Autumn's Here Indeed

If there was any doubt that the fall season was upon us it was dispelled last night when the outside temperature dropped to almost freezing levels.  For the first time since last April I switched my furnace from Air Conditioning to Heat mid-evening when I started feeling chilly in bed.  It was when I awoke in the wee hours this morning feeling cold that I realized that the furnace fan was still running but the burners had not kicked in.  Time to break out an extra quilt.  This morning I fiddled with the gas valve and the burners kicked in.  Makes it more comfortable taking a bath when the temperature’s above 68º F. 

 

Although rush hour at funeral homes is Christmas and Early Spring there have been a lot of notable deaths lately.  You may have read of the passing of the ultra-realist painter Ken Danby.  I’ve always questioned why one would want to do what a camera does but having seen a Glen Loates original of a hawk with its wings spread I know that no camera could capture the amount of detail a skilled artist is capable of generating.  In the case of the hawk every barb on each feather was visible and the mystery of how Velcro works was plainly visible. The second recent death, at 88, is that of the TV evangelist Rex Humbard.  Credited with building the first church dedicated to the promulgation of religious programming on TV he boasted that his program was the most widely broadcast program in North America.  If religion be the opiate of the people televangelists prey on the aged and infirm fleecing them through requests for donations of moneys they can ill afford to waste. 

 

For those who may be interested in how computers are built here is an excellent to building a PC:

 

http://tools.corsairmemory.com/systembuild/print.aspx?report_id=12472

 

Just in case reading this makes you curious remember that opening up the case of your computer before the warrantee has expired voids that warranty. 

 

Here’s a tip from a Post Office professional.  If you’ve filed a change of address and haven’t been successful in persuading all your correspondents to change their records remember that to extend that change of address you must renew it at least 10 days before its expiry date.  The expiry date is 6 months to the day from the date the change became effective and is located on the top line of each and every yellow sticker that is used to forward your mail.  The day after a permanent change expires every piece of mail that arrives will be returned to sender.  The exception is a temporary change which upon expiration will send the mail to the original address. 

 

Once again I’m thankful that Bill Gates doesn’t build cars.  Tuesday was Microsoft Update day and as usual Redmond issued a new series of broken fixes in its continuing attempt to keep its operating systems afloat.  I believe it was Thursday I discovered a problem when I started typing in my browser’s search bar and with the entry of the first letter my browser promptly crashed and did so each and every time.  This morning Maxthon had a fix for the classic version of my browser; the new improved version 2 unfortunately crashes upon loading without exception.  Apparently they’re still working on it. 

 

This afternoon I will be making a drive to Mississauga as there was a faulty menu on the first disk of the Series, Jericho, I picked up on October 2—my local store still doesn’t have any in stock so I’ll have to make the trip to Hazel’s City.   While I’m there I’ll probably have a look at laptops.  When I begin trekking next fall I’ll need to have one so its time to start looking.  I may also look at a new backup external hard drive; my present drive is almost full and with 600 GB of drive space I need more backup space.  Who’d a thunk that I’d be thinking about a Terabyte of disk space—that’s 1000 Gigabytes if you weren’t aware. 

I'VE GOT THAT RAINY DAY FEELING AGAIN

Thats got to hurt!

Days to go: 325

For those fortunate enough to have one, this is the traditional close up the cottage weekend. Having graced us with beautiful sunshiny days all week; the weatherman appears to have taken the weekend off himself and left a spiteful child in charge. Yesterday we got wind, heavy thundershowers, thunder and lightening and today is dawning to fog so thick the apartment building across the way is obscured with a repeat performance on offer. When the rain wasn’t drumming on my balcony railings or the world alight with lightning flashes and the crash of thunder peace was disturbed by the insistent wail of emergency vehicles—apparently drivers will never learn how to drive on wet pavement—what will happen when freeze-up comes?

I started an entry eight days ago but didn’t manage to finish it. The days since have been occupied with the minutiae of my return to the workplace. Aside from the brief entry accompanying the photos I took last Sunday on the Bruce Trail I’ve been neglecting my writing. My taskbar is filled with the six blog entries I plan to make; my personal inbox has 8 E-mail; and I owe the chairman of the meeting I attended Tuesday a set of minutes. Sounds like I have a day’s work ahead of me.

A week ago Friday I decided to have a go at making Tuna Casserole. After some exploration I discovered that finding a definitive recipe is about as likely as finding one for Shepherd’s Pie—tuna seems to be the only ingredient all recipes have in common. Even noodles don’t seem to be essential though I did use them; the essential truth seems to be that tuna casserole is what you make it. It seems to be an emergency meal made with what’s on hand when a meal is required and nothing has been planned. Certainly a friend I formerly visited used it as such. The essentials seem to be egg noodles, drained canned tuna, a can of mushroom soup and cheese—I refuse to use Velveeta. The noodles get cooked and then tossed together in a baking dish with the remaining ingredients and popped into a hot oven for 15 minutes. Almost anything that’s on hand seems to be an optional ingredient. I neglected the cheese and found my casserole lacked that ‘je ne sais quoi’.

I arrived back at work this past Monday to find a month’s worth of tasks no one else at work has the patience to do awaiting me. It is off-putting to find things that need doing everywhere one turns. I wish I possessed other’s ability to ignore needful jobs. During the month I was on holiday people have been playing musical routes so one of my tasks was typing up a new employee list. Another was getting ready for holiday picks for 2008! Yes, already, hard as that is to get one’s mind around.

I wish I could report that I made progress in reading John Jakes but in truth it seems to be easier to collapse in front of a DVD. Picked up the series Jericho upon its release Tuesday and found a corrupted interactive menu on the first disk that prevented me from watching the succeeding three episodes on that disk and when I went to return it Future Shop was sold out. Oh well, it’s not as if I lack other things to watch. My remaining five blog entries are movie reviews. I share with my hiking partner on Sunday the need to be re-incarnated to several more lifetimes to enable me to work my way through all the books I currently possess but that doesn’t inhibit my desire to acquire yet more—my Amazon Wishlist has 70 entries. That despite the fact that I picked up two large orders this week, one of them outstanding for nearly a year. I am now the proud possessor of the entire run New Yorker Magazine on DVD—that’s 500,000 pages or every issue since it started publication in 1925—I have no excuse for ever being bored.

Fall Walk at Inglewood

This past Sunday was the perfect day for a hike along the Bruce Trail just north of Cheltenham Badlands in Caledon. It was a typical fall day; just cool enough to make walking pleasant, no insects to spoil the experience, and just enough cloud to make the sky interesting. In this area the Bruce Trail follows an upland Beech Oak Forest with fairly mature trees insterspersed at intervals by kettle lakes and limestone rifts. Much of the area is relatively level and follows old logging roads which lead to open spaces that make way for nature's flower garden.

In many locations older trees show signs of the work of nature's foresters boring for incects.

Dead and dying trees show signs of various fungi at work at returning cellulose fibre to the earth.

On the return journey along local roads one passes palatial estates and horse farms proving that only the wealthy can afford to live this close to the escarpment.