The
Squamidian Report – Feb. 10 / 24
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Issue
#1133
Including:
The
Ontarion
Nova
Scotia
Sus
Russ
Doug
****
The
Ontarion
Hello
everyone
Here’s
another
trip back in time? I keep thinking of my high school
days and
all the great times we had as teenagers! In grade nine i
got started
on a bad habit by a friend named Joe Doczi! We were
instant friends
and had a great time together. We discovered we were
both roller
skaters so we formed a club with a few other friends
that scared. We
decided to call our club THE TORNADOS!
Our
jackets
were purple coloured with a roller skate in the middle
of the
tornado crest on the backs that was designed by Joe! We
were so proud
of those jackets that we even wore them to school! At
that time there
was a dress code at KCI and a vice principal by the name
of Ross
Dunford! One day he called Joe and I into his office and
accused us
of forming a gang of all things! We told him that we
were not a gang
but a skating club and just having fun! He was really a
nasty man at
the time and demanded we stop wearing the jackets to
school! Of
course we decided to hell with him and wore them anyway!
We I guess
we compromised and would take them off before we entered
the school
and would carry them in to school and hung them in our
lockers! All
the kids thought they were cool and that we caved in to
“THE BROW”
which I guess we did but they weren’t facing of “THE
BROW”! We
called Mr Dunford “THE BROW” because he had the thickest
black
eye brows you’ve ever seen! Eventually the whole school
knew him by
that Monicer and the mere mention of his nickname name
struck terror
into the minds of the other students!
One
time
there was a set of twins by the names of Ron and Ray
Kmart and
they were friends of ours too! That day Ray and I were
fooling around
and play wrestling on the balcony above the girls gym
and “THE
BROW” walked by and yelled at us “you two into my office
NOW”!
So we followed him to his office! He accused us of
causing a ruckus
and told us we were suspended for three days and we’d
better not
miss any home work and to show the work to him when we
returned to
school after the tree days! While yelling at us, he
stood face to
face with each of us and when he was doing so with Ron,
Ron waved his
hand back and forth between them and said “JESUS CHRIST,
BRUSH-YOUR
TEETH!”
Well
you’ve
never seen anybody so angry as “THE BROW” after that
remark! He in turned, yelled a Ray that he just earned
himself
another week of detentions after class each day right in
Mr Dunford’s
office that of course was the worst place to have to
work off a
detention and I was just glad that it was not that said
what Ray had
said! Of course we both laughed like crazy when Ray made
that remark
and that really pissed “THE BROW” off! Soon the whole
school
heard about Ray’s brave deed and he became the hero of
the student
body!
That.
Was
just one episode during my grade nine year but, it will
never be
forgotten, at least by me and I’m sure Ray would also
remember it
as well! What “Rebbels we were back then!
That
was
only grade nine but eventually years passed and after
graduation
from KCI another friend of mine married “M Dunford’s”
daughter
and I was invited to their wedding! The reception was
held at a
curling club called The Granite Club! Of course “Mr
Dunford was
there and he actually shook my hand and mentioned the
incident with
Ray and we actually had a good laugh about it! As it
turned out he
was a very nice man that I got to know that evening and
we met on
many occasions again over the following years through my
friend Larry
and Mr Dunford’s daughter Marg! As it turned out, Ross
was actually
a decent guy once we got to know him out of school! Just
shows that
you can’t judge a book by its cover! Ross is gone now
and left me
and I’m sure many others with colourful memories of our
days at
KCI!
That’s
about
all I have for this week!
Please
take
care and thanks for tuning in this week again!
I’ll
look
forward to talking to you again one week from now!
Goodbye
and
good health my readers!
Greg
****
Nova
Scotia
Sus
It's
Thursday
the 8th of Feb. and my first day back to work after our
major snow storm from last Friday evening to Tuesday.
High winds
blew night and day creating huge drifts. Both our
entrances kept
blocking with snow as we kept digging out hourly.
Luckily our doors
open in so the shoveling could be done although throwing
the snow
was getting harder over high banks. We now have narrow
paths and
tunnels to each door. It's darker in the house since the
windows are
all covered with snow. Quite a challenge but grateful
the power
did not go out and the satellite dish still worked with
a bit of
brushing off. My biggest challenge was that I ran out of
chicken
food and no way to get more. So we made lots of pop corn
and table
scraps from all three of our houses here to get us
through. I even
cooked noodles for them. They didn't suffer. Getting
back and
forth to the coop was a challenge but nature created a
nice drift
with almost bare ground showing around our shed.
Zane
and
Dave started clearing the driveway on Tuesday with his
plow
truck and our tractor when the winds finally died. It
was hard going
and both got stuck at different times luckily able to
help each
other out. Finally we were all cleared but the road was
not. So we
are not going anywhere soon.
The
big
plows started making a one way road path in case of
emergencies. That was a help but dangerous if you met
anyone so we stayed put.
