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Once I switched from slip-on boots to my walking shoes, the tops of my feet got sore again with the occasional shooting pains in the night. I finally looked up my problem on the Internet and found, duh!, that my shoes were probably laced too tight. I was directed to Shoe Lacing Methods and today I tried a variation of bow tie lacing. So far so good though it does take a couple of days for the pain to go away.

Now I know why the safety toe shoes at work don’t bother me: the two side flaps meet over the tongue when the shoes lace up making a “roof” over my foot; whereas, with my walking shoes the side flaps don’t cover the tongue so that the laces go over the tongue and press down on the top of my feet. With the “bow tie” lacing, hopefully, I can move that pressure away.

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My immediate boss said a $500k contract is on the verge of being signed and the major resource (person) to work on it is me.

His boss, our manager, says I’m currently not meeting my(?) billability target. So, do I a) beat the bushes for some billable work and say I’m not available for the big contract b) send him that quote from Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind c) roll my eyes and say “whatever” d) ask him if that was a rhetorical email e) retire and say enough of this nonsense or f) none of the above?

(?) - I was handed a sheet of paper with my billability percentage target. That is a decree from on high.

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It must have been a good vacation— I have been back at work for three days and I want another one.

Though I did take a picture or two of the leaning tower of Pisa. How about one from the top of that bell tower?

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Once again MS Word gets me very discouraged. Why can’t it handle section, page, and appendix numbering properly? Why can’t it arrange figures or other “floats” nicely? Why do I have to go to websites to find, not solutions, but work arounds?

Memo to self: if a client wants a report in future s/he will get a PDF file. I’ll choose how that PDF is generated. LaTeX is my preference. I look up how to do a particular task, appendix numbering for example, write a macro and, forever after “it just works”. If the client wants MS Word then I charge many $$ extra for the wasted time it takes to do the formatting. WYSIWYG indeed: what I see is what I don’t want MS Word!

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Based on my 2 years of experience owning a male dog I think this is a credo. When he comes a across an unfamiliar object: say a garbage bag of rolled rug ends like today. He sniffed it and then peed on it.

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I went to the open house and met the realtor/owner’s wife. I disclosed my interest in the place and, as there were no other customers at the time, she showed me around and we chatted. They had taken out a couple of walls and put in an addition so its made the place roomier. Very nice. I guess the only thing I contributed to the house was upgrading the attic insulation when there was a government program back in the 1980’s. I should do the same thing at my present house.

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Occasionally, I walk the dog past our old house we sold in 1988 about 2 or 3 km away. It is now for sale and the asking price is 250% more than we sold it for. IMHO, the price is way above the street: a combination of single car-single family homes and semi-detached dwellings. They probably used a summer picture of the back of the house to hide these details. (So, I hid the realtor details ).

I see my variagated euonymous is still growing there and I know the red maple sapling I planted is now a sizeable tree just behind from where the photo was taken. I think I’ll dress up a bit tomorrow and go to the open house.

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Got my picture taken, got 3 colleagues to be guarantor and friends, lined up at the Passport Office on Wednesday. “Did you know your current passport doesn’t expire until 2008?”

Even though I had mentioned getting a passport several times and I looked for it and couldn’t find it — assuming it was expired and shredded. Turns out my wife had “hidden” it for safekeeping. Sure enough, there’s another year and half to go.

Sigh…

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We renovated by: buying a new couch for the living room. (I bought myself a tripod just after Christmas.)

Buying a new TV stand with drawers from IKEA and moving the TV and old couch downstairs.

Getting rid of the old wall unit (bought back in the days of turntables and LPs) and having the piano moved upstairs to my wife’s “studio”, the former family room. (It was about 18 years ago when me and 3 or 4 friends moved the piano down to the basement when we moved in. I think I’m just as strong now; however, I’d like to think I’m much wiser, too, so we hired pros to move it this time.)

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Thank goodness for my brother-in-law: unknowlingly, he gives us some comic relief at Christmas with his choice of gifts. This year a “friend” has started a craft. In my image it actually looks OK. However, we are talking about a glass brick, here. Where are you going to store it for the next year? And where do you put it at Christmas time? Apparently this friend also does a Valentine’s Day version. “Here Honey, have a decorated glass brick.”

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I was appointed Chief Returning Officer for our union in September. On Nov. 30 I supervised my first ballot counting. By the numbers: about 2,800 envelopes verified, 4 ballots, 10 candidates, over 11,000 pieces of paper to sort and count. The group of about 12 to 15 volunteers took about five hours to do sort and count. Many of the volunteers recalled factory and assembly line jobs they had years ago.

I was pleased that the winning candidates' count margins were greater than the margin of error arising from missing ballots (i.e. sometimes not all 4 ballots were returned in an envelope).

During the last week of the election, the candidate emails to me took on a soap opera-like quality with accusations that a newly joined local was being bribed or told how to vote by a union staffer. That union staffer and an incumbent were an item, etc. “Fun” reading and, at least as far as I can tell, all specious information. Again the winning margins were great enough that the losing candidates would have trouble coming up with any justification for recounts or nullifying certain blocks of votes. I had to forward one set of emails to the staffer named and the staff manager. These were personnel problems now not something that the CRO could deal with.

It certainly has been a learning experience for me: I have learned to just provide rulings to election process questions. Trying to be helpful with examples or other types of advice seems to confuse people and then replies get garbled with stuff about the advice rather than the rulings.

I’m looking forward to having many less emails to deal with now.

