2013-03-29 Fri

Retired

Still!

Good Friday: I wake to see nobody on the streets; a public holiday. I dress and walk down Jarvis to King, hang a right, and drop in to Tim Hortons to pee and buy a small coffee. And a muffin. Back Outside I see the last Toronto Star in a box, so I pay for a newspaper (first time in about a year) and retreat back into the coffee shop. Why hurry?

I may not get done today all I want to get done, but there's always tomorrow ...

I walk back up Church street and arrive home around 10am.

Once divested of my vest, a whim strikes me: a hot bubble-bath would be nice. Why not? In the past I'd have postponed the bath - there are proposals to be written, phone calls to be made. But today I plunge into a warm soaking bath, at 10 am, with a good book.

Dried and dressed I hear a small plane fly overhead. Why does this always make me feel happy? Perhaps because the first small planes I saw I saw at the seaside, and only at the seaside, so the sound of a small plane is associated with good memories of sand-castles, sandwiches, and a generally good time when even my mother was relaxed.

SUFE

So today is national let's-inspect-the-primary-vermicomposter day.

This vermicomposter is no more than a cardboard carton with a black plastic garbage bag.

I have tipped the contents onto a table-cloth - another black plastic garbage bag. Why are you surprised?

Into the emptied bag go the month's accumulation of shredded paper; this will provide food and air and a moisture reservoir so that the bacteria can thrive.

Over the paper scraps I deposit the original contents of the vermicomposter, which is the accumulated decomposition of this months kitchen scraps.

The paper bin is empty and ready for next month.

I am contemplating making another kit for a friend, so I'll put the paper directly into an empty potting-soil bag, then add a gallon of kitchen scraps, and next month seed it with some handfuls of material from the primary vermicomposter.

So it goes.

2013-03-28 Thu

Clear Thinking

Thanks to federal law or guidelines, almost every scrap of processed food in Canada is labeled with a few ingredients, quantified.

This does not apply to broccoli, carrots, and other healthy foods.

I am in a good mood, about to meet my friend Cathy, so arriving early I treat myself to a chocolaty milk drink; not good for my weight, but a treat once a month is a good thing.

Check out the label above.

What do you think?

Take the entry for Sodium as an example. Depending on where/what you read it is said that North Americans consume around 2,500 mg of salt (or sodium; the writers appear confused about this) each day, and that a large part of it comes from processed food.

We need (depending etc) about 280 mg, as I understand it.

In other words, we consume way too much Sodium Chloride salt (NaCl) than is good for us.

So, look again, and you think 150 mg is not bad, probably a small amount compared to what the cook will add to the chicken soup, or the salt in the whipped cream in the desert.

Look again; it isn't 150 mg at all.

Look at the top of the label; amounts are quoted PER HALF BOTTLE.

As Cathy says, "Who drinks just half the bottle?!". I agree.

We also agree that this sort of labeling is bordering on dishonesty.

For packages where we ladle out a spoonful at a time, we expect to see "per teaspoon" or similar, and to check the units.

But why try to hide the fact that the bottle contains more than the daily requirement?

Clear Thinking

Outside the local church, two women standing with a sign "Life is Precious" with a picture of a baby.

I assume this is an anti-abortion statement, and without getting into the pro- anti-life debate, I'd like to suggest that life is NOT precious, never has been, never will be, and it's getting cheaper by the second.

If Isaac Newton or Einstein hadn't come along when they did, the universal truths would have been uncovered later rather than sooner, but they would have been discovered, for sure.

What's a delay of 2,000 years in a Universe that is already 13,000,000,000 years old?

And mankind's biggest problem right now is population growth. We already have mass-deaths through starvation, thirst and drought, in fringe areas of the world. Children and Adults drop like flies through disease and pangs.

Even the most "advanced" areas have managed to dry up the Colorado River so that it no longer reaches the sea as it should; aquifers are dry after being squeezed to provide cheap food for growing markets.

I wish you a healthy life, and for all children too, but I'd be too self-centered if I believed that my genes had any more value than the others; chances are they have less value than yours.

2013-03-27 Wed

SUFE

So you trot over to your friend's house, where her youngster has eaten a banana and dropped the peel down the toilet before pulling, in a manner of speaking, the chain.

The toilet is blocked, water escapes slowly, but not, sad to relate, solids.

Your friend does not own a plunger.

By the way, a plunger should be pressed gently into service, then yanked back, vigorously, OUT of the toilet bowl. The idea is to bring the blocking material back into the real world, not to wedge it further into the S-trap by forcing it in.

Grab the ever-present toilet brush and one of those plastic milk bags, rinsed.

Place the toilet brush inside the bag, and tie it off with one of those elastic bands or hair-rings that litter the city sidewalks. A tight wrap is not mandatory.

Turn on the bath-tap, slowly, warm water. You may want to wash your hands and forearms after this exercise.

