2013-04-14 Sun

Retired

I walked to the Green Living Show at the Exhibition Grounds this lunchtime. Down Strachan Avenue. About 7,000 steps in about an hour; about five kilometres.

The rails that will take the airport GO trains will be underground between Bathurst and about Ossington, by the look of it. A trench has been dug and stout box girders laid across it as far as the eye, as they say, can see.

Here's a view into the trench.

And here is a view looking east. The box girders are painted grey, and in this photo appear as a mat, although there are gaps in between them.

SUFE

Sort of.

I thought that this was a most imaginative use of a three-legged stool, keeping a two-legged crawler under control.

SUFE

I decided to become a landscape artist this morning.

All you need is what I needed - two sheets of scrap paper, food coloring, and one of the many frames I've rescued from the recycle room.

Here I've torn part of one of the sheets into 5 ragged-edge strips.

Here are a couple of drops of green, and of blue food coloring in a saucer of water. Stir gently with a fork.

After the first dipping, laid out to dry on a wire rack.

After several dips, seen from the back - the printed side.

Arranged for gluing.

This photo doesn't do justice; the ragged edges have adopted a darker hue, as if there are small shrubs on each rise.

The second sheet, as a backing sheet, has been dipped in a saucer of blue-tinted water.

That's not the sun shining, it is the flash from the camera.

Hang it all.

It would probably look better horizontally on a much wider frame - say three feet or so instead of ten inches.

2013-04-13 Sat

SUFE

I came home through the Grenville/College underground parking lot, and what do I see at the southern entrance but three vermicomposters-to-be.

With built-in racks, yet!

My first thought is that wooden sides, thin plywood sheets encase the racks.

Kitchen scraps are tossed in the top and the finer material is gradually "wriggled" to the bottom by the worms.

A fuzzy photo of the other side of a rack.

With wheels, too, for easy movement prior to cleaning.

I'd need a collection tray under the device.

Retired

I was going to title this "When tracks go off the rail", but I suspect that it's just a piece of track that has been retired.

2013-04-12 Fri

Retired

I'm still retired; retired from the Sales and Marketing aspect of business. But business is still Business Solutions, so when a spontaneous enquiry arrives I consider it.

I received an email with a suggestion of a four-to-six month contract downtown. That would suit me fine, both in location and duration.

But how do they (or their client) know it is 4-6 months? That suggests that the client feels they have a good definition of the solution, to be able to assign a completion time to it, and that suggests that they have an even better grip on the problem. So where is the problem specification? And their preferred solution specification?

I will sit with the client, listen to their introduction, then ask the question "What is your goal?".

If they don't have a goal (that they can slide across the table in writing on a piece of paper), how can they have a solution? And if they don't have a solution, how can they cost a solution?

If they do have a goal, then stating a cost suggests that they have mapped out a path to reach that goal, and that, a solution, suggests that they have a understanding of the problem, in which case, why don't they slide the problem across the table to me?

Usually I find that someone would like the project to be completed within 4-6 months, based on what they've seen in the past, what they've done it the past, their level of skills (not great!) and their myopic view of computers through the user-interface.

Clear Thinking

So around ten to four the alarms sound in Lillian Smith branch of TPL; not to worry, says the PA, it is a false alarm. But we know the fire trucks will be here.

I have a book to return, so I decide to return it before anyone changes their minds and forces us all outside; I don't want to lug the book home.

From the second-floor window overlooking College Street I see an eastbound streetcar, and I hear the fire truck sirens. A small domestic station wagon moves forward, I assume to get out of the way of the curbside trucks, but the streetcar is also moving forwards.

The car glances off the streetcar, the driver brakes partway into the intersection. It is a low-speed collision, surely no-one is hurt.

But it strikes me that excepting for a head-on collision, the streetcar can never be in the wrong. Because it is constrained to run on rails!

No one seems flustered, but the streetcar driver unloads all the passengers.

I feel sorry for the driver; by the time I descend to street level, the fire crew are asking the four-wheeler to move forwards because the fire crew have another call further down the street.