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I have volunteered to be Chief Returning Officer of our professional employees union. I’m supposed to make impartial rulings on “corner” cases on elections, nominations, etc. not directly covered by the constitution and bylaws. And, of course, I oversee elections to ensure they are free and fair. I could be in for some interesting and busy times in the next few weeks as the principal officer positions of the union are up for election in a month or two.

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I noticed this spider on its web in the bathroom the other day. It must have been busy during the day while I was at work. Or it could have been busy at night but I didn’t notice it that morning. It’s a good thing this spider was in the main bathroom. My wife would have had a fit if it was in the ensuite. Naturally I got rid of it once this picture was taken.

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I put plastic lattice around the deck to keep the dog and other critters out and to give the deck a “finishing” touch. I also affixed a sheet of lattice to the inside of the fence between our yard and the park: to keep the dog from hurting himself on the chain link fence. I also lengthened his dog run by transplanting some “wild” daylillies from the yard side to the park side in order to “soften” the effect of the lattice and removing the little fence that protected the daylillies and some hostas. Eventually I intend for the wisteria to grow along that fence as well.

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Just starting to blow my nose and the eyes are getting itchy. My body says it’s that time of year again for the anti-celebration of the start of the ragweed season: now until frost. Ah-choo!

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Apparently when a dog lightly pants he is “happy breathing” — something like a cat purring I guess. Finnegan “happy breathes” when I scratch him on the side of his head, when he’s begging at my wife’s place at the supper table or when we go for a walk.

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A terse email from the VP of Personnel announced that the IT Manager no longer worked for the company.

He’ll be remembered by most, not fondly though: we all have stories about this strange character.

Someone asked me if I was interested in that job. After some thought while running home tonight I think not. It’s an admin position with 3 or 4 subordinates, budgetting for several hundred leased PCs, a PBX, ISP, software licences, etc. There’s no hint of technical software development in that.

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People ask me why I’m thinking of leaving the regular payroll when I’m eligible next year: I was thinking the other day that my last summer job in 1976 was at the place where I work now. That’s 30 years by my calculation — longer than I have lived anywhere else and over half my lifetime. I think it’s time to move on. Naturally I would consider contract work there; however, the 37.5+ hours, 5 days a week schtick would not be the norm anymore.

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Or so I told my younger son, learning to be a print journalist at Humber. His summer job is at a nursery doing gardening type things which he was never interested in before.

You prune out the dead wood or edit the superfluous sentences. You prune the strangely branches and tighten up those run-on sentences.

In other words (pun intended) you maintain the natural shape of the tree or shrub and the end result doesn’t look like you did anything. Similarly a good editor will maintain the ideas and the gist of the article and the reader will be grateful for tighter, better reading prose.

Me, I’ll stick to pruning.

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The ticket guy at the Kipling GO station handed me a plastic sleeve along with the 10-ride ticket I bought. A nice gesture since it poured rain for my entire walk home from the GO station at the other end. I had to empty the knapsack and let it dry out.

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I was working in the driveway area when I saw two robins chase a red squirrel who ran down the pine tree in our front yard, ran across the driveway, climbed the tree next to my neighbour’s garage. I lost sight of the trio as they went over the roof.

What did the squirrel do? Steal an egg/hatchling? Bother the nesting mother?

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I couldn’t ping one of our remote devices today. As I happened to be the “least busy” I rented a car and drove out to Oshawa to see if I could fix the problem. The DSL modem wasn’t connecting. I called one of the Oshawa PUC staff and he brought a phone. We plugged that into the line and managed to call his cell phone. After plugging the phone line back into the DSL modem it began work again. I don’t know the it{root cause} of the problem but at least it’s fixed and we know to bring a regular phone with us next time (or ask the local staff to try it).

And then I had to drive back through Toronto’s Friday rush hour traffic.

Wildlife of the day: Finnegan and I saw a fox tonight.

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Peel Region has started “single stream recycling”. I guess there were too many people who didn’t sort = can’t sell recycled stuff because it wasn’t “pure” enough.

I’m going to save some time on the night before garbage day because I did sort. Now I don’t have to.

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Finnegan spotted a possum on one of our evening walks this past week. I have never seen one in the wild before especially this close to home. I didn’t have my camera so I had to borrow an image from the Internet. The warmer weather must be bringing out the critters.

We spent a splendid evening with friends last night. Their twin daughters are about 3 and very cute. Their car has a big dent in the hood which, we thought, might have been from a basketball—the kids next door were playing when we arrived. It turned the snow and ice on their steep roof all slid off last week and and a good-size chunk of ice did the damage.

I’m taking tomorrow off so I can get a few things done aroung the house. Today I fertilized the lawns and mended the “temporary” fence around the backyard gardens to keep out the dog. If I have the time and the weather co-operates I’ll make a gate for the back deck. The backyard is too wet and muddy for Finnegan, not that he minds.

I also bought some “all sport” shoes. The top of my left foot above the arch has been sore off and on for the past few months so I’m hoping these shoes might improve it.

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• Symposium yesterday.
• Mozart/Vivaldi (MV) rehearsal this afternoon.
• BAS choir manager paperwork to complete this evening.
• Lunch time Blood Donour clinic tomorrow.
• Dentist appt Tues. morning.
• Regular OCS rehearsal Tues.
• MV dress rehearsal on Wed. evening
• Two MV concerts on Fri. and Sat. evenings.
• Regular BAS rehearsal on Sat. morning.
• Several work deadlines are in there, too.
• !

