Are there some good video shots of the winter solstice?

It does make for a dull celebration if the sun doesn't come out on the days of the winter solstice. The sun didn't come out in Vancouver this year for the 3 or 4 days around the shortest day of the year. Oddly enough, it was snowing, not raining as usual this year, but there was still no sun, no shadows.

But we don't have any ancient monuments in the Vancouver area - that I know of - that show amazing sights when the angle of the sun is just right as sun rises on the solstice. In other areas of the world there are many monuments that relate to the winter solstice. So in this age of video cell-phones and YouTube are people donating video to the world of the sun rising on the winter solstice on ancient monuments?

The 5000 year old mound at Newgrange in Ireland has a webcast of the event. This year they didn't get sun for the solstice, so they "incorporated clips from the 2007 webcast into the 2008 webcast". That's a bit of a cheat, but it's fascinating to watch.

2,000 people gather around Stonehenge for the winter solstice to see the sun shine on the monument and cast it's shadows. This year, that was a bit of a bust because it was cloudy there as well. (Ten times the number of people gather at Stonehenge for the sumer solstice, but that marks the time when the days start getting shorter, a bit of a bummer, and you're a bit of a wimp if you make it to the summer solstice and not the winter solstice.) Check out some of the celebrations on YouTube.

But beyond that, there are very few videos of winter solstice at ancient monuments around the world. Is there any way to encourage people to video these events and share them? In the future I will be keeping my eyes open for opportunities while surfing to suggest those lucky enough to be close to ancient monuments to take some time to video them.

Will Vancouver run out of yogurt?

A couple of days ago we saw on the news a tragedy of major proportions: a tractor-trailer truck loaded with (gasp!) yogurt overturned in a ditch outside Vancouver. The snow we never have, but for some reason have a overwhelmingly huge amount of this year, is to blame. The driver wasn't hurt, and no other vehicle got damaged, but the loss of yogurt to Vancouverites is a frightful thought for many people.

Will there be panic in the stores as people search empty shelves for the milky delight?

If people hear a rumour of a store that has a stock of yogurt, will the store be overrun with hungry granola munchers who need the silky liquid to mix with the grains to create a complete meal?

Will people just stop getting up in the morning because their breakfast food is just not there for them? Will they skip the morning yoga classes? Will the sushi bars have to extend hours so "last call" is pushed back for people to drown their yogurt-losses in sushi?

The answer is of course not.

In Vancouver we have developed a huge network of sources of yogurt. When one source of supply is interrupted another one can be used to cover the deficit. This is something we take very seriously here.

Silly.

How badly do we want to photograph Snow Geese?

At this time of the year there are snow geese in the Vancouver area, but they don't stay around for long, so photographing them can only be done for a short time. We are getting quite into taking pictures of birds, so this sounds like a challenge we need to pursue. But should we?

It is very cold out there right now. There is snow on the ground, so it's difficult to drive safely. The birds are typically found in fields - last year many schools had to keep the children inside because the school grounds were covered in birds. But the fields they like are way outside Vancouver in the suburbs, so that means driving.

We were at the Reifel Bird Sanctuary a couple of days ago, but the birds were not. We did see some flocks of large white birds that were probably the snow geese while we were driving to the sanctuary, but there were no snow geese in the sanctuary, so we missed the opportunity to photograph them that day. On the way home we may have seen a flock flying back where we had just come from, but we weren't sure, so we decided not to go on a wild goose chase.

So now we have to decide how much more effort we will go to for photos of these birds... it is cold out there, but we didn't get any pictures last year, do we wait until next year? That's pretty long term planning for us! And if we get some pictures this year, will we have to get better pictures next year? Such pressure from these migratory birds!

This could be the makings of a multi-year wild goose chase!

What can you buy for 50 cents?

Interestingly, there is no easy key stroke to get the cent symbol anymore. Maybe that was just on typewriters.

So you're probably saying there is nothing you can buy for 50 cents... but there is something very valuable that provides for many minutes of enjoyment. It's bird seed!

We went to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary on Tuesday. It was a frigid -6 degrees celsius (yes, in Vancouver that's too damned cold and no one is used to it) and there was snow on the ground (which also doesn't usually happen in or around Vancouver) but it was sunny and it's a great time of the year to take photos of birds. So we braved the cold to take some photos. Because it is winter and it's very hard for birds to find food under the snow, we opted to get a couple of bags of bird seed at the entrance gate. It was 50 cents a bag!

When we got the bird seed the woman at the entrance said the birds would be happy to see us because very few people had been there in this weather. The mix of seed was good for the birds right now, so they could use the food and we were sure it was all good for them. Typically we don't get bird seed because it's not a great idea to make wild birds dependent on humans. Unfortunately, that's why the birds are at the sanctuary, so they already are dependent.

We saw many little sparrows and chickadees, the ubiquitous mallards, coots, and pintails, and 3 sandhill cranes! The sandhill cranes were almost as tall as me! They are graceful grey birds that introduced themselves by walking on water - the frozen water in one of the ponds. After a great photo shoot they flew off and we followed them. They were near some handy benches, so we got the bird seed out and had a wonderful time feeding the cranes (and some ducks too). The cranes have long thin beaks and very good aim to collect the bird seeds on the ground. So we took even more pictures.

It was good for the birds, and good for us too. So that's what 50 cents will buy.

What is that white stuff?

Yes, it's snow. Yes, we're in Canada, so we should know all about this. But we're in Vancouver!

When we moved to Vancouver 10 years ago it was fascinating to watch the snow removal efforts of people here. They actually moved the snow into the middle of the streets! That way it melted faster. It was guaranteed to rain soon after the snow had finished landing, and it would all be gone in a matter of a couple of hours.

Yesterday it started snowing in the afternoon and it kept accumulating. The snow is still here now, the next evening, and will likely be here for a few more days. This is just not right.

