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March 3, 2011 8:58 PM AKA Make–Myself–Scarce–Night Kristi's hosting her Book Club this evening, so I am merrily puttering around in the basement. eBay and Kijiji continue to be my de-cluttering friends as more and more stuff finds it's way out of here. Hopefully by the end of tonight I've got a box of baby stuff to list, a computer, and perhaps some misc computer parts. A lot of my Commodore 64 stuff has already been sold and gone, and the more I clear out, the more happy I feel about it. I've even created quite the recycle stack, with several loads of stuff already passed on to be recycled. Liberation! The other day I was at the Glenmore Inn for an all-day training class on fall prevention, and what an eye-opener that was! Did you know that a 220lb person free falling a mere 6 feet using a steel lanyard can generate over 7,000 pounds of force!? The course was very informational and interesting – something I wish I'd had years ago, particularly when my daily work involved working at heights! Truth be told I rarely climb higher than four feet anymore but I still get the occasional 60 foot ladder climb up a light pole at the airport to keep my adrenaline levels topped up.  One of my colleagues hanging in a harness - part of the fall prevention course. At lunch time I went across the street to an Indian Buffet and what a meal that was! Sefron Rice, Butter Chicken, Chick Peas, Vin daloo: Spelled wrong but tasted oooh so good! The overheard conversations were equally satisfying, behind me I had two older men discussing the Catholic Church, while a threesome to my immediate left appeared to be a boss and two employees of some distributor or wholesale company talking about sales and employees. One person came up frequently in their discussion, a lady named Tan-something. Taniah? Tanner? It's fading fast. A statement made by one of the church-churning table caught my ear. One fellow said to the other, "What concerns me about Catholosism most is a that often a greater emphasis is placed on tradition than on scripture." That's my paraphrase. Interesting dinner conversation. March 5, 2011 11:55 AM  This entry has a day break within it. Alright, so a few more bins of stuff to the recycler... I got rid of an old CRT monitor that was perfectly fine but I'll likely never use again. I've got LCD monitors with Composite inputs now, so it doesn't make sense to keep bulky old boxes like that. I dumped two stereos in various states of disrepair, a couple of nice laptop bags that have been collecting dust for the last decade, a whole whack of Christmas lights, my very first Pentium class computer, a PII-266, and no doubt some other odds and sods. That computer, by the way, was the first computer I owned which was capable of decoding an mp3 in real time. Before that, I had to uncompress the mp3 to a wav file on my 486 DX2/66 and play the wav file, a process that could take up to 45 minutes per song! Did you know that the very first mp3 I ever listened to was Aerosmith - I Don't Want To Miss a Thing. I believe the second was Sarah McLaughlan - Building a Mystery. Anyway, there I go digressing again. The basement is getting definitely getting clearer. Still not hits on my big array. I'm not sure what I had expected, but we'll see if anything comes of the weekend. In the mean time, I saw an interesting news article the other day, a good eye opener for anyone who posts pictures online in one form or another. The sum of the report was that certain cameras geo-tag the pictures they take, particularly cell phone cameras, and this information is then easily accessible by anyone who can see the picture. What is geo-tagging? Specifically, it is attaching information obtained by a GPS device incorporated into the camera which gives the exact location the camera was at the time the image was taken. What does this mean? By using this information in the pictures you post on your Facebook or Twitter or Cubeinc web page, predators can find out where your kids live, go to daycare / school, where their friends live, - even which room in the house is theirs! Now, subsequent reports seem to indicate that a lot of the picture posting web pages out there strip this information before displaying your pictures, making the threat moot. You can also turn off geo-tagging on your cameras in most cases. Something to be aware of. On a completely different note, I've been taking a new route to and from work lately, and I must admit I find the new drive unusually inspiring. There is a certain beauty in the prairies, as I've tried to capture in some of these pictures. Take a look - you may just get inspired as well. (Or you might just feel cold!)  Ever wonder where clouds come from? I think I found the cloud factory!    To some, a frozen wasteland. To me, thought–provoking and energizing.  My work truck rolled a set of sevens the other day. I think I have Rusty's 77777 odometer picture somewhere on here too.  A different kind of water balloon.  I don't know if it's just because I'm a guy or what, but it seems I just can't make the bed sheets go flat!  She thought it was very funny, but I went to work that day with one loose sock! You could fill it with Christmas presents!  Ah the pretty colors of data communication hardware...  When I saw this junction box, the first thing I thought was that it kind of looked like the bottom of a space ship, with fire shooting out of two big jet engines. Can you see it?  I was VERY sleepy this morning, in fact – I could hardly get my eyes to open. I awoke to small, cold hands grasping my prominent facial features and flashes of lightning and laughter. No better way to wake up though. I love my family.  March 29, 2011 11:11 PM Tea A Gentleman's Drink I love tea. I don't know if it's the sweet taste or that it reminds me of my father, but as I sit here sipping a cup of English Breakfast and tea-dipped ginger snaps, I couldn't think of a better opening line for tonight's entry. Most of what I want to share today is picture-based, but it wouldn't hurt to have yourself a cup of tea while reading.   First off - where's spring? We're a day or two away from April and still having snow fall? I did take a neat picture of some very interesting frost that had formed on my truck's antenna the other morning. Despite the common complaints about the weather, I find it very beautiful despite the chilliness.  This was shot this morning. The picture really doesn't do the scene justice - it was amazing to behold, especially through sleepy eyes.               We had parent - teacher interviews last week, or rather student-lead conferences.  I could (and should) probably write up a whole rant about technology in the schools. When we went to do our conference, both the girls' classrooms were equipped with smart boards. But I found myself wondering - do they really help the students learn? For example, a math problem was displayed on the screen as you can see above. However, instead of making the problem simpler or more intuitive to solve, it seemed like the technology actually made it more difficult to solve the problem. Now in all fairness, I don't know how the boards are used in an actual classroom setting, so maybe she was just taking the opportunity to play on it and move the pieces around because it's fun. Nevertheless, I am reminded of an old man who once said of his new computer - That's the most expensive deck of cards I've ever bought! BACK to Journal Index |