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We saw CATS at the Mississauga Living Arts Centre this past Thursday. Those tunes are as familiar to me now as they were 25 years ago. However, I’ve learned a lot about singing and listening to singers in the last 25 years. Some of the soloists in the cast sang flat on occasion, one painfully (to me) so. The dancing, however, was great. We sat 2 rows back of the stage so we had a great view of the goings on.

The only problem was that I had booked this night out last fall. My wife didn’t have a full-time teaching job, nor did she need every evening to make lesson plans back then. She survived though we’ve been kind of tired this weekend.

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Today I’m triple the age I was in 1972.

Today’s song “infection”: “Blow, blow thou winter wind” by John Rutter.

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I just put in an order for over 60 prints from Blacks. Half of them were pictures my wife took at school last month. The other half are pictures from last summer!

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I spent a couple of hours last night “crafting” an email to the chair of the board. I had mentioned to the board on a couple of occasions that filling in grant proposals has never been my idea of fun—even if I were to get paid for it. It is hard to believe that in 2006 one proposal mails you hard copies of the application to fill in by hand. You don’t really want to try and read my hand writing. Though my printing is somewhat more readable it takes me much, much longer. I finally had to partly resign in writing to get this message across. I’ll continue, on a volunteer basis, with the choir record keeping and in making arrangements for concerts and rehearsal venues.

I’m a computer-type guy. If I can’t write, find or buy the programs to do most of the paperwork-generation then I probably won’t ever get around to it. I’ll choose to walk the dog in the pouring rain (like today) instead.

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I took today off [1] and took Finnegan for a walk. He found and tried to grab the back half of a dead red squirrel. Later on he sniffed out a mound of something in the bushes which appeared to me to be a dead raccoon. It was a great day for a dog! I’m not complaining, though, as the temperature is 8°C—very mild for mid-winter [2]. Finnegan turns one year old tomorrow.

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The other day, while walking my dog, a guy had stopped his car across the clearly marked pedestrian crossing waiting for the light to change. This is a “push button” light so he would have to wait awhile. I made a motion with my mitt to back up. (Most people, including myself, would do so anyway though we would try to stop before the crossing lines in the first place.) He didn’t move, so my dog and I had to walk around. As we were doing so he yelled obscenities like what’s your problem a**hole and don’t be a chickensh*t and walk away, c’m'ere. Yeah right: I have to look after my dog and you are inside a one tonne weapon. My only regret is not getting is license plate number and reporting him since he was obviously over the limit on something. I uttered my usual curse towards drivers who are morons about hoping they crash themselves (alone of course) into a concrete wall.

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Well, it seems I have either a) lost interest, b) lost time, c) found other things to do or d) all of the above with respect to this blog. My first post was way back on Feb. 25, 2002. Our dog, now almost one year old, accounts for b) and c) as well as becoming choir manager, and a) arises because, after walking the dog in the evening, I don’t feel much like spending another half an hour posting something.

Perhaps I should try posting just a sentence or fragment instead of paragraphs.

Anyway, my software find this week is Audacity. I decided to start digitizing choir concert tapes from years ago. I can record one side of a tape and then slice out the selections, creating mp3 files out of them. So far I have done one Bell’Arte Singers set of two tapes from Nov. 1998 and one Toronto Chamber Society concert from Nov. 1981. The TCS turned out all right. The BAS tapes have either been played too much or they weren’t recorded at a high enough level. Their sound is kind of rumbly and muddy. I tried the FFT filter from the Audacity library to cut out the low frequencies: less rumbly now but the vocal sounds still aren’t very clear.

As for the 1981 tape, I don’t have the program just the titles I wrote on the cover. Through the “miracle” of the Internet though, I can search for midis based on the titles and, from listening to those, I can determine the correct title and composer.

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Is walking the dog good or bad procrastination? At least I’m getting some exercise and Finnegan seems to enjoy sniffing around and walking with me. And how about updating this blog once in a while?

Yesterday, I realized that dogs lean on things just like people. I never noticed this behaviour in cats; however, they sleep so much anyway.

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• My wife turned the half-century yesterday. She got a beautiful ring (pink sapphire amidst some smaller diamonds) “sort of” from me. She actually bought it several weeks ago for half price from a jewellery store going out of business. I’m going to return the favour by having her give me a replacement “CD/tape/FM playing” system that I’ll be looking for Christmas and my birthday.
• Last night we had the last “regular” rehearsal for our concert next Saturday, Dec. 10, 2005 at Grace Church on the Hill.
• As that rehearsal was moved to late afternoon I took my wife and her girlfriend out the pub for supper and libation. Singing is such thirsty work!
• Today was relaxing: walking the dog a few times, putting up some Christmas lights, reading the paper, etc. This evening I took my wife, my two sons and my older son’s gf out for supper at Canyon Creek. Four of us chose, quite independently, the chipotle and roast garlic steak. It was delicious. I had a pint with my meal. Wine is too expensive. One bottle of a “brew at the store” variety is cheaper than one glass at the restaurant and better tasting IMHO unless I go for something really expensive.

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Well it seems if you are a Mail Plus user you get to choose an alias with a '.' in it. Wow! I wonder how many database table schema had to be modified to do this?