Grip the handle by the rubber band to effect a good seal; the toilet-brush, encased in an air-tight bag has morphed into a flexible but strong balloon.

Gently insert the balloon into the drain, letting water seep up and around it, then give a vigorous backward yank to create a partial Vacumn behind the blockage. Rinse and repeat.

This normally does the trick.

If this fails, you can try vigorously PUSHING the balloon; that sometimes forces material through, especially if it is flexible biomass, such as orange or banana peels.

But if the blockage is a feces-encrusted plastic toy, it may be time to call the plumber.

Clear Thinking

So off to the Dollar Store this morning for a $1.00 pair of 3.25 reading glasses.

Attached to the glasses is a clear plastic pouch bearing the sign "Warning enclosed".

I expected to find the standard stuff about heat, batteries, small children suffocating and so on.

Instead, a bit of text.

I am fascinated by the part that reads "These glasses are not designed to replace corrective glasses sold by prescription".

Huh?

I thought the sole purpose of dollar-store reading glasses was to provide presbyopic folks with a means to read.

Aren't these glasses meant/designed to replace prescription lenses, when you are out of town, left your glasses at home, dropped your glasses down the elevator shaft, and so on?

Isn't that the whole purpose?

2013-03-26 Tue

Clear Thinking

Accosted, again, this morning by a construction site worker who I correctly addressed as "idiot", to which he took offence; but I was right.

Lest you think that I go out of my way to antagonize street folk, be assured that at 66 I've had experience crossing the street in the UK, Australia, France, Singapore, USA and Canada - all places where I have resided and worked for extended periods. I'm not counting vacation spots such as Cuba, Germany, Spain and so on.

So to this morning: I walk up St Luke's Lane with a car slowly catching up to me. A construction-lorry blocks the end of the lane, so I know the car will elect to turn right, east, towards Yonge Street and an escape.

I elect to turn left, west, towards my home, and catch the eye of the truck driver, but he is now busy reversing because a truck-trailer ahead of him is reversing; I'm certain neither of them can see me.

So I duck between the construction fence and the row of 30-inch high concrete traffic barriers. Well-protected, me, from the two drivers.

But not from the local construction tin-god who berates me soundly for putting my own life in danger.

Huh?

He, of course, is operating on a minimal set of facts: I am walking where he thinks I shouldn't.

I am operating on a larger base of data: The car, truck, and trailer combination are all focused on their own paths.

I have placed myself into the protective security of a significant traffic barrier of concrete.

Who is the idiot?

2013-03-21 Thu

2013-03-21 Thu

Clear Thinking

I think that there are more cell-phone-vendor kiosks in Toronto than there are Tim Hortons coffee shops.

My cell-phone partially packed in this morning. I spent the day trying to remember not to use the touch screen to accept calls, dial calls, select podcasts etc but by 6pm I'd had enough.

So I called the help-line, where a youngster assured me that I could drop the phone off and it would be sent off for inspection and repair and returned to me within six (6) weeks.

I suggested, as politely as I was able, that going without a phone for 6 weeks could not be classified as a service. He seemed inclined to agree.

After some hesitation he said that there was another option. I said it couldn't be another option since going without a phone for 6 weeks (while paying for a phone service) wasn't an option.

The first option (now) is a "loaner".

Hooray! Now we are getting somewhere.

I could drop the phone off and fill out a form, and a loaner-phone would be available for me within 7 to 10 business days.

I said that's two weeks, and dropped the stylus back onto the "going without a phone isn't an option" track.

'Gustus didn't know what to say. So I helped him out.

I suggested that the first option was for both of us to recognize that there were 17 phone kiosks between here and the southern end of the Eaton Centre, that is, within 20 minutes stroll south of where I live.

Option two, I suggested, was for him to come up with a better plan for my old cell-phone within the next twenty minutes, for by that time I'd be deeply engaged in conversation with a rival phone service.

'Gustus admired my logic, but was stumped, so we escalated the call to his supervisor; if he could locate one, which he thought he might, please hold.

I slipped on a shirt, a pair of pants, a jacket, cap and gloves, and was partway out the door when Jodi came on the line.

"How are you?". "Bundled up for a quick walk to the Eaton Centre, since you ask, where there are many brightly-lit phone kiosks and many success-oriented students doubling as sales representatives, since you ask".

In the time it took me to reach Gerrard Street, Jodi had determined that a loaner was available and was waiting for me at the corner of Dundas and Yonge. Which confused her when I asked which corner; hang on, she'd get back to me. Which she did; 10 Dundas Street East, whereas the store is really on Yonge Street about 80 yards NORTH of the corner, but ...

There's a bit of sleight of hand gone on here.

They have a loaner, but it only does phone, not podcasts, so an upgraded model was produced, for which I paid cash; they say that the balance of payment due on the old phone will be paid by them, not me, so the theory is my phone bill will go down next month, since I won't be paying off a phone.