Of course there are compensations, we live at the top of a rather steep hill, and our windows face the right direction for viewing this hill. The entertainment value of watching people attempt to drive up the hill lasts for quite a while. Just some clues for the clueless:

1 - When driving in new snow, use the busy, most travelled street, not the back alley! The best surface you can get is the travelled street.
2 - Slow and steady works. Spinning your tires in a blind effort to go as fast as your tires will spin wastes gas, makes ice under your tires, and will not get you anywhere quickly. Those cars that are going slowly are actually...going somewhere, unlike those with spinning wheels.
3 - Park the car on the side of the road if you're going to give up on it and walk away from it. Abandoned cars in the middle of the road are only good for bumper-car games.
4 - Stay home when it snows if you can. It's the smart thing to do, and you don't want to die of stupidity.

What does 'oversharing' mean?

Oooooo, Webster's New World Dictionary has chosen their Word of the Year and it's "oversharing". It means "to divulge excessive personal information". Been there, sat through that, wondered how to politely escape from it.

It happens on buses. Some people like to talk to bus drivers as if they were bar tenders. This means there is way too much detail given about the person's life to the bus driver and everyone else within hearing distance. Maybe getting off the bus one stop early is a good idea today.

It happens in drug stores on weekday mornings. And you know the conversations in the drug store are going to be about health issues... it makes that product on the shelf way over there extremely interesting all of a sudden. I wonder if that's how they sell a lot of products in drug stores, they put the visually inviting products in strategic areas so people can edge away from other's conversations politely.

Oversharing is also at an almost epidemic level on the Internet. This very interesting article from the New York Times describes the experience of a blogging-addict, for lack of a better term (warning, it's a long article). I've been wondering how many people are actually hitting the wall and feeling that they are oversharing their thoughts and feelings with the world. If it's the word of the year, maybe it's a substantial number of people. Interesting.

Is running with a musical instrument safe?

"Don't run with scissors!" Was definitely something you learned as a young child. (I hope, for your sake.)

But how about running with other objects... like tubas, flutes or drums? Those could be dangerous as well - even though it's far more entertaining for onlookers, so there's got to be an embarrassment factor in there too!

The Vancouver Santa Clause Parade went off on Sunday in sunny skies and all! We live next to the start of the parade route. No, we didn't go out to see it, but we lived it for a few hours. Starting at about noon, we were woken up (hey, it's Sunday, we sleep in) by a set of drummers - about 10 of them - warming up in our back alley. They found an acoustically great place to make lots of noise in the loading bay / garbage area of the restaurant building next to us. So we were drummed out of bed.

And then the other bands in the parade started warming up - apparently we are living in the band practice area. In the alley, on the streets, everywhere you can stuff a marching band to warm up, there were marching bands. Do you know how many marching bands are in your average parade? LOTS.

The funny part was when one of the bands was a bit late getting into line to join the parade! Runners holding - and trying not to hit themselves with - wind instruments, followed by these poor guys carrying the tubas and drums. It was like a wrestling match! I bet on the instruments! Too bad it wasn't the bagpipers, now those instruments would have an unfair advantage!

Is that disapproval or admiration?

On December 5 diamonds valued at 85 million euros were stolen from a Paris retail store. From the description of the heist in this article it almost sounds like the police are admiring the work of the thieves. They describe the heist as "meticulously planned" "the biggest jewelry heist yet in France" and the thieves as "major pros".

They then go on to describe the market they expect the thieves to sell the diamonds at as a "new El Dorado for traffickers", which conjures up visions of legendary markets of wealth.

The writer of the article definitely was on an admiration kick. The store that was robbed was given a good write-up as well, it "specialises in ultra-luxury jewelry" and sells to royalty (both rulers and pop stars). And then recent record breaking or unique robberies in Europe were numerated.

It seems as if a really good heist of ultra-expensive items from the very rich is something to be admired.

Is painting in the dark with a flashlight good?

OK, so they are working into December to finish painting the outside of our condo building, which can be considered nice because they may actually finish this year. (It's already been a year and a half since they started.) BUT is it good that they are painting in the dark? Is it good that it's past 5 pm and they are still painting? The sun went down about an hour ago.

The building has gone through stages of men redoing the edges of all the windows, replacing tiles on open balconies (to the exact same colour tiles, just a bit bigger - why?) to painting the beige bits (with more beige paint, maybe a bit lighter, but essentially the same colour). And it's all been annoying as hell due to the construction debris that is everywhere (don't park your car near this building unless you want dents), the scaffolding which makes the place look terrible, and the bloody noisy, bad mouthed construction workers with the bad taste in music constantly outside our windows.

We have many paint spots on our windows already. I shudder to think what these men are doing to the windows in the dark. Is there any chance of ever having clean windows again?

What's over there?

It's not a deep philosophical question, but it's an energizing question that gets you off your butt to go exploring.

If it wasn't for that question, would any European have discovered North America? What about South America? What's over there? And Australia, what's over there then?

Would you ever find that great new restaurant or the coffee shop with the best views to sit and have coffee in without that question?

If it wasn't for that question, would everyone convince themselves that where they are is "good enough" and they never need to move again? And isn't "never need to move again" the definition of death?

Some questionnaire developers want to know the attitude of the responders, so they ask questions about your attitude towards change "Are you a change seeker or do you like things to stay the same?". In truth the answer is, of course, "It depends" on the situation. The orbit of the planet - yes, that would be a good thing to stay the same, we just don't want to know what would happen if the planet stopped moving. Changing newspaper boxes so you have one big one instead of a dozen little different colored ones all over the sidewalk - yes, you could change that and life would go on, be less cluttered, yup, change that.

But if they asked "Does the question 'What's over there?' get you interested in seeking out the answer?" that is much easier to answer, and may give them a better idea about the attitude of their responders. It would be easier to get rid of the "dead wood" that way, wouldn't it? Knuck, knuck, ooh, I like that one.

I think this has got to be one of my favourite questions. A whole world of possibilities are open to you when you ask this question.

Has anyone seen my screwdriver?

We are finally putting our books back into the second bedroom after the flood that made us frantically move them all out 2 months ago. We have a lot of books, so we needed more shelves and this was an appropriate time to add to our collection, so we needed to put together more shelves before beginning the long slow process of re-shelving the books.

The big stumbling block to this plan was a missing screwdriver. It wasn't where it should be, and it doesn't come when called.