I still prefer my gmail accounts for keeping track of email threads and far better search capabilities. Perhaps Yahoo! will catch up one of these days.

jim dot service at yahoo dot com

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• I configured the final (?) version of the rain barrel with a length of flexible pipe and restored the original elbows of the drain from the eaves trough. Now I can easily take said pipe out of the top of the barrel and clean the debris strainer.
• I have re-used a lot of the old deck railing 2×2 to make another compost bin for this year’s leaves. I found plastic “hardware cloth” to line it with and used the bags from topsoil to cover the bottom rails. While I was making it, my neighbour commented that a compost bin cost less than $20 at the store. Yes, I know, but IMHO this one looks nicer than those plastic bins and I re-cycled all those left over 2×2’s.
• Not in the yard but round and about: we saw Hello Dolly with my in-laws in Scarberia last night. It was quite a good production—a friend of ours was in the ensemble. Though Dolly’s voice wasn’t the greatest, I enjoyed watching her lungs.

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• According to the assessment, as of January 1, 2005 my house is worth 47% more than what I paid for it 18 years ago. The disclaimer on the notice says my realty taxes may not go up. Sure and Santa Claus is real, too.
• Today’s software “find” is a square image. It isn’t your general image editing program but it looks to be handy for creating icons from your favourite photos.
• I walked the dog around some richer “no exit” streets tonight. It seems that those with 3 car garages don’t park their cars on the driveway.
• Now that one son has moved away and the other will likely do so in a couple of years I don’t feel the need for a larger house anymore.

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A person drove by in a smallish car today exuding very loud music and pounding bass. Do they know that everyone else outside of, perhaps, a couple of friends think they are jerks?

I predict it will only get worse: These young guys will gradually go deaf so they’ll have to get increasingly more powerful amplifiers to experience the same volume.

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We looked after my son’s golden retriever this weekend. No real problems just twice as much work doing some routine tasks. Like wiping 8 dewy paws this morning—several times until I put a gate across the deck. My wife and I had to sleep apart last night; otherwise, despite the extra hour, we were afraid the dogs (probably our dog would start) would get up and wrassle again in the middle of the night. My wife is also allergic to the shedding golden.

Our dog is jealous of the golden. Every time we patted her, he would wrassle with her. It was only about a day after she arrived that Finnegan would finally stop trying to nip Cricket’s ears and want to wrestle. He’s very despondent right now as Cricket has gone home with my son.

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First it was three days of vacuuming each floor and spraying for fleas. Last night we saw Oscar Peterson at his namesake public school in Mississauga. At $20, it was a bargain to hear the jazz pianist legend.

I relaxed this evening by going to the grocery store for a few things and stopping at the drop-in clinic (because there was no-one waiting in the waiting room) for a flu shot.

Of course, I walked Finnegan for a about an hour each of those nights, too.

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This cold is a bad’un. I felt somewhat guilty when I had to go out and walk the dog. It wasn’t particularly pleasant though: walking in the rain and blowing my nose every few minutes. However at work, I couldn’t have slept all afternoon like I did today. I think I may be well enough to return to work tomorrow. Don’t bother me at lunchtime though: I’d like to have a nap!

Dogs are great company when you are ill. Finnegan likes to sleep a lot during the day just as I have been doing.

Having gone through a couple of sombre days I have had to turn the thermostat to heat once again. I’m hoping this 25 year-old machine lasts another winter.

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Friday evening

We were taught some early 19^th century dances at Fort York in Toronto. Though we had never done this before we found that if you can count, visualize simple patterns and know you right from your “other right” it was fairly easy. Quite fun actually.

Saturday

Up early at 7 am to give the dog a long walk before going to choir rehearsal in the east end of Toronto. After a quick lunch and longish drive back as the direct highway route, the Gardiner Expressway, was closed for repairs, we did a quick change for a wedding of a school friend of my wife’s at 3 pm.

Saturday Evening

We experienced our first Taiwanese-type of wedding reception. It was supposed to start a 6 pm (no bar) and we finally started being served our first of twelve courses at 7:30 pm (no bar, no wine). Four hours later we finished the last course and left the hotel. There were 330 guests in the room. Part of those four hours was taken up by two(!) false alarms. We didn’t leave but neither did the serving staff serve for those periods of time. Did I mention it was dry and there wasn’t even a cash bar?

Saturday Night

One of my wife’s teacher colleagues had invited to a party. My wife phoned and they were still partying. Those three beers I had there tasted so good!

Sunday, Very Early in the Morning

Walk the dog. Get to bed about 3 am.

Sunday

Very tired today. We did pick a couple of bushels of Cortlands and Empires though.

Monday evening

Put out the garbage and did some grocery shopping as well as walked the dog.

Tuesday evening

Attend a Masonic reception for my father-in-law on the occasion of him becoming a very worshipful brother. Walked the dog after I got back and went to bed about an hour later than I usually do

Wednesday

One of those late afternoons when I hoped no-one would drop by my desk because I might have fallen asleep. I could blame the high pollution count, too.

Wednesday evening

Go to bed as soon as I have posted this.

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Hmmm, this blog isn’t so regular anymore. Could it be the hour or so I walk the dog each evening? Probably. Then there’s choir manager things to do. Oh yes, and the washing machine drive belt broke on Friday evening when after it had been filled with clothes and water. My son wasn’t amused.

On Sunday I syphoned and sponged out the water and took a look underneath. I puzzled out the route of the belt, taped it together even in order to experiment on how I would put in a new one. It sure looked to me like I would need to lower the pump and agitator drive assembly and disconnect the agitator shaft. Unfortunately this suspicion was confirmed when I looked it up on the Internet. This “routine” repair would probably take several hours. My wife decided for me: the machine is at least 23 years old and not worth fixing. So, now I have started looking at new washing machines and we’ll be visiting the local laundromat in the mean time.