We'll see.

Moral: Never believe the front-line help-desk; it may pay, always, to escalate the call; especially if you have, say, 17 alternate solutions.

2013-03-19 Tue

SUFE

East shelf, lower.

East shelf, middle.

East shelf, upper.

South shelf, lower.

South shelf, middle.

South shelf, upper.

I estimate there are 26 cartons ("Domtar copy") of books to be shipped out.

I'll need 16 empty boxes to repack the stuff that's jammed into old-and-bursting cartons. It will take me about an hour to repack all.

After that they need to be taken out by trolley out to the service elevator, hoisted up one floor, then by trolley out to the loading dock, then carried, one box at a time, down a narrow flight of six stairs into a car.

26 cartons is about 600 pounds of material, roughly three overweight humans. The car can manage me and three tubby humans (braking distances increase!), so one trip should do it.

If I sort the books into cartons of "mine" and "give away", I can drop mine off at home, then proceed directly out to the next lucky book sale receipient.

Or I could dolly them home and just wade through them as I did the previous 26 cartons.

2013-03-18 Mon

2013-03-18 Mon

SUFE

I continue to be amazed at what gets Recycled rather than Reused.

Above is part of my haul from last night's foray to the recycling room. The small green plant pot was pressed in to immediate service to hold three plant cuttings that demonstrated roots.

This is a One-Gallon can of Latex Paint, marked "Orange", and apparently unopened.

Who knows, maybe it doesn't contain orange paint after all.

I shall open it, paint a chip, let the chip dry, then offer the can of paint it to whoever wants it.

Perhaps I have been spotted carrying away pockets-full of dead lamp bulbs.

Perhaps these bulbs were deposited in the hazardous-waste by the same clown who snips the wires off appliances that, for him/her/it, don't appear to be working. "If I can't fix it and use it, I'm damn sure no one else will benefit from it".

The two lamp bulbs had the metal shanks twisted off, and then the shanks were crushed with pliers! That, to my mind, is malicious.

Clear Thinking

All bullies are cowards, and vice versa.

Even the faint-of-heart bullies.

I set off for my local internet café this morning, the one with only one much-coveted power outlet. Most of us have learned to share. Some of us still have to learn.

Sitting there, with books and papers and bag spread out two or three feet to the side is my target.

I ask, politely, if I may sit on the (material-occupied) chare because I need access to the power outlet.

Grudgingly the hog allows me some space, explaining as he does, that he really needs the seat because he is waiting for a friend. Presumably both he and the friend will be discussing matters from The Attorney General's Office, for the material covers the counter.

"Sure!", I say, "I may well be finished before your friend arrives". I have a feeling that I will be.

I drag out my session as long as I can, 90 minutes at least. I recompile to the web everything I can think of; I download every podcast I can find; I browse Google Maps and the National Weather Service Animated Radar .

Noon comes and goes; home-made bean soup beckons my stomach. I fold my tent and make to slip away, saying as I do, "Your friend sure is late; I hope they show up soon".

Bullies 0; Christians 5.

SUFE

About a week ago I picked up an as-new Acrylic Rug in the recycling room. That means it is time to retire my old grey rug and fit it to the bathroom.

I make, in sequence from left to right,

1: A rough outline sketch of the room (rectangular) with overall measurements to the nearest centimeter.

2: A detailed sketch of the room with measurements of every nook and cranny, including the overall space required for the toilet pedestal.

After documenting every measurement, I add them up and make sure that they agree in total, and in particular that the aggregate measurements agree with the rough sketch.

3: Carpet must be marked and cut from the underside, so I prepare a mirror-image reflection of the second sketch which can be transferred to the underside of the carpet.

Here is a better view of my mirror-image sketch.

This prepared, I march back into the bathroom and re-measure every nook and cranny to confirm that I've got it right.

After that I brew a pot of tea and sit down for 15 minutes.

The old adage taught me by Mr. Hewitson in 1956-58 still rings true "measure twice, cut once".

After my sit down, I re-measure. Measurement is free, but once I start cutting, both the carpet and I are committed.

I am using the spare track from a closet as a steel straight rule. Here is the start of the markup on the underside of the carpet.

The left margin of the photo shows the dotted line which will be cut to slip the carpet around the toilet pedestal.

The rectangle (top-right) is the base or plinth of the vanity/hand-basin, just inside the door.

The line of blue pile shows where I have cut-along-dotted-line to make a slit to receive the toilet pedestal. I will cut to fit the pedestal once the carpet is laid in the room.

That's the new acrylic rug peeking out from underneath. It takes raw courage to carve up an old rug on top of a new rug.

Here I have cut almost all the way to a triangular chunk. I'll make the final cut once the carpet is laid. There's no sense cutting and making a mistake out here when I can make a better-informed cut on site.