Apparently we're not the only ones missing some tools that seem a bit out of reach. The astronauts on the space station have also lost some tools. During a space walk last week a tool bag deftly escaped from astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper. It floated off into the vacuum of space never to be seen again. Except now it's the latest challenge for amateur astronomers.

Find the tool bag. If you have a powerful telescope, an accurate watch, and can point the telescope in the right direction, there are instructions on the web on how to see the escaped tool bag in orbit. See this news article.

Typical humans, anywhere they go they misplace their screwdrivers. No shelves going up in the space station now, they won't be able to grab a good book and a cup of tea and get comfortable.

Does anyone hear that knocking?

So I'm just sitting at my desk in my home office, working on my computer, when I hear this knocking. It's a metal sound. Doesn't sound like it's coming from inside. It must be something outside.

I look out the window and I don't see anybody. But there is this large metal container that the construction workers are using to put their equipment in. I hear more knocking. Oh damn, one of them has been locked in the metal box. Now who do I phone to get someone with a key to let the guy out?

As I'm going through the list of possible people to phone I realize that there is no business name or phone number on the metal box. I could phone the office downstairs, our building has 24 hour security, but they do walk around the building sometimes making them hard to find, and they don't have the key. I could phone the police, but they don't have a key. I could phone the fire department, hey, now there are people with some heavy metal busting equipment...

And then I see a construction guy come and open the metal box and let his coworker out. They seem to be joking about it, so I guess no harm was done.

Oh well, it would have been more fun to get the fire department in on this. Bummer.

Why are they digging deeper in that hole?

I was walking along Georgia Street today between Thurlow and Bute, just past the new Shangri-La Hotel which is set to open in January when I heard several shrill warning whistles. A few seconds later there was a boom. It was more of a base-note that you feel rather than a loud noise that you hear. And then I heard one more shrill whistle, which would be the all-clear whistle. They were blasting in the hole in the ground that was going to be the foundation of a new Ritz Carleton. But there isn't going to be a new building there.

Part of the impact of the current global financial crisis is that construction has been halted or abandoned on new buildings. In downtown Vancouver the hole in the ground that was to be the foundation of a Ritz Carleton hotel / apartment building has all but been abandoned. The huge signs with the great pictures of the planned building are gone. No company name is displayed anywhere near the site.

So why are people still digging deeper in that hole? Shouldn't they be filling it up so no one falls in while the financial crisis continues and nothing is being built?

Some "news" on the web suggested that the construction was stopped because they needed to make changes to the parking garage design. Uhuh, that would be what was going in that hole, but I don't think that's what is happening. The derelict building that was there before the construction was started was your basic rich-person's graffiti - a partly-built building that was never completed and just abandoned to be an eye-sore. Maybe this is just a more insane and dangerous version of rich-people graffiti, a hole where people can fall into and die rather than spray paint and squat in.

It's fall in Vancouver now, with the coming rain maybe this will be the biggest puddle on the planet, and they're going for a Guinness World Record!

What is the future of questions?

So as just a random thought I decided to google on "questions". I got about 861 million results.

The top result was a link for a Twenty Questions toy - that would be a paid link, and not too interesting.

The second result was a link to Wikipedia, not much of a surprize, but boy was that a dreary Wikipedia entry. I was expecting a dissertation on the Socratic method but it was only briefly mentioned.

The third result was a link to asnwerbag.com where people ask questions - not very interesting ones from my quick wander through - and other people answer these questions - not experts in any particular subject, just people. The answers were just about as interesting as the questions.

The rest of the results on the first page were discussion questions for people learning English as a second language, job interview questions, advice on how to ask questions to technical people (them being only illusionary humans), and an intriguing FAQ from the American Internal Revenue Agency. This means the number of googles on the IRS FAQ list must be incredibly huge for the page to rank that high in google results.

The other interesting part of the google result was "Searches related to:" area which included a suggested search for "answers". That search resulted in only 389 million results. So there are at least twice as many hits for "questions" as there are for "answers". I think there's a life lesson in there somewhere.

And just to compound the feeling that there are more questions than answers in life, the fourth result in the list was for "Google Answers" the text for this hit started out: "We're sorry, but Google Answers has been retired, and is no longer accepting..." Well, that's us told.

Did it bounce or did it sink?

When you have an email address for someone (that you haven't sent an email to in a long time) and you try to use it and it doesn't work... did it bounce because the email address doesn't exist anymore? Or did the owner of the email address tag you as a spammer to get rid of you? Did your message sink into the ether never to be seen by anyone?

How do you tell? How can I find out?

I don't recall pegging them as spammers... but they claim the email address doesn't work anymore. I have been trying to get rid of the slush, so I might have tagged them as a spammer. They've used another email avenue to contact me, but I don't really feel like responding using that one.

So I could tag one of my own email addresses as a spammer in one of my other accounts (I have 6 email addresses and counting now... I don't want to go on about it, they just mushroomed, and are a current source of clutter in my life.) But I don't want any of my emails being pegged as a spammer anywhere. But I don't really know what happens when your address has been pegged as a spammer. How much do I want to find out?

Well, I guess the real question is, do I want to respond to this person who sends only yearly Xmas spam - part of the message being "I'm too busy to read any of your email, so don't send me any email replies from this Xmas greeting. You bastards." OK, so the bastards part isn't explicitly stated, but it is implied.

Well, when I put it that way, why am I even bothering to think about it? If I did peg them as a spammer: Sink baby, sink. If they typed the wrong address: YP (your problem)

What does the status evaluation "5 by 5" mean?

It's a term used by the pilot in Aliens right before the small landing craft is launched from the interstellar mother ship (in the 2nd Alien movie). It's also a term used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the Faith character uses it a lot, but no one else knows what it means.

I've found the answer to this one! It is a way of describing the quality of sound in communications. The first number is for the strength of the signal, and the second number is the clarity of the signal. 5 is the best rating for each, so it means "excellent strength and perfect clarity".

The question then becomes, does that have anything to do with the movie or the TV show?

No one is left on the interstellar mother ship in Aliens to communicate with the people in the landing craft, everyone is in the same ship. They could turn around and talk to each other in person. The landing ship does drop off a big tank with most of the people in it and then flies away from them, but they were not testing the communications between the two of those vehicles.

