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A dog ran across the street dragging his “cord-reel” leash behind him to meet my dog. At first he started sniffing Finnegan but then “it” started barking and growling. By this time the owner had grabbed the reel but didn’t stop the leash unreeling as the dog chased Finnegan around my legs. Before I had a chance to grab that dog’s leash I was burned.

Rather than banning pit bulls I think Ontario should ban irresponsible pit bull owners, reel leashes and owners of dogs who can’t control their pets.

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I had several ½” holes to drill into the brick in my house in order to “sturdy up” and “verticalize” the deck railings with some brackets. It took an hour to go in about ½” with my 3/8” 2-speed drill (a wedding present to me from my best man, btw). I brought out my other drill but it happened to fall off the railing and crack the handle. I considered this an omen: go out and buy yourself a hammer drill. So I did.

It took me about 15 minutes to do the four holes I required with that tool. I should have bought one years ago. For example, it took me most of the day to drill a 5/8” hole through the foundation wall of my previous house to add a new outside hose tap. I was swapping my two drills as one would get too hot to hold. I suspect that with a hammer drill it might have taken 15 minutes, tops.

Duct tape, “the handyman’s secret weapon,” fixed the drill’s handle.

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I really stubbed my toe last night. It was so sore this morning that I was noticeably limping. I basically “hobbled” with the dog. I couldn’t run or jog: more sniffing time for him! Tonight I was able to jog a bit with the dog and even not think of my right, baby toe for a short while. Now there’s a bruise on my toe extending to my foot. Was it broken? I suppose I could tape it to the toe next to it tomorrow and see if that helps.

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Today I did something my father never did for me: I helped my son prepare two second story wood windows at his house in Guelph for painting. We removed the loose and flaking paint and I caulked around the outside and applied a coat of primer to each. It appeared to me that the windows had never been painted since they were installed when the house was new, perhaps a decade or more ago. There were no traces of paint on the plastic slide part of the inner window. Perhaps you can get away with this on the south side of the house—the wood drys out too fast to rot. But they did look terrible with the peeling paint and greyish frames.

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• A clean tie attracts the soup of the day.
• A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
• A free agent is anything but.
• As soon as the stewardess serves the coffee, the airline encounters turbulence.
• Exceptions always outnumber rules.
• Exceptions prove the rule and wreck the budget.
• Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
• For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
• He who hesitates is probably right.
• If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
• If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods.
• If it says “one size fits all,” it doesn’t fit anyone.
• If only one price can be obtained for a quotation, the price will be unreasonable.
• If something is confidential, it will be left in the copier machine.
• Interchangeable parts won’t.
• Life can be only understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
• Love letters, business contracts and money due you always arrive three weeks late, whereas junk mail arrives the day it was sent.
• Never ask the barber if you need a haircut, or a salesman if his is a good price.
• Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
• No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
• No matter which way you go, it’s uphill and against the wind.
• No one is listening until you make a mistake.
• One child is not enough, but two children are far too many.
• People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either of them being made.
• Progress is made on alternative Fridays.
• Quality assurance doesn’t.
• Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.
• The bag that breaks is the one with the eggs.
• The book you spent $20.95 for today will come out in paperback tomorrow.
• The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required on it.
• The hardness of the butter is in direct proportion to the softness of the bread.
• The hidden flaw never remains hidden.
• The ideal resumé will turn up one day after the position is filled.
• The least experienced fisherman always catches the biggest fish.
• The more an item costs, the farther you have to send it for repairs.
• The one item you want is never the one on sale.
• The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.
• The telephone will ring when you are outside the door, fumbling for your keys.
• The tough part of a [IT] Manager’s job is that users don’t really know what they want, but they know for certain what they don’t want.
• To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research
• To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.
• Trust everybody…then cut the cards.
• Two wrongs are only the beginning.
• When reviewing your notes for a test [report], the most important ones will be illegible.
• When there are sufficient funds in the checking account, checks take two weeks to clear. When there are insufficient funds, checks clear overnight.
• When you drop change at a vending machine, the pennies will fall nearby, while all the other coins will roll out of sight.
• You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
• You never want the one you can afford.

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My wife, Finnegan and I had a relaxing vacation at Summer House Park on Miller Lake about a half hour drive from Tobermory. We swam, hiked on the Bruce Trail, read books and magazines. No email, no phones: What bliss for a week. My favourite sign at the “Park:”

No outside radios allowed.

We liked it so much we’ve booked a week for next year.

In other news I have found out that my father, who lives in Vancouver, has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Unfortunately the prognosis for this type of cancer is not good though we will all hope and pray for the best of all possible outcomes.

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…Bruce Peninsula to a “camping cabin” at Summer House Park for a week.

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I hate being indispensable when I’m supposed to be on vacation!

First it was a power outage and then a drastic change in IP address from the infamous sympatico.ca prevented data getting through for a few days while I was canoing in Algonquin Park. I spent a day fixing this.

Then, coincidently, bad blocks appeared on the root partition of my server and it wouldn’t boot after yet another local power outage. So we purchased to new brand new hard drives. One of them I put in the old server and made the old disk a “slave.” Then I used the FreeBSD miniinst CD to install the OS on the new disk. Then I could rsync all of /usr from the old to the new drive. I also rsync'd /var/log, too. Finally I had to tweak the /etc files. Fortunately I had a backup copy as / was hosed on the old drive. The new and improved server worked fine once it was re-installed in the so-called DMZ at work. Thus ended the second day.

Today I “constructed” a backup server with that other new hard drive installed in another surplus office computer. This was somewhat slower install because, after I had installed the OS from the miniinst CD I had to bring over the rsync executable from the other server. Then I rsync'd /usr and /var/log over the network. As left this backup server will mirror the original server so that, hopefully, I’ll be able to swap if the original server dies. So endeth the third day.

I “pretended” I was on vacation by walking the dog first, picking up a coffee on the way, and coming in to work later wearing shorts and sandals. Oh well, this means three more vacation days later on.

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We paddled some and portaged about 8.4 km altogether in 5 days. I recall only one night where I slept “in” my sleeping bag. Thank goodness the lakes are so close by—we needed to swim a lot to keep cool.

Then my niece, the youngest daughter of my brother in Victoria, came to visit. Though she is 14 years old we felt like we had a kid again. Finnegan liked her because she ran and played a lot with the dog.

This morning I got up at 6 to take her to the airport. Then I spent today’s vacation day at work fixing a couple of problems with my “automatic” system.