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1. Leave before 8 a.m. to pick up coffee, drop off wife and dog on the way to parking lot where Peel Region was having a HHW and recycling day. Parking lot was only a short walk from the leash-free park.
2. Got rid of half a dozen almost-full, rusty cans of paint my son “inherited” from the previous owner when he moved in. Also recycled an old 16 MHz computer, a keyboard, 2 computer power supplies and an A/C motor/compressor control.
3. Dropped dog off at house and then went to choir practise in the east end of Toronto.
4. Drive back to Mississauga to pick up my tux. Met son picking up the dog. Dog didn’t miss us at all since my son’s dog was already in the car.
5. Drive to London to rehearse with the FOICS choir. Arrive about 1.5 hours late but the conductor already new that. He was glad I came. Now there were six basses to balance about a dozen tenors and perhaps 50 altos and sopranos!
6. We sang an all Mozart program including the Requiem and Ave Verum.
7. Drive back to Guelph to pick up dog. Drive son and friend to party on the way home.
8. Get home about midnight. Very tired.
9. Very hoarse voice on Sunday and part of this morning.

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I was quite sleepy this morning. I walked to the post office at lunchtime and, just as I was crossing the parking lot, a woman walked by with a Tim Hortons cup of coffee. Well, since it was kind of muggy today, I thought I would take a little detour on the way back to work and pick up and Iced Cappucino. Thanks Lady, for the great idea!

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• On Monday after the Bell’Arte Singers board meeting, I watched a self-erasing video preview of a sitcom called Dads for this market research survey. The show wasn’t very good. Of course I haven’t watched American-style sitcoms since I was a teenager. I prefer the British comedies where I would put Fawlty Towers at the top of the list. Anyway the followup phone call asked me about the commercials I saw during this preview. The emphasis was on the commercial for “ground beef assistant,” an ad I don’t even remember watching. Basically, I panned the show and didn’t remember the “most important” commercial.
• The Oakville Choral Society started its rehearsals last night. I’ll have to talk to the director as I can’t attend and sing at either Christmas concert this year as it conflicts with the Bell’Arte Singers gig.
• I had made a couple of changes to the Postgresql database functions and was surprised that the scripts took so long to execute. One optimization was to move a couple of sub-selects out of the loop. This made the select loop about 10 times faster. Today I found the other slow part was a Perl sub being called in my script but, because the –debug switch wasn’t set, nothing was being printed. However, a large hash of hashes was being built and consuming memory and several minutes(!) of CPU time. I rewrote the sub call so it definitely wouldn’t be used unless I turned on debugging.

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Perhaps it’s the adjustment from vacation to work or that I’m taking antihistamines for ragweed causing less restful sleep or the dog barking at 4 a.m last night. Though it has been a four day week I feel like it has been six.

I was pretty sleepy yesterday afternoon at work. One of the guys on the canoe trip says it is embarrassing enough to fall asleep at work. It is especially so when you wake up and find there’s a polaroid picture of you snoozing sitting in front of you!

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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 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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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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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.

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Should my automatic software systems at work run OK then I should be away from work for all of August. Next week it’s canoeing in Algonquin Park. In two weeks it will be to a rental cabin on the Bruce Peninsula. The rest of the time it will be doing this and that around the house and garden.

The third window vendor came a couple of days ago, a small reno company representing a BIG (we’re a Fortune 500 company didn’t you know) company, the former marketing division of a natural gas utility. Though his estimate was nearly the same as company B but without the inside finishing included. He was a poor salesman IMHO.

• Disparaging remarks like: why aren’t you getting that lousy sliding glass door replaced. [Because that would be another grand and it still works OK after 25 years.]
• Insisting I make a decision by the morning of the next day because of a special offer that would expire “soon.” [We’re talking about my 8 grand I’m spending or at least borrowing against my line of credit.]
• When I turned down the offer, he asked why. [Because you have annoyed me.]
• He was too insistent about how good the windows are. Yes, they are CSA certified but, unlike vendor B there was no ER.
• He wrote lots of stuff on the quotation form and was at the house for almost three hours (no gardening or dog walking that evening). It makes me wonder whether his staff really know how to install windows if he has to write so much.
• I wrote “Cancelled” on the estimate, signed it and faxed it in this morning. The guy finally knew I meant NO.

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While threading between the cars to get to the station the other day I noticed that someone had inserted a flyer about the same size and colour as a traffic ticket on every car in the lot. Lots more were on the ground or blowin' in the wind. I think this “dead tree” spam is worse than the electronic variety.

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Just a bit cooler today so I dug a 30“ by 4' by 6” trench, threw in the leftover limestone screenings and put the concrete patio slabs back on top. Now there’s a level place to build a couple of steps to the deck. For now I’ll just leave the precast concrete step there until my vacation time next month. Once again I have a half cubic yard of clay lumps and rock to get rid of in the garbage: 3 small bags at a time.

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We are kind of sheepish at times because our dog has decided to stop and stare at you while you pull weeds or clean your golf clubs. Or the dog is busy sniffing, pooping or peeing so we say hi to passersby to cover our pooch’s activities. Or its the usual, “My dog doesn’t normally do this…”

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I haven’t given up! However, the evenings are full and I seem to work through lunch: who wants to go for a walk in industrial Etobicoke when it’s 35°C?