There is no testing of any equipment for sound or other abilities on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think the Faith character was just quoting from the Aliens movie because "5 by 5" sounds cool.

I think the Aliens movie uses "5 by 5" just because it sounds cool too.

Pondering questions of "what does that mean" can be fun, but don't expect deeply philosophical answers.

Can we get rid of daylight savings time?

We did the "fall back" portion of daylight savings time last weekend. So on Sunday 2 am became 1 am and we got an extra hour of sleep.

And then we had traffic chaos while people tried to deal with reseting their internal clocks to match the new time.

And then people came to appointments an hour earlier than they should have because they didn't know it was the time change weekend, and had to waste an hour of their lives waiting.

And then we found out just how early the sun went down when it was 5 pm and all of a sudden it was dark outside.

In Canada we've changed the dates when this infernal daylight savings "fall forwards" and "spring ahead" will happen. We "fall" later and will "spring" earlier. This is because the 'mericans have changed when they reset their clocks, and we all know they will never understand what time it is in Canada (if any of them really care) if we don't change with them. It's the younger sibling being bullied syndrome.

But I was so enjoying having the days get slowly shorter! It was an easy transition into winter that way - almost a natural change that the body could handle. Working with the planet instead of fighting to control the ultimately uncontrollable.

The spring shift is always the more chaotic of the two changes. From traffic chaos to more heart attacks, springing ahead is worse than falling back. See this article for more from a Swedish study on that subject: Norwich Bulletin Article

Theoretically, daylight savings time is supposed to save energy costs, but most studies find this is really not the case. See this newspaper article: Star Tribune Article

I think we should get rid of the idea entirely and skip the spring time shift and the fall time shift. Our health is at risk. The entire country's health is at risk - except for Saskatchewan, where they are smart enough not to bother doing the time shift. We need to learn from Saskatchewan - not something people often say, but it's true.

Why are so many people wearing berets?

It's an interesting fashion statement to say the least. A beret on the head identifies you as either an artist with a healthy ego, a little old lady who crochets a lot, or a mime. And there are dozens of berets being worn in Vancouver right now. (I'm hoping they are mostly artists... the mime idea kind of scares me.)

But why is this fashion statement being made? These hats are not water-proof. Most of them will look awful if they get water stains on them. Many of them are crochet hats with lots of holes - the parts that are not holes are very absorbent wool that will stay wet for hours.

The Vancouver Writer's and Readers Festival - that I volunteered at again this year - was crowded with many beret covered heads. A large portion of the audience are want-to-be writers, so it wasn't that odd to see - that was the artists with healthy egos.

But I've seen many more people wearing berets out on the street after the festival wrapped up last weekend. In the rain. Yes, the rain is back in Vancouver. We expect it to stop in April - or March if we're lucky - until then we expect rain most every day. The only beret that will keep your head dry in this rain is a shower cap. I'm gonna look closer at these hats....

Does anyone have a pen?

My spouse and I attended a few of the events at the Vancouver International Writer's and Reader's Festival this year. It was great to watch a few authors read from their books - and then have on-stage discussions afterwards or answer audience questions.

We even purchased a couple of books and had the authors sign them. Ooh, my first signed book, I was quite thrilled!

So the authors had pens to sign their books... but the audience members were given surveys to fill out, and do you think anyone in the audience had a pen? The audience is made up of mostly wanna-be writers, but no pen was in sight. Going to a writers festival without a pen is quite ironic.

It seems odd to think about it now, but with computers taking over the planet, why would anyone cary a pen? It's about as anachronistic as wearing a watch, rather than using your cell phone as a time keeping device. It's odd how the everyday of a decade ago is a foreign concept now.

Can a 9th century German ghost understand current English?

It's a ghoulish time this halloween, little children are all dressed up as super heros and princesses. Little adults are dressed up as bums and hookers. It's amazing how our hopes in life dive so very far in so little time.

And on TV there is a veritable avalanche of programs with people looking for ghosts and trying to get them on film or audio tape. These TV programs typically involve a group of people - some psychics, some TV show hosts, some skeptics - asking "If there's any ghost that wants to talk to us please let your presence be known." There is no real rationale behind why any ghost would want to respond to these odd people who are doing a one-time visit to disturb the dead. I'm sure they don't get any commercial funding in the afterlife for making appearances on TV programs. But it is nice to see the different castles and areas of the world, and it is fun to watch the people freak themselves out in dark, scary places.

The one thing I'm not so sure about is, do any of these ghosts understand current English? Have they been doing community-centre learning programs to learn modern English? I've just seen a TV program stalking a ghost from the 9th Century AD - a German ghost. All the people were speaking modern English. One of the psychics had a strong Scottish accent. Oddly enough, they didn't get any evidence of the ghost.

Are there many ghosts of babel fish - the ultimate universal translator that sticks in your ear and translates everything for you - and does each human ghost get one when they agree to haunt a place? If not... where do they learn their English so they can respond to the TV investigators?

Who thought self-flushing toilets on boats was a good idea?

The thing about a boat is, it travels on water. The thing about water is, it moves. Whey you are walking around on a boat - even a very large BC Ferries boat - you are occasionally tipped and rolled to the side. Even when you are sitting down - you are occasionally rolled to the side.

The thing about self-flushing toilets is, they flush on their own. The thing about toilets flushing on their own is, they do it when they sense movement off the toilet.

If you put these two ideas together... you get self-flushing toilets doing their flushing whenever a big wave moves the person sitting on the toilet to the side.

Who thought this was a good idea? I remain confused on this one.

Why are there so many SORRY busses?

In Vancouver we have a lot of busses. They are typically stuffed with people and are a very useful, if crowded, way to get around the city. But why is the most prominent feature of these busses the SORRY message that shows when the bus is not in service?

When a bus is in service the number and name of the route is displayed on the electronic sign on the top of the front window. This is always done in mixed upper and lower case letters, so it's not an obtrusive sign - just a very useful one.

Sometimes when there is a sports game on, like a hockey game, the sign occasionally flashes Go Team Go. The message goes back to the number and name of the route fairly quickly, so the cheer does not interrupt or confuse potential riders that much.

