Solstice Sentiments

It’s Saturday Morning and I’m listening to Pipedreams from NPR while I leisurely browse the Web and catch up on E-mail.  If you’re reading this I’d appreciate a note to let me know that I’m not just blathering to the ether. 

 

Here in Oakville, Ontario by the lake the Waterfront Festival is going strong without me—at least they have ideal sunny temperate weather for event.  I like to avoid crowd scenes and the thought of unreserved seating for a popular rock star frightens me. 

 

Work

 

Countdown to retirement 13 months and not a day too soon.  Can’t say as I enjoy a 4:00 AM to Noon shift.  I end up getting my major rest as an afternoon nap so that I can enjoy my evenings despite an alarm that goes off at 2:30 AM.  This week when I arose at 5 PM on Thursday I’d lost track of which day it was.  I often awaken thinking I’m late for work until it dawns on me that it couldn’t be light at 4:00 AM.  Since I last made a serious attempt at catching up here the lighting in the oldest section of our office was revamped—it’s now so bright in there as to be blinding.  After two and a half weeks I threw out the mess of fluorescent tubes the workmen left behind believing they had no intention of picking them up; having them around was a hazard as they were getting broken by careless individuals.  Friday the poor snook who finally showed up got a bit of a blast from me when he came to pick them up.  The interior of our workspace is being repainted yet again.  Why I’m not sure as I’ve been busy putting up all the posters, bulletin boards, and notices that littered it in the first place.  Canada Post has joined the ranks of employers monitoring employee use of the internet—no more hockey fights.com.  With summer upon us new homes are going up like crazy and Monday we initiate 10 new Community Mailboxes or close to 400 new homes.  All our routes are full and we are working on number 57 and 58.  I can’t imagine what’s going to happen when they start building north of Dundas to 407. 

 

On the thirteenth of June I got up to Milton to pick strawberries.  There’s no way of getting there without passing through road construction and a trip along Derry Rd proves why Milton is one of the fastest growing communities in Canada.  Springridge Farm is no longer out in the country—fortunately the prevailing westerly wind keeps the construction dust off their berries.  John Hughes retired a few years ago as professor at Guelph University’s school of agriculture and is even now in the process of passing the torch at the farm to his son and heir Tom.  Farmer John’s pride is obvious.  The proud grandparents are also busy sharing pictures of the third generation. 

 

I’m still busy occupying my free time with DVD’s.  Many reviewed on my sister blog.  Splurged to pick up discounted sets of the entire Buffy the Vampire Slayer Series.  Should keep me out of mischief for the summer.  Spent $188.00 to have my 25-year gold watch ‘revised’ by Birks.  Hopefully it gives me 10 more years of trouble-free service—the batteries are free.  I’m still struggling to keep up with the podcasts I download to iTunes. 

 

The blurb below on the Safety Village below was occasioned by a visit there for a Meet and Greet with the new Superintendent of Police for Oakville.  Must confess I still have trouble keeping track of the various ranks and even more with the revolving door of officers who fill them.  Also picked up a plaque marking over 5 years service to a community policing committee. 

 

Watching Endless Summer made me wish I was twenty again and healthy and wealthy enough to go surfing.  Mind you the thought of surfing 30 foot waves in two feet of water over razor coral is just a bit intimidating. 

 

The rant below is prompted by the forced update I will be making to my Lavasoft Ad-Aware Software.  Mind you I bought the SE version 5 years ago before they came up with the idea of subscription fees and have had a “free ride” ever since but they’re terminating the updates at the end of this year so I decided to update while the offers were good.  How much trouble removing the old version and installing the new will occasion may be the subject of a future rant.   My computer has been trouble-free of late and I’d like to keep it that way. 

 

 

Another Rant about Software Providers

<Just out of interest the automated response I got from the particular company to which I sent the E-mail upon which this rant is based identified my letter as spam.  A pox on all your houses.>

 

Just once, I wish a company would make it clear when a customer updates or upgrades their software whether:

 

1. The old software must be manually removed

 

2. The new version will un-install the old version

 

3. The new version will install over the old

 

4. Special software must be downloaded to ensure all vestiges of the old software have been removed from the program folder and the registry.  As is the case with Nero or Norton for example.