I sat in on my first Bell’Arte Singers board meeting on Monday, this being, also, my first in my role as “choir manager” and recording secretary. Like all meetings, it did go on a bit; however, there were some good ideas and excellent suggestions. Basically the choir is broke at the moment so the emphasis is on raising some funds by increasing choir member donations, expected ticket sales and beating the bushes for more grant money.

Yesterday evening, while walking the dog, I met a high-school buddy (we graduated some 32 years ago). Turns out he’s just moved into our area a month or so ago. Welcome to Olde Burnhamthorpe or the Folkway-Sawmill Valley area of Mississauga, Mike! It has kind of grown on us after living here for 17 years and, before that, another 6 years just a kilometer to the west.

And speaking of walking the dog, Finnegan still likes to run even though it was 32°C when we left at 8:30 pm. I’m using one T-shirt per dog-walk these past few evenings.

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When I’m walking our dog the women, especially the young pretty ones, smile at our cute puppy. Perhaps the young men do too, but I never seem to notice. I wonder if the opposite effect happens to my wife?

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I’ve been very busy at work fixing up a website to show 50 homes worth of hourly electricity meter readings. Last night I had to go and visit my brother-in-law to fix and “take a look at” more problems. He thought his washing machine wasn’t working. Because he’s deaf he can only go by what the timer dial says and by feeling the machine. I think he may have been opening the lid which triggers the “kill” switch. Question: why don’t they put an LED or two in the front panel which light up when the machine is “busy?” Obviously we hearing people can tell when the machine is busy; however, an operating light or two would let the deaf know at a glance, too.

My shadow, walking companion, and friend who gives me a real lickin', our Finnegan is back from being neutered. He was gone for a couple of days. Except for the shaved nether part and a bit of one leg for the IV you’d never know he’d had surgery. He’s just as lively as he ever was and glad to be home. I thought the vet would just cut off his nuts but I was told they remove the testicles and stitch up the scrotum. The latter gradually shrinks into is abdomen. But perhaps this is TMI.

We have to keep the dog “not too active” for a week! Maybe we can at least accomplish this over the weekend.

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According to this CBC news article, those old wives were wrong: You can swim after a typical meal. However, the article cautions, that intoxication seems to be involved in a quite a few drownings. Sober up before taking a dip.

Happy Canada Day!

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Did you ever get that sinking, very hungry feeling when you opened the door to the staff fridge and your lunch was gone? Happened to me today. It was easy enough to find the culprit: a colleague who also shops at the local grocery store sometimes and re-uses the same bags. He claimed he was being absent-minded.

This past Sunday we drove to London, rehearsed hymns, Mag and Nunc, responses and an anthem during the afternoon to sing at an Evensong service. A good friend and music director at the church sent out an email invitation and 53 singers showed up. It was hot inside the sanctuary. My wife had only come because I promised we would go somewhere air-conditioned for supper rather than staying for the pot luck.

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I sent an email about a ½ hour before quittin' time to a manager about my new site going “live” on my PC at work. He phoned to say that the link didn’t work. I went over to his office and, sure enough, it didn’t. He suggested I try another PC in his area and this time the http access worked fine. I suggested that perhaps there was a configuration problem on his laptop. Instead, he seemed to imply that it is was my problem. I wonder: he his covering up some form of technophobia? I should have sent the email in the morning—I missed my usual evening train.

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A group of us have finished up the first annual(?) Health and Safety Audit at work. Generally the people we interviewed know the company has a policy and that the documents are on the Intranet. It seems the only ones who actually what’s in the policy and related documents are those like me who had to look up the “real” answers to the interview questions and others who had recently been involved in “incident” investigations. The rest know just bits and pieces from emails, hearsay, colleague chatter, etc. The Safety Manager has his work cut out for him to bring the company into “compliance.”

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In the “I don’t why I didn’t do this years ago” department, I installed a ceiling fan in the kitchen. Cool! Unlike the second floor fans I didn’t have to remove the existing junction box or worry about a vapour barrier. And this time I had an electronic stud finder to locate the joist. I still haven’t had to use any of those weights to “balance” any of the fans (more than a half dozen now) I’ve installed. Since I installed the fans I have been able to turn up the thermostat 1 C°.

I can see my workbench and table saw tops again. All that clutter was driving me nuts.

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Though I slept OK and didn’t go to bed too late last night I was falling asleep at my desk this afternoon and also on the GO train home. I figure it was the smog alert today. It’s like being in a small room with too many people and a boring meeting/speaker. The body just has to fall asleep to compensate: that’s what I’ll tell my boss, anyway. It could be worse.

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My butt is sore today like I’ve ridden many kilometers on my bike. Now I know why some of the Dragon Boat race participants brought foam pads. At least I remembered my neoprene bicycle gloves: keeps my office keyboarding hands from getting blisters.

It was a fun day though we won none of the three races. Thanks to my wife whose sore shoulder prevents her from paddling, we have lots of pictures though I only show four here.

I take two sleeping pills each night. Each of them are about an inch long and somewhat conically shaped. I include a picture. )

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• After dark, don’t let your dog sniff and poke around under bushes—he might find a stinking, dead bird.
• The only thing our dog doesn’t try and eat is poo, his or others.
• You know you are a dog owner when you are relieved to hear the only thing the lab found in the stool sample was (I paraphrase) dog poo.
• People who don’t have dogs seem to comment on how well-behaved your dog is when, just at that moment, he happens to be sitting quietly.
• Our dog is quiet. Whether it is by nature or training, I don’t know. He only barks when he’s really frustrated or angry much like me. )
• Puppy walks have two phases: sniffing every object within lease distance for ¾ of the time and then running home again.
• A little cheese or liverwurst helps the kibble go down especially as it seems our dog tastes exclusively by smell so you only have to mix in a little of the “flavouring.”
• Dogs can learn by example: Finnegan learned has learned to bark at the back door to be let in because he’s seen the neighbour’s dog do it. I think that is also why he barks at dogs being walked on the park path on the other side of our fenced yard.