Typing anything in all capital letters is considered rude. It's called "shouting" at your readers. It's almost as bad as using all lower case letters and actually expecting people to go through the pain of trying to read what you didn't put enough effort into writing to properly capitalize. Life is too short to bother with text written in all lower case and too stressful already without having text shout at you.

So the busses that are not in service shout the fact out. You can't miss these shouting busses, even if you weren't waiting for one. And if you were waiting for one, it's rather disheartening to be passed by so many screaming SORRY ones! It's nice to know when a bus is not in service, but do they have to be so noisy about it?

Where should I put this spoon?

Now, before I get too many suggestions for anatomically questionable places to put a spoon, let me give some background on where this question came from. I was on a BC Ferry last weekend, and wanted some yogurt to munch, so I asked my spouse to get some while I watched our stuff. He returned with some yummy yogurt and a spoon - not just a disposable plastic spoon, a real spoon that you put in a dishwasher and use again. Which was great for the eating of the yogurt, but then the question came up: Where should I put this spoon so that someone will take it to the dishwasher, wash it, and put it out to be used again?

This type of question is popping up more often these days. With the idea of reuse really hitting the mainstream, you can often find the more environmentally responsible options. When I go to Starbucks I typically ask for my coffee "for here" which gets me a real live ceramic cup to drink it from. This is wonderful, it makes the drinking more enjoyable, guilt free, and I think the coffee actually tastes better in a ceramic mug too. But then where do you put the empty cup? I do hate leaving debris on the table when I leave - that being akin to littering - but I don't see an easy option of where to put the cup.

It's not as bad as a story I heard from a friend who was on a beach in Portugal with families with babies all around. One mother actually changed her child's diaper, put the dirty diaper on the sand, and then packed everything else up and made to leave. The diaper was still on the sandy beach, so my friend encouraged her to pick up the diaper so it wouldn't still be there when she visited the beach the next time. The mother was pissed-off at the suggestion, but the father had enough sense to look embarrassed and picked up the diaper before leaving. So how often did the mother leave dirty diapers anywhere she happened to be sitting at the time? The poor small human child probably had its excrement dumped freely all over Portugal. The karma of the infant was probably damaged to a point where it would take years to recover. The planet would be cleaner and more sanitary without that child. What was it's mother thinking?

So my spouse did manage to find the right place to put the dirty spoon before we got off the Ferry, but it did take a bit of hunting. And I am still leaving the Starbucks mugs on the tables, but the people working there are pretty good at clearing the tables. Maybe the child will grow up to be a doctor and help mankind. Hopefully the "where should I put this" question will be an easier one to answer as more environmentally sound practices become common place.

Isn't it nice dealing with people who have pride in their work?

I had to go have blood taken for tests today and it's always something I hate doing because people have great difficulty finding my veins. I typically have a pink tinge to my skin, but my body's attitude is generally: "Yes, there is blood in here. No, you can't have any of it." So when I find someone who can find the vein on the first shot without leaving a huge bruise, I'm very relieved. I'm sure I will never see them at the same lab again, it's only the ones who have problems who seem to stick around in the same job for extended periods of time, but I take my happiness when I can.

Today I actually had a lab technician who found the vein without a problem! Celebrations began almost immediately. I asked if she thought they would ever get one of the machines that use blue light to light up veins in people to make the job easier. She said she expected hospitals could make good use of those, but in the drop-in labs they don't really need it "Because we're all so good!"

Wow, actual pride in her work! That is so rare, and so incredibly welcome! Someone who does her job well, and takes pride in doing it well. Life is good.

Why did the pigeon cross the road?

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.

The question I have is: Why are those pigeons on the road in the middle of traffic? And if they are crossing the road, why are they moving in odd circles rather than going from one side to the other? And if they are pigeons - which they are - why are they walking instead of flying across the road?

These are the pigeons who usually sit on the power lines that cross the road at the corner just up the hill from us. They are the ones that are known to aim their droppings so that they hit as many people as possible - we have washed off plenty. So they don't seem to be dumb birds.

The weather may have changed rather drastically at the beginning October here in the rain forest (oh yeah, rain forest, I remember that, it was such a sunny summer I almost forgot) but the pigeons knew about this. They've been through this before, the rain comes, it gets cooler, been here, done that. It's fall, it's now going to rain until March.

But the pigeons seem to have, on mass, lost their common bird sense about not walking across roads and into traffic. As we drive onto the ramp down to our parking lot, 3 pigeons decide to walk right under the car! We are going at a crawl and hoping the birds get out of the way of the tires, but why are they walking under the car instead of flying away? A quick look back confirms that no one was hit, but that was a tense drive for us! Are the pigeons messing with our minds?

Has mother nature gotten bored with the using obvious climate changes to wake us up to the peril that faces us and she's now making the birds do wacky things to get us to pay attention? Or have the pigeons upped their consciousness to a point where all of the pigeons have been watching us long enough to get a few ideas on how to make the monkeys freak out?

I don't think it's a random occurrence, I think the pigeons are playing with our minds. Why did the pigeon cross the road? To play with our minds!

Is using a clock as a calculator odd?

This week my volunteer work helping in the offices of the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival included the task of adding up hours. This is because all volunteers can request a free ticket, and these tickets are given out in a lottery of all tickets available, but the volunteer must work at least 12 hours to be eligible to request a ticket.

So the festival needs to know who is working enough time to get a ticket. So I was adding up everyone's scheduled hours. I was using a clock and a piece of paper to scribble on to do the math. The next volunteer who came in for the afternoon shift thought that was very odd. She said there was a calculator in the desk drawer. I find those annoying when adding up time.

So is it odd to use the clock as a calculator? As a visual key it's very useful to count the hours from 9:15 to 11:30 on the clock face (2 1/4), and count 6:30 to 9:45 on the clock face (3 1/4). It's kind of like an abacus. It doesn't really help with the fraction math, and I admit it's been years since I've added 3/4 + 3/4 + 1/2 and the like, but it was a good mental work out.

I admit it's close to using your fingers to do addition, but I find it very useful.