I hand my card to the streetcar driver, and write my name against the phone number.

I feel sorry for the streetcar driver. Through no fault of his own, he will be saddled with a ton of paperwork, have a mark on his record, be late home, and surely a whole lot of other stuff.

I don't feel sorry for the four-wheeler idiot.

As I walk home (to Bay street from pretty well Spadina) I pass several streetcar stops with anxious customers peering westward, wondering whether the car will soon be here to take them home or to daycare or to their classes or to their next appointment.

One small piece of distracted driving is causing misery for hundreds of people right now.

2013-04-11 Thu

Discovery!

I've had more telemarketing calls than I care to think of on this new, my only, number over the past twelve months.

So it was with unbridled joy I discovered a little feature on my humble non-smart LG phone.

Now I'm waiting for another telemarketing call so that I can add them to my own do-not-call list!

2013-04-09 Tue

SUFE

Rain.

It's too wet to enjoy a tromp across to the dollar-store or an expensive tromp to the drug-store, so what's a guy to do?

Here is the backside of a clean scrap of carpet. I've used my 7-year old comfortable walking shoes to draw an outline of the outer edge of the sole. The walking shoes leave the story at this point.

I hand-draw a second line about one quarter of an inch inside the first; no artistic skill is required.

Then I use the tip of a sharp knife to cut through the backing material along the inner line.

You get the idea. It's like walking on carpet!

2013-04-08 Mon

SUFE

And it was, last weekend, Hey! For the annual Bloordale Rummage Sale, helping to set up and test most of the electrical and mechanical appliances for the appliances tables, and helping sell stuff the next day.

At the end of my shift I went off-duty and purchased a shredder for $2 (it needs the knives cleaned of some stray junk, is all), a Hammond World Atlas - executive edition in excellent condition for $1 (I objected to the price and finally got away with $5 by handing over the bank note and not waiting for the change), and a 3-mug thermos flask for $2.

Thermos flasks were a prominent part of my teenage years. My parents wouldn't get in the car without at least one thermos of tea, and the trip between Perth and Geraldton, 6 hours in those days, was interrupted by a tea-break during the driver swap over at two-hour intervals.

Nowadays the stress seems to be on individual insulated mugs, and it seems like a loss.

I pre-heated the thermos with hot tap water, then filled it with black coffee at 6:30 last night, and brought it home.

Ninety minutes later the coffee was too hot to sip. At 9:00 this morning, fourteen hours later, the coffee was still piping hot; I could drink it by sips.

Of course I dismantle it to check it out.

A broken flask would still have given me a superb, large-volume handled funnel for the kitchen.

But the flask is intact. I used a toothbrush and a dab of detergent to clean the upper rubber sealer ring, removing a few years beverage stains.

I have re-assembled the flask, wadding some dry shredded paper around the flask to increase the insulation. (Well, I wanted to use the paper shredder ...).

It seems to me that I could drive Toronto to new York and enjoy a piping hot home-made soup on arrival.

Many aspects of use will reduce the effectiveness of the flask:

Adding cold milk and sugar when loading the flask lowers the initial temperature.

Taking drinks en route lowers the temperature, because it allows heat to escape and introduces cooler air (OK, not a big loss, but a loss nonetheless).

I'd be for taking some powdered milk and sugar in a couple of empty (well-rinsed) pill bottles and adding the solids as required.

2013-04-04 Thu

Toronto

Our first block of warm days this spring; yesterday was about -1 with a wind-chill factor of about -15, or so it seemed.

Today is +10, clear sky, sunny etc, and yet half the pedestrians are walking around with thick coats, mittens, large woolen hats, and scarves held tight across the face, as if it is still Antarctic winter.

It seems to me that one segment of the population clings to winter in the form of clothing until heat-wave time; as if they are reluctant to let go of a chance to complain about how cold it is.

It's spring, folks; open your coat and feel the sun-warmth come through your shirt onto your belly.