a pathetic meaningless treat that we had all heard many times. A few days later, when things settled down and it became apparent that the teacher had been in the wrong, we were all told we could re-do that exam at some later date or be given a basic minimum pass mark. We all took the pass as we all had summer jobs etc and could not or would not take the time to come back after being treated the way we had been. Back in those day, boys in the 4-yr Tech programs were not trusted, not treated very well, and basically looked down upon by the school system, including the teacher that had assumed we were trying to cheat. Most of the guys in that class went on to very good lives working in the ‘trades’, myself included.

doug

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From Russ

"In like a Lamb - out like a Lion" that's how it went this March. 

"Spring forward - Fall back" that's how it went yesterday when Old man Winter gave us one last 'wallop'! The wind was gusting up to 80 clicks when we stepped out of Sobey's in Kincardine with our carts full of groceries intending to load the stuff into Bettie's truck parked only a few steps from the door. Suddenly a blast of wind carrying ice pellets and freezing rain nearly knocked us to the ground!! The ice pellets stung our faces, while slush packed our eyes and ears - we couldn't see - we couldn't hear - retreating to the store was not an option - we were both soaked. Bettie loaded her wet groceries, then mine, as I took refuge in the cab of her truck. Coward!

"WHEEOO!!" screamed Bettie as she climbed inside - looking like a drowned Rat! "TIMMEY'S!" was her breathless word. "I have to go in to dry off - and have a hot coffee"! No argument from me! We were both wet and cold, and shelter was just steps away. Once inside, Bettie went into the little girl's room where she attempted to dry-off "No damned paper towels!" she complained as she returned to our table - still looking like a drowned rodent. Typical female - she carries 'everything' in her purse - even a towel!! While she tried hard to dry her wet, red hair, I removed what I could, and still remained decent.

We must have sat there for over an hour drying off, while drinking coffee and eating muffins - 'yummy!'. Not one drop of rain fell while we were in shelter, but the wind was still howling angry! An employee had scraped the ice from the walks around the building, but not from the nearby 'Handy-capped Parking'. Walking was treacherous - ice everywhere - Bettie's truck was 'candy-coated' with the stuff!

"Careful, Pop" she cautioned, while opening the passenger side door for me (she's the best!), then, she walked around to her side - out-of sight, and out-of sound due to the roaring wind! The wind caught my door and it slammed shut - I grabbed the ice-coated handle, and began to pull the car door open toward me when my feet slipped-out from under me, and I landed heavily upon my back!!

"I'm down Bettie - I'm down!" I cried, but the wind drowned-out my voice. I'm down! Can't get up!She still didn't hear me, but had come around to my side as my door was open and I wasn't inside. There I was, on my back - all four feet in the air, struggling like an up-turned snapping turtle - and just as angry! With nothing to grab onto that wasn't coated with ice, I was helpless & hopeless - if it weren't for her help I'd still be lying there on my back in the Handy-capped parking at Tim Horton's.

Russ

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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!

Well, today felt like Spring had sprung but it only lasted the one day (Thursday) and we’re back into the rain and cold windy weather. I took a walk around our block in the warm sunshine and actually worked up a bit of a sweat in the half hour it took to make it all the way around the block and home again. The temperature when I started the walk was +16 on our weather station that monitors the temp out behind the house but by the time I got home it had dropped to +10c. I guess it’s a little early in the spring to expect the temps to stay at a nice warm level. After all, we’ve had snow in the month of May in other years so maybe I’m asking too much of Mother Nature this year! During my walk I was thinking of going home and preparing the MGB for a drive but once I realized the warmth would be short lived I changed my mind! We usually don’t bring the MG out until around the 24th of May so why would it be any different this year? LOL! Along with bringing the MG out of storage, comes the opening of the pond out back and other gardening chores! Guess I might as well not get my hopes up for a top down drive quite yet! I’ve seen a few motorcycles out and about already but no convertibles so far.

Under the heading of “What is this world coming to?” most of the news reports are indeed depressing these days! There was a video on the news showing a person on a bicycle towing a small trailer behind that contained the body of a chopped up woman wrapped in a plastic garbage bag. This took place just the other day and was footage that the Toronto Police service released to the public after a woman was reported missing. They subsequently located the bag containing her body in the bush area of a local park in downtown Toronto today. They are currently looking for the woman’s son to ask him a few questions regarding her disappearance! Of course this makes one wonder if they suspect he might have something to do with her death! Toronto isn’t the only city with crimes happening these days. Also on the local news here in KW, there was a report of a man in his late 20’s or early 30’s that’s been harassing people in the area of the two Universities in Waterloo. He’s not only approaching women but also a couple of young men have reported the man of the same description bothering them as they walked near the University. He’s making comments and asking them if they would like a ride home in his car! The police are hoping to catch this pervert before any harm comes to his intended victims. One of the women stated that after she had been approached by this man in his car, the following day she saw the same man watching her through the window of her regular gymnasium as she worked out. This is of course concerning to both her and the Police since it shows that this man is following her or as they say stalking her! One other news item of note was the one of the arrest of the man who instigated the theft of $8,000,000.00 worth of Maple Syrup from a trucking depot in Quebec last year. They finally caught and arrested him and he’s been assessed a fine of 8 million by the court. He has now lodged a complaint with the supreme court of Canada that he feels the fine is too high and petitioned the court to have the fine reduced. However the court denied his request and has decided that the fine should remain at that amount! I guess he’ll be working for the rest of his life once he’s out of prison to pay that debt! I’m sure the company that lost the maple syrup won’t expect to recoup much of their losses from that individual, unless of course the guy wins the Lottery or inherits a sizable fortune!

On a personal note, I finally picked up my new glasses early in the week and I can now see and read the subtitles that appear on the TV during many of the movies we watch in the evenings. I sit about 12’ back from the TV and most of the printing on the screen looked fuzzy to me with my previous glasses! I had been putting up with that fuzzy vision for about a year now and finally decided to do something about it. The Ophthalmologist (eye surgeon) that is monitoring my eyesight told me about 8 months ago that I have some small veins in my eyes that have bled and could cause a loss of vision if not corrected with a laser. He surgically corrected that problem and then discovered that I have two cataracts developing in both my right and my left eyes. The one in my right eye is worse than the left. He told me when I visited for an update last week that my vision will be very much corrected after he surgically corrects the cataracts and that I most likely won’t need my glasses once I’ve had the surgery. However, he can’t perform the surgery to correct the cataracts for about another year so I figured, why wait for that when I can make due with corrective glasses in the meantime? It was a costly item to get the glasses but it’s worth it to have better vision with the glasses while waiting for the surgery! Either half the people in the Region have the same problem I have or there just aren’t enough surgeons in this profession to handle the patient load! Either way, there’s a terrible backlog on the waiting list so I made the only choice worthwhile under the circumstances! At least I can read the print on the computer well enough without glasses at all so I can keep on writing The Ontarion each week!

That’s about it for this week folks!

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?

Did you happen to change the batteries in your smoke detectors this spring? If not, why not?

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Have A Good One
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The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.