 

A thorough search often yields no information on this subject.  It would seem techies feel no need to share this kind of information with mere mortals. 

 

While I’m on a tear I’d comment that I also lose patience with installation processes that want to go online to update the software and update definitions and/or register the software.  In the first place why should I have to update software I just finished downloading; why wasn’t it properly written in the first place?  When I install software I reboot without starting programs so that backup, firewall, and virus-ware programmes do not interfere with the installation process.  Therefore in today’s dangerous environment on the net I am ill-advised to go online totally unprotected.  Furthermore many companies’ updater softwares do not seem to understand ASDL internet access and cannot recognize that I am online in any case. 

 

 

Halton Regional Police Service Safety Village

Spent part of last evening at the Halton Regional Police Service Safety Village. Where else would you find a Petro Canada Station, Canadian Tire, Royal Bank, MacDonald's, a school bus, a school, working traffic lights, and a railway crossing complete with marked roads, cross walks and street signs all in a small miniature village? During the school year busloads of elementary school students get to experience this special community. The youngest ones walk the course, the older ones ride bikes, and the oldest get to ride battery powered miniature cars. Montessori would be so proud. Sponsored by the Oakville Optimists this is a unique way to learn how to be safe on our streets. Who says cops don't have a sense of humour?

Catching Up

What happened to me, you may well ask.  I’d fully intended to make an entry in this blog last weekend but once again I got overtaken by my penchant for trying out new software and getting myself into cyber hot water. 

 

With the increasing proliferation of threats on the World Wide Web I’d decided that now that I have sufficient computer resources to enable the use of a full-time firewall I’d try out Agnitum’s newly minted Outpost Firewall Suite.  The problem with a new innovation such as this programme represents is the fact that no one can be on the Internet without previous anti-viral software and one is reluctant to take it on faith that a new innovation is going to provide comparable protection and furthermore one has probably paid good money for that protection.  Therefore I discovered first hand that Agnitum and Norton do not play well together.  After a month of difficulties gaining online access for my favourite software I finally had to make the decision that the hassles involved didn’t justify the outlay of funds Outlook Firewall would represent.  The un-installation seemed to go well; I removed the folders left behind and the 87 remaining registry entries but it was then I started discovering the damage the two programmes had been doing each other.  The next stage was the repairing of Norton Systemworks Pro—it must be removed, it can’t be repaired!  For anyone who needs to uninstall Norton Products don’t attempt to do it via the Windows Control Panel—Norton’s built-in self-protection makes that attempt extremely messy.  Norton supplies a small download called the Norton Removal Tool for that purpose.  It does work.  Next follows the re-installation process, approximately 100 MB of updates in 4 sessions each of which requires a reboot, the reconfiguration of each individual component, the obligatory complete system virus scan, resetting Norton Ghost and its back-up—somehow Norton retained its registration files and did not require reactivation.  All this by way of explaining my silence.  When will he ever learn?  Probably never. 

 

I just finished wading my way through the 401 pages that Leonard Cohen’s Stranger Music represents.  (Review elsewhere on my books blog.)  This compilation of selected poems and songs spans the arc of Cohen’s life from naïve neophyte to angst-ridden observer of the Holocaust to sexual libertarian to old-age-driven reconciliation with his maker.  As I’ve previously opined, this is not a book for children. 