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The concert of all-Canadian, recent compositions and arrangements went well though I had a bit of cough going into it and my voice “disappeared” a couple of times. Apparently my solo southern Ontario 'r' in Feller from Fortune came through loud and clear:-).

Being choir manager and riser schlepper, I had to run out after the concert and move the van to one of the church doors to pick up the 5 risers. Methinks, after “donating” a half-days vacation, paying for some gas, spending extra time picking up the van from work and being deprived of my wife’s company while driving to/from rehearsals/concert, that the choir will have to look into hiring a riser schlepper for the next season.

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On our walk with the dog this morning we saw that “Company A,” the “business” who took our deposit, dug out and gravelled our driveway but never came back to pave it had visited some people in a cul-de-sac nearby. We had Burl-Oak Paving come and complete the job after three months of promises. Anyway the representative from “Company A” was talking to some people, so my wife gave him a piece of her mind. Said representative came over to our place and talked to me about trying to call us (we have Call Display: no calls). We called them several times. He said he drove by in the summer and it was already paved. Again not true as we didn’t have it repaved until the end of August, over 3 months later. He said the deposit barely covered his costs of the disposal bin. Again, not true, I know what disposal bins cost from excavating for my front walk. They can recycle the old asphalt. Besides, I had an estimate for excavating our driveway for pavers and it was about what we paid “Company A” in a deposit. He told me he’d let the matter drop and not sue me and that my wife should have a Happy Mother’s Day. Yes and I’m sure that “Company A” is squeaky clean and would just love to open their books in a counter-suit.

At least my wife has probably ensured that the people on that cul-de-sac will actually get their driveways paved so that “Company A” can show us they are honest. “Company A” doesn’t deserve any publicity whatsoever from me by naming it in this blog.

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Our puppy doesn’t seem to care for plain kibble all that much. So we mixed it with a bit of cream cheese and he thinks it’s yummy—most of the time. One day I tried grated parmesan, he likes that too and it’s much less messy than cream cheese to sprinkle a bit on the kibble and mix it in. He does seem to get tired of the same old, same old. I don’t think there’s any danger of him overeating. Even at puppy classes he got bored of the liver treats so we’ve bought cheese strings and curds for tomorrow’s class. Outside, however, he never seems to get tired of chomping on any old thing: dead leaves, sticks, cigarette butts, litter, snail shells, bird droppings, … Reminds me of the first time we put our youngest, maybe a year or so old, on the sandy beach. He grabbed a handful of sand and immediately tried to put it in his mouth.

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“By mistake” I left a bit later on Thursday night because I was off for a four-day Easter weekend and I needed to collect a few things and water my office vegetation. At 5 p.m. I got a call to do some Quality Inspection (QI) work. Well, they were “desperate” and it was time-and-a-half billable work. So my first QI work started at the very bottom: inspecting some spare parts for overhauling sump pumps at a nuclear station. Instead of helping my wife prepare vegetables for Good Friday’s family supper, I worked.

All day Friday was spent getting ready for my wife’s family and one friend: a total of 22 people and one puppy. Then, at the end of the evening I had to sort music into numbered stacks to hand out at choir practice on Saturday morning. I’m exhausted. To relax I include an image of our sleeping puppy.

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The hygienist at my dental appointment this morning asked if I wanted the topical flouride treatment. Why? I recall stating in my “particulars” form that flouride seems to give me a migraine headache. This happened both times I had tried it in two different forms. Besides, our dental plan doesn’t cover it if you are over 18. I said, “No thanks.”

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I haven’t been away; however, generally I’m either out (less likely) or looking after the puppy (more likely) most evenings.

Yesterday’s break in the office work routine was provided by a colleague who bumped into a concrete support column in our office area. The forehead cut required two stitches to close but otherwise he’s fine. I remember almost bumping into that post on occasion when I first started working in this area.

I opened (yet another) gmail account in order to archive emails relating to my upcoming choir manager position that I (foolishly?) accepted (before puppy). I have a password generator/saver utility but the new gmail user form didn’t seem to accepted the password(s) I pasted into the field. After several fruitless attempts I tried typing the password by hand and finally got accepted. I’m wondering what Javascript technology is behind that. Perhaps I can adapt it to try to reduce blog comment spam.

BTW, if there’s anyone left on the planet who doesn’t have and wants a gmail account there’s plenty of extra invitations to give out now.

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Finnegan, our SCWT puppy, has to be quarantined to our back yard until he’s had his next set of shots in about 3 weeks. Thus, my wife and I have spent lots of time in our backyard. That maple tree will probably have to come down. There are more splits in the trunk bark and it is “crying.” I thought the dog had peed on the deck but pee isn’t brown and sticky. I guess the sap is running and leaking out of an overhanging branch. I’m considering a star magnolia or serviceberry as a replacement.

And that living room bay window is deteriorating badly. I guess I’ll have to call for some estimates and the kitchen window…and a two instead of four section sliding glass door to the deck would also be nice. Anyone have any windfall profits or lottery winnings to share?

Good news, too, that most of Finnegan’s deposits are now being made in the backyard. We are all learning the appropriate signs I guess.