Here is a view from the doorway. The vanity is on the near left.

The carpet slit is fitted around the toilet pedestal.

The small triangular nook is waiting for the carpet to settle into its final position before I trim-to-fit.

Here is the carpet struggling to fit around the toilet pedestal.

The narrow gap between carpet and bathtub will disappear once I settle the carpet into its proper place.

Here is a view looking out to the doorway. The pile is too thick for the door. That means I'll have to remove the door and saw about ¼" from the bottom of the door and repaint the door to seal it against moisture (and hence swelling and warping).

2013-03-15 Fri

2013-03-15 Fri

SUFE

The Vermicomposting Bin which premiered earlier this year, last reported 2013 -02-21 Thu continues to compact.

Last night I noticed that the black plastic sleeve appears to be descending with the material. No matter, I'll just insert a second sleeve and let it works its way to the bottom.

What is at the bottom?

That's a large shoot, possibly from a potato eye, peeking out under the plastic, and some eggshells and scraps of paper that appear to have fallen through my grid.

The castings accumulate, although they haven't reached the point where they cover the bin floor, and so they have not yet reached a mass where they can support a small colony of fallen worms to complete the digestion.

Here's a detail showing how the sleeve has slipped down, exposing a bit of the cardboard tower.

The second sleeve is in place. Do I spread its lower rim out, or leave it clustered?

I left it clustered; some worms will make their way up through the aperture. I of course hope that the majority of worms will stay below and continue to do their business.

The new sleeve extends quite a way over the outside. Yes, those are tear-holes in the sleeve. Should have used a new bag, right?

Oh well, it's an experiment at this stage ...

2013-03-14 Thu

Clear Thinking

The news-papers are full of articles about the new pope.

The Toronto Star's editorial maintains " ... a community of believers that after 2,000 years, keeps on growing. The faithful now number 1.2 billion, up from 700 million when John Paul II was elected".

Pope John Paul II was elected in October 1978.

Pope Francis on Wednesday, March 13, 2013.

In that interval the world's population has jumped from 4.3 billion to 7 billion.

The question is, has the number of believers as a percentage of the world's population grown? Or has it shrunk?

Do the math!

P.S. there are indisputably more males named "Chris Greaves" on the planet than there were in 1978, 1946, 1912 etc.

Toronto

We have a condominium boom here, been going on for the last million years, it seems.

The two buildings outside my residence were having all their balcony-glass replaced when I moved in a year ago.

This morning on my way to Canadian Tire, corner of Bay and Dundas, I spotted another building with similar problems

If you look from the bottom at the second row of balconies, you'll see that the two on the right each have an apparent hole; the hole is masked off with a wire grill. Those holes represent broken and/or fallen glass.

Two rows further up, more gaping holes.

If the solution here is the same as my neighbours, every glass panel will be removed, and then replaced with better glass.

That means a period of months with the area below blocked off for pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

The cost of putting up condos quickly and cheaply!

2013-03-13 Wed

Clear Thinking

I am reading yet another Nitrogen-in-your-Tire pamphlet, and I still don't get it.

For starters, Nitrogen gas makes up 80% of the air we breathe at sea-level. (Snap Quiz 1: 80% by volume or by mass? Snap Quiz 2: Does it matter.) So if we compress air and pump it into our vehicle tires, the tire content is 80% Nitrogen already by definition.

This pamphlet tells us that high-performance vehicles (military, racing, construction and aircraft) has been used for years; The FAA apparently has mandated high-purity Nitrogen in all commercial aircraft in North America.

I assume they mean "licensed in North America", but they may mean "licensed to operate in north America", and anyway, it wouldn't be the first time a federal agency got it wrong by being distracted by lobbyists/salesmen across the dinner table or in the good seats at the ball game.

There follows a paragraph that tells me that Nitrogen is a safe, inert, dry gas. Last time I looked any gas could be dried, if by "wet" you mean "containing water vapour". Furthermore "Compared to Oxygen, Nitrogen is a larger molecule and diffuses through the tire wall at a slower rate".

If I thought this relevant, I'd plump for Argon, which is an inert gas, "more abundant in the earth's atmosphere than carbon dioxide" ("The periodic Kingdom", P.W.Atkins p8).

What's more the atomic number for Argon is 18, whereas the atomic number for Nitrogen is 7, which suggests that the atoms of Argon are way bigger than those of Nitrogen (atomic number is, roughly, a measure of the number of electron shells in an atom).

Now I grant you confusion between atoms and molecules, but the pamphlet introduced that confusion. Neither Oxygen nor Nitrogen is a molecule; they are chemical elements, atoms, and they combine with other atoms to form molecules. You might think that a molecule (several atoms) of Nitrous Oxide (NO2) is, by definition, larger than a single atom of Nitrogen (N) and larger than TWO atoms of oxygen (O2), so why not fill tires with laughing-gas., light a match, then remove the water (

There are quite a few indisputable statements - "under-inflated tires increase fuel consumption" - but I can't make the connection between Nitrogen and n on-under-inflation.

