2013-04-03 Wed

SUFE

"Screwge"

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.