 

The past year has seen more severe and unusual weather than has ever existed in a similar period in living memory.  Asthma sufferers such as me feel the impact of the lack of ground frost to kill the fungus and mould in our soil.  Northern communities miss safe passage over pack ice and the loss of free ice roads to transport heavy goods.  Southern Ontario swelters under photochemical smog for longer and earlier periods—February?!!  The hurricane season begins earlier and spans more super-storms; tornados reach severities that push the upper boundaries of 5 on the Fujita scale.  This past week three inches of rain in one hour literally drowned Calgary Alberta where rivers in flood from the spring melt run-off were already swollen.  Southern Ontario yesterday spent most of the late afternoon and evening under a severe thunderstorm and tornado watch.  As the cold front came through the temperature dropped 25 degrees Fahrenheit.  This morning’s cerulean blue skies belie the fact that I was awakened from my afternoon nap yesterday by crashing thunder, gusts that shook the trees outside my windows, a sky that was as black as night, and wind-driven rain that sluiced down my balcony windows. 

 

Here I take a break to wind my centuries-old 8-day striking clock, make toast for breakfast, set the dishwasher, and prepare to start doing laundry. 

 

The past week or so I’ve been working on updating RSMC Routes, making case plans, and checking out new growth.  It’s frightening the speed at which Oakville is growing.  It may be a town in name; but it has big city problems.  Having had to rewrite bylaws to accommodate the building of a castle-like 50,000 square-foot home in East Oakville the town is now facing the spectre of a condo-tower/commercial Complex on the site of the former Holiday Inn on Iroquois Shore Rd that would punch up to three towers 30 stories into the sky overlooking the QEW and Ford of Canada.  And we thought we had traffic problems before. 

 

Not much has changed in my life.  I’m still attempting to keep up with the podcasts I download in iTunes—at least I have 600 GB of disk space on which to store the overload.  I’ve listened to music by Sir Malcolm Arnold, Sir Hamilton Harty, Howard Hanson, and Amy Beach.  I’ve been acquiring new DVD’s faster than I can watch the ones I already own lately.  I’ve reviewed a few of them on my Movie Blog.  My reading has suffered lately but I’m still plugging away at short stories, poetry and Whyte’s The Eagle.  I’m attempting to keep up with my electronic subscriptions to PC World, MacLean’s and Reader’s Digest in Zinio Reader.  Ironically I’ve been reading the Austin City Chronicle in .PDF because of the difficulty of finding our local EYE and NOW.  The world is on pause awaiting the July 21^st release of the final Harry Potter; Amazon has pre-sold 1,255,901 copies at time of writing.  Whatever else, this is quite a coup for Raincoast Books in Canada.  I’ll go on the record again predicting that Harry dies in this version.  Lately I’ve been doing my best to keep Amazon.ca viable with my shopping.  Were I able to find the books I find there at Chapters, the movies at Blockbuster, or the music at HMV I would not be doing so much shopping online. 

 

So here I’ve over-compensated for my past silence; however my inbox is empty of personal correspondence so I won’t be taxed by answering it. 

Rant of the day for June 9, 2007

What’s the point of having a blog if one doesn’t use it as a platform for one’s personal rants? 

 

I’ve been listening to Guardian Books podcast coverage of the Guardian Sponsored Ten-Day Festival of Books at Hay-on-Wye in Wales.  Hay, a small town with less than 2000 residents has over 30 bookstores!  Even if the majority of them actually are used book stores this is still a remarkable feat.  One that is not possible on this side of the pond.  If you have to ask why, then you haven’t been following the juggernaut that is Heather Reisman’s Chapters Indigo.  Chapters is to book selling what Staples is to office supplies, Wal-Mart is to department stores, Tim Horton’s is to doughnuts, MacDonald’s is to fast food… an attempt to monopolize its sphere of enterprise.  The ascendancy of Chapters in the book market has made life difficult if not impossible for independent book sellers.  Their demise has led to a lack of diversity in the book trade and a loss of the kind of personalized service a small bookseller can give.  When any business corners up to 90% of a market the old saw about “absolute power corrupting absolutely” starts to come into play.  The ability to dictate terms to book publishers, ban books one dislikes from one’s stores, market titles weeks before independents get their hands on them, ban free tabloids including the Montreal Review of Books (?!), sell klap trap like candles and crystal, refuse to do customer book orders—“buy it online”….  Whether or not I like Amazon.com, Chapters has driven me to their arms in protest.