So I'm still of the belief that Nitrogen-in-Tires is a scam designed to make lots of money from gullible owners at the relatively low cost of extracting nitrogen from the air. And for all I know, they just add hydrogen (H), light a match to make water (H2O) and then evaporate the water.

Ka-Ching! And thank you ma'am.

SUFE

... which of course includes an interest in ecology-friendly practices.

I get unreasonably worried when I read ("Canadian Living" April 2013, p117) "Ditch toxic store-bought silver polish in favour of this environmentally friendly alternative ...

The wording conjures up horrible images of ditches with running water into which is leaching the contents of a "Silvo" tin.

Unreasonable-worried because most people know who use Silvo consider that the more money you spend on a cleaner the better, so they aren't likely to toss something they value.

Me, I don't own anything silver.

I do feel that we ought to use up the stuff we've bought, especially the bad products, before switching to green. Contributions of water, energy, mined chemicals and diesel transportation have already taken place to bring the crud to your home. Acknowledge the terrible cost by at least making use of what you purchased at the expense of the environment.

Then pledge not to buy it/them again.

I follow the same reasoning in my refrigerator when I find a healthier oleo-spread; I'll use up what I'd bought before buying the healthier version.

The TTC

What's a day without a complaint against the TTC?

Today it is "out-sourcing".

The TTC has, I believe, outsourced the business of shelters to a firm, "Astral", unless I got it wrong.

The shelters don't shelter; any sort of wind with rain sweeps raindrops under the gap in the roof and leaves the bench seat wet. If it's raining you don't get to sit down.

Today I was waiting for the 49B bus Eastbound at Mill Road, and thought to improve my knowledge of the bus routes while I waited.

Forget it.

The maps are pitched high above the bench. If there were someone sitting down I'd have to thrust my groin in their face to read the lakeshore routes.

I can't focus on the top of the map regardless, unless I stand on the bench.

I'm 5'6" and took the photo above at the horizontal.

Why, for the sake of sanity, can't the TTC's outsource put the maps at a height that average people (let alone children) could read.

Placing the map to the left of the bench would have given them all the vertical space they need, and allowed users to inspect the map without disturbing seated people.

The TTC doesn't really care about their users.

2013-03-12 Tue

Clear Thinking

I listen to the Quirks And Quarks podcasts, amongst others, but quirksaio_20130105_67357 of 5th January 2013 has an item that caught my ear.

"Self-Driving Cars" is the catchy sub-title. The initial listener query includes (3m 33s All times are relative to the start of my downloaded version of this podcast) " ... in the near future we won't actually have to drive our vehicles; we will simply enter our desired coordinates and the vehicle will skim along a track with some sort of smooth surface to our destination."

Well, that sounds to me very much like a subway train, streetcar or bus in a major city. In other words, public transit. Or at the very least, a taxi-cab.

There follows much discussion about technology, including sensors embedded in the road surface, optical technology on the "cars", and faster response time to so-called accidents about to happen. Autopilots get a good mention, but the focus is on making the vehicles autonomous.

(5m 23s) "Vehicles that can adapt the speed at which they are doing cruise control", "vehicles that can keep themselves within lanes on the highways" and much more.

Seems to me we already have that in the current long-distance coaches (of which Greyhound is an example. It is true that I am defining "vehicle" as "coach plus trained and experienced and dedicated professional driver", but from my point of view, the coach is autonomous in the sense that I board it and don't have to make any driving decisions.

(6m 10s) "It can start to make all the driving decisions that we make regularly, by itself". Sounds like a coach, taxi-cab or bus driver to me.

There's more, but on re-playing the podcast this morning I could not find an idea that was not already implemented in our current life.

Want to work while you commute? Lots of folks do that on a regular basis around Toronto on the VIA rains, GO trains, subway trains, LRTs, streetcars, buses and taxis that pour into, and out of Toronto every day (not just weekdays). Some folks even use the commute time to listen to podcasts or to read a book.

What about when the public transit system doesn't go exactly where you want? Then you call a taxi-cab.

What about small-town Ontario? Well, commute times in and around Orangeville (London, Kitchener, Cambridge, Guelph etc) are hardly a major problem, and traffic is slow and light enough for sane humans to manage without a collision, as thousands of us prove every day.

There is only a need for greater saturation of public transit on, say, inter-city routes.

If you live in a city such as Orangeville (London, Kitchener, Cambridge, Guelph etc) and regularly get stuck on Highway 401 between home and Toronto, consider the impact on your daily life if an every-15-minute shuttle ran between the large parking lot near your home and the fleet of golf carts in downtown Toronto.