I wondered if other people do the same as I do. So I did some googling. There are abacus and clock combination apparatus that you can buy. Actually, many of them. So I think this is a valid and popular way to add up time. I guess it's not that odd. Google is a very comforting tool for making life make sense.

What do I want to watch?

On the weekend the spouse was busy putting together some of his favourite photos to create a book (potentially quite a nice book, updates to follow). So he said "watch whatever you want on the TV, but not a pirate movie". OK, so maybe I've played those DVDs too much lately, but what do I want to watch?

I want to watch something with adventure, humour, fun, physical action... no, actually I want to be IN something with all those things. I want movies to take the next step and be 3 dimensional, and I want to be involved in them, not just watching them on a flat screen.

We have a Wii game console, it's a great tool for having fun because you typically stand while playing a game, and your arms swing and you can actually work up a sweat. Unlike other game consoles, your thumbs are not the only part of your body getting exercise when you play with the Wii. I want the same kind of interaction with movies. I want to do sword fights and swim underwater and be inside the movie.

So how long do we have to wait for this to happen? The Star Trek series was said to inspire the iPod and other MP3 players into existence. When will something inspire enough smart people to create the technology to put people inside a movie rather than in a chair watching a flat screen?

Sometimes progress is just too slow.

What is that mouse doing?

Dude. If you want a freaky experience, try using a wireless mouse when you're half asleep - or half pickled.

The neat thing about a wireless mouse is, it's wireless. The neater thing is, you really can't tell which way is up and which way is down when the mouse is upside down!

Try using the wireless mouse with the buttons at the base of your palm and the other end under your fingers. The pointer does really freaky things, and it's really hard to click that thing!

Don't drink and surf... the mouse will be your undoing!

What's another term for overly ambitious?

Dehumidifying Vancouver

So we have a flood in our apartment building and for the 3rd time, yes, the water is on our floor and in the walls of our apartment. So we have the disaster recovery dudes come in, rip up carpets, drill holes in kitchen cabinet toe kicks, put 3 industrial strength fans in a bedroom and the kitchen. and put a huge dehumidifier in the bedroom. The disaster recovery guys are typically fun guys, they cheerfully rip up your home and warn you to keep the windows closed, or else the dehumidifier won't work - it will "dehumidify Vancouver" before it will take the water out of your room if you leave the window open.

Now there's a term! Dehumidify Vancouver. The mere thought brings to mind many other fun overly ambitious terms like:

* boiling the ocean
* solves all our problems
* hole in one
* self-appraisal
* honest feedback
* getting your ducks in a row
* business intelligence
* help hotline
* herding cats

Is there something trying to escape from the walls of my apartment condominium building?

Maybe I jinxed it. A couple of days ago I wrote about the labyrinth of duct work in my apartment building and the new access doors on the 9th floor. I figured a small Minotaur had moved in because they would feel right at home in the maze. I also talked about the perplexing maze of pipes that run through this building. The noise that comes from these pipes had me thinking there were small versions of mythical sea monsters living in there. And yesterday we had another flood. So maybe we do have monsters and they are having epic battles in our walls.

The flood started on the 9th floor and the water flowed down to a point where the cupboards above the kitchen sink on the 1st floor had a waterfall coming out of them. It took a while for the investigators to find the leak. All of the apartments from the 8th floor down now have holes in their walls. The investigators started looking on the 2nd floor and moved up through all the apartments until they found the source. It was the 9th floor. The floor plan on the 10th floor is different. The amazing mess of piping and duct work on the change-over is the culprit.

So yet again we have holes in our walls, water on the floor, people from our property management company who want to get restorers in here as soon as possible to fix the damage, and an unresponsive Strata Council who will have to pay for it and will delay the entire process for months. Yes, this has happened to us 3 times now, we know how bad the Strata Council is, we are expecting the worst.

But have the monsters managed to escape? Or do they enjoy the pain and frustration of the human inhabitants of this building when we have a flood? If they enjoy floods, an apartment condominium in Vancouver is The Place To Be.

Why are people queueing behind me?

We typically do food shopping at Granville Island Public Market on the weekends after we get as much as we can from our West End Farmer's Market. This weekend it was especially busy at Granville Island. There were a lot of people, mostly milling about, a few were purchasing items, but there were a lot of tourists taking pictures of us doing our grocery shopping, as there oddly often are.

But why were people constantly forming queues behind me?

When we do our shopping in the Public Market my spouse and I typically discus and decide on what needs to be purchased at the various vendors. Then the spouse typically requests the items and handles the transaction and I move to the side to get out of the way.

This weekend I did my regular getting out of the way maneuver, but I noticed every time I found a place out of the way to stand, I found I was standing in a crowd again. Now it is typical to find ourselves in a crowd when we're together at a vendor discussing what to get... people see others purchasing and they come up to see what all the excitement is about. Or something. But when I'm standing beside a pole, or in the middle of a walking area without any vendors, why would I find myself in a crowd?

Then I figured it out. Everyone is queueing behind me! I'm not standing in a line. There is no one in front of me, but these people are lining up behind me! I was standing outside in front of the bakery, just under the awning to stay out of the rain, and people came and stood in a line behind me! I moved to the side and the crowd milled around and looked confused. Then they slowly dispersed.

There is a whole group of tourists who are queue addicts in Vancouver right now! And they all want to stand behind me. I must look like I'm from around here and must know what I'm lining up for. But I'm not lining up for anything!

This is all I can think up for this odd group behaviour I've observed. Anyone else have any ideas?

Why is shredding paper so enjoyable?

I'm volunteering once a week to help in the offices of the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival and I have to admit my favourite job is shredding paper.

There is something therapeutic about taking small sheets of dead tree with colourful squiggles on them, putting them into a machine that shreds them into smaller pieces of dead tree and then taking them over to the recycle bin and adding them to other pieces of dead trees. It's destructive, and yet, it's going into recycling, so it's not as bad as if it was going to landfill. A not-so guilty pleasure.

The other fun job today was rolling up huge - bigger than me - posters for bus shelter advertisements. You don't realize how big one of those things are until you try to roll them up!

Other than that, not much happened - I didn't even have to take a phone call. Not very exciting, but it may pick up as we get closer to the event.