Sus
****
From
Russ
Oatmeal
porridge
and woolly caterpillars
"We're
going
to get it sooner or later", my dad used to say about
winter. So far this winter I've had the snow (slush)
plowed only
twice, and my good neighbor has shoveled snow from my
ramps and deck
but twice also. I have a feeling Old man Winter is
lurking just
around the corner, waiting for the early spring that
Wiarton Willy
has predicted.
This
"early
spring weather" is both good news and bad - good
because of using less heating fuel, not wearing-out our
long johns,
and preserving our winter boots - bad because the trees
are coming
back to life - they are tapping Maple-sugar trees in
February
(normally in March). The "soft fruit" trees are
beginning
to bud, and if they get hit with a hard frost (and
likely will) there
will be no fruit!
Some
areas
in South Western Ontario will no doubt suffer drought
conditions, as there is no snow covering the ground and
there was no
rain to speak-of last Fall. Lake Huron keeps getting
lower, and lower
as it evaporates - no ice anywhere now!
Last
Sunday
I saw a 'live' woolly caterpillar beside some sprouting
Daffodils in my garden! My son said he saw a Robbin in
Kincardine
(but I think it must have been one that remained here
over winter,
and not a returned bird). The lawns in my area have
remained green
all season - likely to see my neighbor running his
riding mower soon.
There is no frost in the ground so that migrating
Robbins will not
starve. Love to be a Robbin, until mealtime.
Last
fall
I stocked-up on Kellogg's oatmeal as it is a staple for
the
long, cold, winter months ahead - to date I've not made
oatmeal
porridge! Cold cereal suites me just fine. Let's hope
I'm not eating
hot oatmeal porridge in April and May? How do you take
your porridge?
I put a little butter, salt and pepper on mine. You say
you don't eat
oatmeal porridge? What in the world is wrong with you??
I'm
off
for a ride on my 3-wheeler upon the bone-dry roads when
the temp
reaches double digits this afternoon!
Uncle
Russ.
****
From
Me
How’s
it
going…..eh?
Firstly,
an
eye update: From what I can tell it is not normal to
feel the
procedure happening the way I did during the first eye
surgery, so
the other eye’s procedure should not be near as
uncomfortable. As
for the ‘new’ eye, its coming along very nicely. I can
see
through it way better than I ever could before. The only
issue right
now is that the ‘new’ eye (meaning the one that has had
the
cataract surgery) no longer needs corrective lenses but
the old eye
still does. So, I can either wear my glasses so my old
eye can see,
or not wear them so my new eye can see. The old eye is
the dominant
one so its actually easier to still wear my glasses. The
solution is to simply pop the lens out to the glasses.
The good thing
is that the old eye get done on the 22nd and
after that
both will be happy.
*
Back
in
early January I replaced both mine and Sue’s computers.
Both
units were very old, old to the point where they would
no longer do
security updates, old to the point where they could no
longer access
secure web sites such as on-line banking etc. They both
ran just fine
but we needed units running the latest systems in order
to be able to
do the things we needed to do. Both our computers were
Mac mini’s
and both were replaced with the new, much more capable
and powerful
Mac mini’s. (Face it, us guys do like ‘more power’).
Transferring all our data from old to new was fairly
easy, with a few
glitches along the way but nothing too bad. However, the
new machines
are both running the latest Mac O/S, Sonoma 14.2.1 which
is a
different architecture than the old Intel based chip
sets. So, some
of the programs I had been running have not yet been
updated to run
on the Mac silicon chipsets. That not a problem but it
is a nuisance.
For instance, when each Squamidian is finished, I used
an HTML
editing program to convert said issue into Web format
for uploading
to my web site. I can’t do that on my new system because
I can’t
find an appropriate HTML editor app that works on the
new O/S. My
clumsy workaround was to simply pop the document file
onto a USB
stick, then plug my monitor into the old Mac mini and
fire it back
up, copy the document onto the old computer and process
it there.
That worked but it was awkward.
To
that
end I started pestering Ryan for ideas and help in
somehow
setting up my computers to I could work on my new one
and access the
old one through the new one, networking so to speak. He
was of course
more than willing to help but is also away a lot and not
available
much to set up the two systems so they could talk to
each other. I
started mucking around, reading various help pages and
eventually got
to the point where I could get the new Mac’s to ‘see’
the old
Mac, and get the old Mac to agree to being seen. Good
first step even
if it did take me a week to do. Then, I finally figured
out how to do
‘screen sharing’ on the old system which lets the new
system
‘see’ the screen of the old system (whether or not the
old
system’s monitor was turned on meaning I didn’t need to
connect a
monitor to it). With file sharing also permitted, I
could then run
the old system through my new system. Very cool, I could
have both
‘screens’ showing on my monitor and could do anything on
either
system using one keyboard and one mouse. That means I
can now drag my
documents or whatever from one Mac to the other, and do
whatever I
need to do. Very cool. I shyly admit I’m quite proud of
myself. One
little but meaningless issue is that I can’t seem to
copy and paste
between them, I must ‘drag and drop’ each file using the
mouse,
which is actually a ‘file transfer’ procedure. Not a
problem,
just something I had to figure out. Pretty cool, eh?
Doug
****
Have
a
Good One
The
Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property
of the persons writing them and should be respected as
such.
****
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