We already have rent-by-the-minute bicycles in the downtown core. Why not golf carts?

We already have GO buses that run between cities; they just aren't frequent or regular enough.

We have GPS devices that track our movement to within about 10 metres, I think, so why not GPS transponders on cars and a fee for trips that duplicate a public transit trip? You can still drive from Barrie to Toronto, but if you pass within 300 metres of a transit-lot at either end of your journey, you get billed. And thus you help pay for better public transit.

Ultimately you'll be weaned off your selfish car habit to the better alternative, and free-of-collision responsible way to do things.

And yes, I'm aware that collisions still occur with professional drivers. I leave it to you to locate the statistics, if any, that show that pre-occupied amateur drivers are better than dedicated professional drivers.

SUFE

It's a hobby, a pastime, some say it's an obsession. I don't resist hauling apparently well-working appliances out of the recycle room and tarting them up, or at the very least finding out why they fail.

This is the inside of a water-pic (toothbrush) handset AFTER I'd run all three parts under the tap, and begun to toothbrush-scrub out the nozzle part.

I imagine that people who use a device this dirty are unaware of the build up of grunge inside their devices, but health-consciously and meticulously douse their hands in alcohol-gel on entering and exiting the local hospital.

2013-03-11 Mon

The TTC

For me it has become a game, a sport, to collect as many different stories as possible about the yellow-stickers on monthly MetroPasses.

This latest from one of a team of three TTC employees handing out maps and information at Bloor-Yonge.

We had the initial discussion, then I tried to pin her down to a rational explanation of security and how it is improved by this measure.

Turns out it is the corner-stores and similar sales forces that are the problem.

According to the young lady, it is the devious corner stores who sell a MetroPass (with yellow sticker) to a relative or close friend and promise a 50% refund near the end of the month. As the end of the month draws near, the collaborator returns the pass, receives the 50% refund, and the dastardly merchant aims to receive a 100% refund from the TTC.

The TTC can dream up no other way of thwarting this scam than by having 100% of the law-abiding traveler litter the subway steps with adhesive yellow-stickers that, to my mind, still make no sense at all.

For "no sense" read "not sane", and for "not sane" read "insane".

Retired

I wandered into Women's College Hospital the other day.

FINALLY!

A large downtown inner-city hospital that is honest:

Check out the fourth label, right-hand side.

Haven't you ever got lost in the maze of corridors that constitute a near-century of additions and amalgamations?

Truth is WCH really does have a labyrinth (or maze) within its facilities, for spiritual and healing reasons.

While I'm at it, Toronto general Hospital has just renamed its three banks of elevators. Gone are the names "East Elevators", "West Elevators" and "South Elevators", so easy for worried families and visitors to comprehend. The banks are now named after benefactors, which makes it that much harder for people to work out how to get back to where they parked their car.

To make it worse, Toronto is laid out on a nominal north-south and east-west grid, and we all know that Elizabeth street is east of University avenue, and that Gerrard street lies south of TGH; so we locals are now somewhat inadequate in our efforts to help strangers.

2013-03-08 Fri

The TTC - security

The TTC continue to amaze me, as I continue to probe the matter of the Yellow Sticker on the Monthly MetroPass.

Sitting on a stool at the Dufferin turnstile is a TTC gent about my age, presumably aware of fraud, security etc because he is inspecting each MetroPass and ticket as we walk through.

I'm last to walk through, so I ask if he can explain to me how the yellow sticker works as a security feature.

He tries, I'll give him that.

His explanation is that it circumvents fraud along the lines of photocopying the pass. See? If you photocopy the pass while the yellow sticker is ion place, then a user can't "peel" the (photocopied) yellow sticker from the (photocopied) MetroPass.

Huh?

On the 28th of the month I buy a MetroPass for next month.

I take it home, and in the privacy of my own bedroom, peel of the real yellow sticker from the real MetroPass.

Then I photocopy/print a thousand copies of the MetroPass.

How has the yellow sticker improved security?

People who buy a forged/photocopied sticker from me at cut-rate prices know it isn't real; they know the risk.

2013-03-07 Thu

SUFE

Another neat technique from a podcast: "10 out 1 in", the speaker describing a program instituted with his son.

Once a month, I think he said, he and his son collect ten toys that are no longer played with, take them in a sack to a Goodwill or similar place, after which the son is allowed to buy (at father's expense?) any toy anywhere - from Goodwill or Toys'R'Us.

Son loves it - a new toy every month, brought on the backs of some of the crap received last Christmas.

Dad loves it, as does mum I guess - a lot less clutter around the house.

We could each do that in our living space; for each new appliance brought in, discard the two least used. Do you really need an electric apple corer? Who buys electric apples nowadays?

We could do it with salts and spices too, especially getting rid of two salts and replacing them with a new spice.