We bought ourselves a digital camera, NiMH battery charger and 512 Mbyte CF disk. Expect more images…

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A puppy is a lot of work. Feeding, playing, napping, inside, outside, inside, outside, clean up occasional messes, … I think a wireless network and a laptop would allow me to read a few emails perhaps in between during the commas.

Today’s new thing I tried out was calculating differences between “adjacent” rows in a database. That is, given a monotonic increase in reading values over time I want another column of differences between this row’s reading and the last. I think I figured out how to do it by attaching two sequence columns to a table self-join. Now I need to make it more efficient.

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Perhaps the people who say this haven’t raised children.

• Babies wear diapers. Nor are they particularly mobile for the first year.
• You don’t take babies outside each hour. They don’t run around and play for 10 minutes. Then, just after you’ve brought the puppy inside and turned your back, it pees on the floor.
• You can put a puppy in his crate for an hour or so with a water dish hanging on the door and a favourite chew toy, perhaps stuffed with food. Then you can go out, get some coffee and relax for a few minutes.
• It’s a “good thing” puppies are so adorable.

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No I wasn’t directly affected—no money to travel at the moment anyway. However one of the cars on last night’s commuter train was a huge mobile Jetsgo ad. I hope GO transit and the ad agency that installed the mobile billboard asked for payment up front. I wonder if the contract covers prompt removal on the demise of said advertised company.

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I’m tired so I’ll just gripe a bit:

• There’s a foot of snow in the park I cut across to get to the train station—too deep to run through in the morning. It was -10°C. Around about March I should be contemplating shorts and in-line skates again.
• Cold and deep snow mean wearing boots and too many layers of clothing—an extra few minutes to go outside so I just stay in at lunch time.
• On the next temporary music job I accept I will have to already know at least half the repertoire and the other half will have to be in a language I know how to sing (English, Italian, French, German, Latin) and with easy harmonies à la Bach, Haydn or Mozart.
• Non gripe: there be daylight at 6:30 am and the sun is still shining at 5:30 pm. Now if only the snow would melt away…

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I decided to run in the valleys today; however, the rain last week has made everything icy. You get kinda get slowed down gliding or taking steps across the sloping icy parts.

I finally used my router and new stand to make some small ½ in x 1¾ in parts out of PVC moulding for my wife’s Indian flute making club. I used the switchable two-outlet strip to also power the vaccum cleaner to suck up “some” of the chips. As is customary, the setup took longer than the actual fabrication. I figure with the cost of the stand and the two straight bits I bought each part only cost about $10 each to make!

I had a look at the music that I will be singing to help out the bass section of another choir. There are several Finnish songs to learn. With the help of the Internet, I have found an audio pronunciation guide. It turns out that Finnish is similar to Italian in that you learn a few rules and you can almost sing the language like a native. I’m glad English is my mother tongue. Otherwise, how would I know how to pronounce cough, rough, through or thorough? There’s also a Gaelic song. Instead of accents these folk add extra consonants and vowels to symbolize the sounds. Sometimes it seems a one syllable word has 10 letters!

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It was too cold (-3°C) to do some “work” in my garage workshop but I did do some tidying up. Today’s tossed items included:

• a box of foam trimmings (for packing?)
• a couple of computer power supplies
• a parallel port scanner (remember those?)
• lengths of coax ethernet cable (cat-2?)
• several speakers from the intercom system that used to be in our house (quaint 1970’s technology)
• wood structures I built to go on things I no longer have
• junk (of course!)

Then I rearranged the remaining stuff for somewhat easier access. Perhaps this spring I should see what I have stacked and stored along with the two or three 4' x 8' sheets of dry wall.

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I rehearsed the Messiah (parts 2 and 3) with a (new to me) choir on Saturday morning. Today the Oakville Choral Society sang at Oakville’s Town Hall in support of an Oakville Arts Centre. As usual our half hour slot was delayed by at least half an hour.

I would have said my script was done until I analyzed some binary files. I programmed strictly to the spec.; however, it seems there must be a work-around because I’m missing all of channel 3’s data since the Feb. 3 whereas the old program gives data for that (and all the other) channel. I shall see if the firmware guys are ignoring their own extra parity byte.

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Either my wife is into money laundering or she forgot to check her pants' pocket. Should I consider the $10 and $5 bills my tip for unloading the washer and hanging up the stuff?

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The union shared an arbitration settlement with management after 17 hours of mediation-arbitration bargaining(!). The details seem somewhat unusual: such as 1.5% every six months for the three years of the new contract.

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I put a greeting card addressed by my wife in the mailbox for someone in another city. A couple of days later it arrived in the mail. Canada Post has such intelligent mail sorting machines that it must of decided that the return address sticker pasted to the back of the envelope was a better address then the one my wife had hand-written on the front. She has very legible hand-writing by anyone’s standard. We know it was machine-sorted because of the flourescent bar codes on the front of the envelope beside the stamp. We have mailed it again. This time my wife put To: on the front and From: on the back. Perhaps those bar codes will trigger a manual override and have the card sent on. We’ll see.

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I got the training today. I can hardly until wait the trainer’s stories come to pass—I’m looking forward to a steak dinner at a posh “Gentlemens” Club; or the Call Girl that accompanies you on the elevator up to your hotel room. Neither ruse swayed him. His point was that integrity is really your only trump card in rejecting something because of a non-conformance.

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I was part of the chorus for Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance several years ago. It was fun; however, I didn’t enjoy driving the half hour or longer commute at the tail end o