What is living in the walls of apartment condominium buildings?

Vancouver is a sea of apartment buildings. Most of these buildings contain a large number of privately owned condominium units. And most of these lovely apartments hide a labyrinth of duct work, electrical wiring, and plumbing design done by a certifiable madman.

In our building we've recently had our dryer ducts cleaned. Well, most of us have had our dryer ducts cleaned. But several months after this process started, today they are finishing up the 9th floor. What happened on the 9th floor that caused the act of duct cleaning to take several months? It's the labyrinth. Maybe it's something that's been living in the labyrinth. Maybe we have a small version of the Minotaur living in our walls!

The final solution to removing the Minotaur from the dryer ducts on the 9th floor has involved making holes in the walls in the apartments of the 9th floor. Big holes with new hatches. Permanent doors to give access to the world of the labyrinth beyond the walls. Maybe the Minotaur just thinks this is a home improvement, giving it access to wander about outside the labyrinth.

Why the 9th floor? You may ask. Because the floor plan of the 9th floor is not the same as the floor plan on the 10th floor. There are 4 apartments on the 9th floor and 3 on the 10th floor. The floor plans change again a couple of times as you go up the building, but the problem is only on this one change-over point. The Minotaur obviously doesn't like heights.

We had to find a water shut off point in our main bathroom a couple of weeks ago. It was well hidden under the vanity, behind the drawers, covered by a metal plate that was screwed on, 2 handles surrounded by pink insulation. And this is all a very long way from the shower stall and bathtub. Just how the pipes get from there to the shower we will never know! So what's been living in that maze? Is it the refuge of sea monsters that have had to find new homes because all the divers with side-scanners and sea monster investigators with cameras are making too much noise in their regular environment? At night there are some very odd noises that come out of our pipes. Maybe it's the sea monsters.

Since we live on the 6th floor, maybe the Minotaur on the 9th floor is battling with the sea monsters from our floor at night. I'm sure the plumbing on the 9th floor has its own special problems as well - maybe it is connected to the labyrinth.

This is, of course, all wild speculation on my part... but noises in the night do make the mind wander.

Why is transferring a call so difficult?

Every office has a different phone system, and every phone system is different, but no matter where you are, transferring a call is always fraught with peril.

This time I think I've run into the ultimate in silliness. Transferring a call with this phone system means you need to hit transfer, 3 numbers, # and 6... and the extension you want to transfer the call to! Er, well, that's a probably... I don't think I've mastered that yet, I may have sent someone off into oblivion! Why do the designers of phone systems make it so difficult?

This morning I started this year's round of volunteering with the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival. I'm working in the office doing reception on Thursdays. There's not much to do just yet, the festival happens October 21-26 and tickets go on sale to the public next Monday, so they're still warming up.

So far I've done some envelope addressing and stuffing, some shredding, and some alphabetization... and I've handled one call... badly. Most calls go directly to the right people, but if the caller doesn't know the extension, I need to pick up the call and transfer it. I so wish another call had come in so I could have redeemed myself! Everyone in the office says they have problems with the phone system too, so I shouldn't feel bad, but it is annoying.

Next Thursday I will need to study those instructions again! I am always amazed at the ability of receptionists to handle transferring phone calls - maybe the designers of the phone systems are receptionists who like amazing others with their skill and calm management of phone calls. I'll bet that's why it's so difficult, it's a badge of honour if you can figure it out!

Does anyone really want to know how you are when they ask "How are you?"?

Normally I assume that the answer to this is "No!" and I don't bother going into any detail beyond "Great!" or "Happy now that the sun is out."

But today my pharmacist asked "How have you been?" when I was picking up a prescription. If anyone on the planet really wants to know the answer, I figure it would be him, so I tested that idea. I told him I had a really bad cold last week, but I'm better now. He said "Oh, that's too bad." I told him it had been a year since I've had a cold and I had a hard time remembering which cold symptom relievers worked for me last year. A pharmacist sells these cold symptom relievers, and probably makes a lot of money from them. He could have had something useful to say. He didn't. I think this is odd.

And no, I don't ask people "How are you?" as a general rule myself. It's a question that makes people very uncomfortable. They may not be well, and don't want to think about it. They may think I'm not being genuine and don't really want to know. Or they may tell me their life's story. Any result makes the question a bad one to ask.

And even more frightening is someone who asks and really wants the 2 hour answer!

The answer to "How are you?" is definitely NOT 42, so I'll leave this question unasked.

Is that an off-leash child run?

Living in Vancouver's West End, we typically go to the farmer's market on Saturdays in the West End. The market is held on a street beside a small park / school yard. In the small park is a new area, a fenced-off area without grass. This is the off-leash dog run. The dogs are kept inside by the fences, so their humans can let them off their leashes and the dogs have a most enjoyable time socializing with other dogs without any fear that they will run away.

This off-leash area is a hit with the dogs. Many of them lead their humans to the gates and look up expectantly - even if the humans claim "You were just in there! We have to go home now!" Watching these dogs having such a great time is also very enjoyable for all the humans in and around the dog run.

This weekend we didn't make it to the Saturday market, so we had to go with our backup plan: the farmer's market in Kitsilano on Sunday morning. It's the same vendors, but the customers are a completely different group of people. We try to avoid this, but sometimes we just can't do a Saturday.

So I was sitting on a bench waiting for the spouse to get back from the first drop-off trip to the car and I noticed something I found really odd. The market is held in a school parking lot, in the field to the south of the market there seemed to be a off-leash child run.

The setup was the same as the off-leash dog run in the West End, fences to keep close-to-the-ground off-leash beings inside, some apparatus for them to climb on, a variety of adult humans around the edges having conversations among themselves, and about as much noise and running and colliding as you can see in the West End dog run. But the off-leash beings were definitely human. Is this an off-leash child run?

So does this mean the dogs are being treated like children? Or does this mean the children are being treated like dogs?

Will this cold ever end?

It takes about 7 to 10 days. Well, that's not too long.

Get plenty of rest. Always good advice, I'd love to do that.

Drink plenty of liquids. Sure, I can do that easily.

But I have a cold, and I don't want to take 7 to 10 days to get over this.