2013-03-06 Wed

Dress for the Job

I heard that on a podcast yesterday; "Clothes make the man" Roy Peterkin intoned on a regular basis to we students of Governor Stirling Senior High Schoool, residents of Swanleigh, as we donned our grey pants, brown sweaters, blue blazers, clean shirts and pressed ties. The headmaster Norman MacLeaod was of the same mind.

How true it is.

If you aspire to the next level up, dress like the guys in the next level up. The CFO probably wears a clean white starched shirt to work each day, cuff-links, and a muted suit, whose jacket is always at hand when visitors arrive.

Unless you gyrate on stage and have millions of tweet-followers, torn jeans and a grungy t-shirt just don't cut in any more, any place, any time, if you truly want to get ahead.

2013-03-05 Tue

The TTC - Refunds

I'll never understand the TTC scheme of things, so I live with it.

But the logic pains me.

I have half-a-dozen tickets, paper tickets, not tokens, in my wallet. The TTC has begun to replace them each year. This year they are brown, last year perhaps green, next year, who knows?

"I'm told that the idea is 'security"; changing the tickets each year thwarts the forgers.

I think not.

Load a different colour paper, or ink, into the word-processing file, and press "Start" again. Also reduce printing towards December, because you won't be able to sell that many tickets at the end of the year..

To alleviate public disgust for casual users who get stuck with unused tickets, the TTC in its infinite wisdom has instituted a scheme for replacement whereby you can upgrade tickets at specific stations for a while, after which you must travel, by subway, to the head office at Davisville.

It is not yet clear to me whether this will necessitate two more tickets down the drain just to reclaim the balance.

Here's the puzzle: Why not allow ANY station ticket-issuer to swap old tickets for new? Why force ticket-holders to traipse from, say, Kipling to Bloor-Yonge, transfer, north to Davisville, and back again, instead of just swapping tickets next time through Kipling?

I assume, of course, that TTC ticket sellers in their little kiosks are honest, can be trusted with thousands of dollars in cash, thousands of metal tokens, and hundreds of tickets.

I assume, of course, that at close of shift, a ticket kiosk person completes a register indicating that the dollar-value of tickets, tokens, passes and cash adds up to what it did at the start.

As an aside, I assume too that they are smart enough to toss in a toonie if they are short by two dollars; it's really not worth the hassle to re-count.

I can't come up with a logical (read "rational" or "sane") reason not to allow kioskers to swap or refund seniors and student paper-tickets.

2013-03-04 Mon

Retired

Well, that didn't turn out as I'd expected.

Betty's son is getting married. Again. I'm invited. She expects me to wear a suit and tie.

So far so good; I look good, at my best, in a suit and tie.

A white shirt, and tie, she says. I object; After 25 years of wearing white-shirt-and-tie a la IBM, I switched to coloured shirts and matching ties. Only two suits (navy-blue and striped grey) but lotsa shirts, and three times as many ties.

A NEW white shirt, she says, none of those yellowed-old shirts you hang on to.

I object. Having neither had a shirt professionally laundered nor bought a white shirt in an even longer time, I know which option will cost me a small fortune.

So I drop two white shirts off across the street at my friendly local cleaner. My only reason for going there is that he accepts wire coat-hangers from Betty's recycling room, and the other cleaner doesn't.

He cleans both white shirts and suggests that I purchase only 100% cotton shirts and wear a white T-shirt underneath for added brilliance.

Brilliant!

I wear, proudly, my looking-like-new white shirt to Betty's. She is impressed.

I point out that THIS cost me only $2, whereas new 100% cotton white shirts start at around $70 in Toronto and rise to a price that makes it cheaper to RENT a car, fill it with gasoline, and drive to Buffalo to buy a shirt.

She agrees.

I've won?

Nope.

She points out that I should now carry ALL my remaining dress shirts across the street to my friendly local cleaner and have them all made-to-look-like-new.

Expensive!

The TTC

Again.

Just to save you some time, I looked up this word in my 1,700+ page Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Goon: Person employed to terrorize esp. political or industrial opponents; A stupid person, a dolt.

Here we are, 11:30 on a bright sunny morning, Monday 4th March 2013 about to drop me off at the Passenger-drop-off parking lot on the east end of Kipling Subway Station.

Ooops! Access to the lot is blocked by a white van. This is a drive-through lot, like the one at the west end of the station, one-way in, one-way out; a mere technicality, perhaps.

Who would block the driveway when every parking space within the lot is empty?

I toot the car horn, once, politely.

No response, no movement. I put the car in park-gear and get out to see.

No driver in the vehicle; no other occupant (unless they are stretched out fast asleep in the back of the van).

It is a TTC van. Must be some great emergency inside here?

You can see part of the sign "Kipling" on the recently-opened access point.

What you can't see is that the van is parked across the sloped footpath ramp.

Not only is the vehicle parked, it is STOPPED can you believe. That's a TTC-erected "no stopping" sign, telling people not to stop here.

I'm done taking pictures; I have a train to catch, and she has a doctor's appointment. Best we back up the car onto the public street alongside the lot, the street where TTC buses hate to squeeze past cars that are too lazy to park in the passenger drop-off lot.

My photo-session has attracted attention.

A hired goon of the TTC, in his orange beanie cap, has wandered out to see what all the fuss is about.

Within seconds a second hired goon appears, sizes me up, leaps into the van and drives it to park in the closest parking slot.

If you go back and look at the first photo, you'll see he parked in a handicapped spot. I wish I'd taken a photo of that, too.

Let's be generous and put the driver down as mentally handicapped

I grab my gear, kiss my witness, Betty goodbye, and enter the foyer to the friendly TTC service. Where podgy hired goon (now you'll understand the definition above) gets stuck into me, verbally, which is a big mistake on his part.

I didn't record the conversation on my cell phone (a pity, really) but it ran something like this:

"You shouldn't take photos of me; that's illegal".

Wrong; it's illegal to take photos on TTC property without a permit; it's NOT illegal to take photos of TTC property from outside the TTC property, and I took the photo from the far side of the car that had to park on the public street because your van was blocking the parking lot entry. (I know this because in 1983 I applied for and was granted a photo-permit so I could take photos of subway trains for modeling purposes).

"I can take those photos off you".

No you can't; those photos are my property, on my cell-phone, my property, and in my pocket, on my person. (And yes, I'm aware of the recent ruling that police can search a phone if it is not password-protected, but I don't tell orange beanie-baby that).

"I'll call the police!".

OK. You go right ahead and do that. I am not due downtown until four o'clock. Go right ahead and call the police.

"Well, I don't have anything to do until four o'clock either" (How telling! Spoken like a true idiot).

By now, of course, I know that I'm dealing with a bully, and since all bullies are cowards, he is backing away on the defensive, but all the time thinking he is on the offensive.

Right, I say. Call the police.

"I said IF I call the police".

The conversation runs out of steam at this point, orange-beanie bully-boy having run out of original thoughts.

The van-driver sanely remains silent.

The two guys, one with a screwdriver, fumbling with the turnstile mechanism remain quiet, while darting glances in my direction. Maybe they've never met Andy Byford, CEO of the TTC; maybe they don't know whether he's 5'6" and wears a gray woolen coat with a green cap.

And anyway, what am I doing here at this new entrance facility at the East end of Kipling Subway Station? Why aren't I using the old one at the West End?

Well, like many other subway and surface-route passengers at Kipling, I've watched as the TTC built this thing, year after year, dollar after dollar, but unlike most others, once it was opened I decided to inspect it.

This entrance is good for me. I have sore knees; it hurts to walk up or down steps, and the physiotherapist advises I take elevators, escalators or ramps whenever they are available.

So rather than fight the crowds at the west end for the privilege of 36 stair-risers, I opt to use this end, with the sloping ramp to the bus level and an escalator down to the subway train level.

I note in closing that the TTC decides it takes four employees (or hired help) to repair a turnstile.

1: One to wield a plastic-handled screwdriver.

2: One to observe an orange screw-driver being wielded.

3: One to drive the van. Traffic-sign literacy not a requirement.

4: One wearing an orange beanie to intimidate clients and customers.

Not one of these four goons was capable of sticking their head out the door to see what the honking was about until pictures were being taken.

You and your passengers can form your own conclusions.

Weight Loss

I walked to the Royal Bank at Dundas and Spadina this sunny afternoon. 1,953 steps. And according to Google maps, 1.9 kilometers; but that's driving in a car on streets, of course. I make a pixilated track, right-and-left through alleys and so on, but it's probably the same.

For the moment, a rough guide for me is that 1,000 steps registered on the odometer is one kilometer.

2013-03-01 Fri

SUFE

And it's HO! And off to the local YMCA, right behind my building, where I have negotiated to take off their hands all the books they don't sell by 7pm tonight.

And if you're wondering what I mean by "right behind my building", the two photos above are taken from the same spot; the first is aimed East, the red-brick building is the YMCA; the second is aimed South - my back-door is just beyond the bright light and yellow posts on the left. An easy stroll with 6 cartons of books on a trolley.

Here is my first trolley-load of the 26 cartons in the first batch; the top cartons contain 40, 21 and 42 books respectively.

We estimated 750 books out in the hall, and another 750 in the back-storage, which didn't get to see the light of day.

I'll skim all the books, grabbing those I should read, and keeping some of those, but the bulk of the books will be distributed to the various charity and volunteer organizations around the city.

Bonus: These are some of the CDs I get, but only some. Many are still shrink-wrapped.

A carton of books typically weighs twenty-five pounds, so we're looking at about 1,000 lbs of books, or half a ton.

That's heavy reading!