Getting plenty of rest isn't really a decision I have to make, I couldn't do anything energetic if I wanted to.

Drinking plenty of liquids means using the washroom frequently, that's the room with the big mirror so I can see my nose turning bright red from all the blowing and dark circles growing under my eyes because all the rest I'm getting isn't high quality rest.

There are "cold remedies" in drug stores. Entire aisles devoted to them. These provide the cold struck individual with an amazing array of syrups, lozenges, drinks, inhalers and pills promising to make you feel better. But none of them make the cold go away. Most of them make the average cold linger longer than the typical 10 days. Many of them give you a sugar rush - so much for that "plenty of rest" instruction. And all of them will give you that "I'm very medicated" feeling.

Why can't someone cure the common cold?

Is it a conspiracy among the makers of "cold remedies" to keep people staring at the aisle of syrups, lozenges, drinks, inhalers and pills? That's a rather far-out theory, but when you have a cold, you begin to think this is possible.

Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Yeah. I feel really strong. So we shouldn't cure the common cold because that would make us weaklings. I vote for weakness. Can I see a show of hands with tissues in them voting for that?

And somehow the worst part is that I haven't had a cold for about a year now, so I forgot how bad it really is, and I don't remember which of the "cold remedies" actually made me feel better. So I start all over again, staring at the aisle of lotions and potions, trying to define my symptoms, and remember which ones worked last time. How's that for a "glass half empty" point of view? Well, at least there is a glass. That's the best you get when you have a cold.

Can I throw dirt and gobs of paint on your windows?

Construction dudes have been working on the outside of my apartment building for more than a year now. Apparently mostly glass walls start leaking after 15 years or so - go figure. The construction has meant we've had dirty windows for more than a year now, removing all the benefit of having walls that are mostly windows.

The most aggravating moment happened about 2 days ago. After drilling, hammering, globing out sealant around all the windows, and making a general mess, they've started painting... ooh, could they be getting near the end? I'm afraid to hope. But they aren't being any more careful with the paint than they were with anything else they've done.

At the end of the day, there was a huge gob of paint on the window. The window that we look out of most often. The window that faces West, where the sun makes the shadow of the gob of paint so incredibly obvious. The window most likely to have paint burn a hole in it from the sun beating down on it. I guess it had to be that one, didn't it?

But this story doesn't end like that! I am stunned, thrilled, and amazed that today the construction workers have removed most of the gob of paint off the window!!!

I've always wanted to open a window to ask these construction dudes if I could have their home addresses, so I could come to their homes and throw dirt and paint on their windows. They all seemed to care nothing about the people living in the building they were working on. But I guess some of them do understand that this is our home, and there are humans living here, it's not just a bunch of windows they are working on.

So my faith in human nature has recovered somewhat, and I may not refer to these guys with the derogatory name I've been using for a while for them. This is a happy day.

Did I really need security slippers?

Fall is coming and it's time to bring out the warm slippers and sweaters again. I needed some new slippers, and I was in a store that had slippers, and they cost next to nothing because they were last year's slippers. So I have some new slippers.

But my new slippers do more than just keep my feet warm - they are security slippers.



The slippers have a grippy sole. Very security conscious, I won't be slipping anywhere. But they grip so much... you can hear me coming when I'm walking on the hardwood floors in the hallways and kitchen of my apartment. Think of space boot suction cups. Hear the squish? That's me. Echo location to pinpoint my existence in space, just what I needed.

I've also been told that the heels have added security features. There is a bit of elastic around the opening with a little pull to tighten it behind the ankle. This pull glows in the dark. Actually, if there is a light source, it flashes in the light when I walk. In case you didn't hear me coming, that flashing light will help you locate me when I'm going.

So now I'm easy to spot, I can't sneak up on anyone, or quietly sneak away without being noticed. And I feel my existence in space. There is no doubt that I'm here, no chance of fading into the background. Yep, I'm here. I have bright blue slippers (they didn't look that bright in the store) that are little security pods for my feet.

Did I really need this? Was I playing a joke on myself? Does this mean I'm going to get other new slippers as a gift in the near future? Hmm.

Are clouds darker when the sun is out?

It's getting late in the summer and the rains are slowly, but surely, coming back to Vancouver. So when it's sunny here now, there are often big dark clouds in the sky as well. It may just be a trick of the light, or an emotional reaction, but are these clouds darker than the average clouds we get in the winter?

Sometimes when you can see the clouds in the distance between buildings they are very dark and have little white clouds in front of them. If you didn't know better, you'd think the mountains were getting closer. Of course, if the mountains were sneaking up on you your other senses, beyond just vision, would be screaming out warning signs and shaking your very existence into a new view of the world. It's very unlikely that the mountains are stalking you.

If every cloud has a silver lining... the silver needs polishing, dear. These clouds are dark and angry.

But when the sun goes behind one of the clouds, the clouds don't seem as dark. Is this just nature's way of showing you that the upcoming months of clouds and rain are not nearly as scary as they could be if the sun was always coming out? Are we supposed to be happy about the days of flood-fill gray with no detail in the sky?

I think the clouds are darker when it's sunny. I also think I think way too much about the rain that is coming. Could it be that after 10 years of living in Vancouver the rain is getting to me? Hmm, I guess that's better than having mountains sneaking up on you when you don't expect it, she writes, looking over her shoulder.

Are they old enough to drink?

Well, here's a question that makes me feel old!

We just spent the weekend up in Whistler - the spouse was running up the mountain, and I was there to be bored stiff.

The huge number of adrenaline junkies who were there hooting and hollering were expected, but there were also so many party-hardy people there that looked like children! Not doing anything other than having a good time and apparently a lot of alcohol, there was nothing particularly wrong with this... but they all looked so young.

Yes, I've come to that point in life where I could be the mother of people who can legally drink... and I'm oh, so glad I'm not!

So maybe that's the real question for which the answer is 42: When will you feel old?

Why is there an elephant in my dream?

I'm having a bit of a sleep-in one morning and I start having a dream. I'm on a bus going somewhere, I'm not sure where, and then I decide to get off the bus because I really didn't want to go where the bus is going. Once off the bus, I'm in a suburban neighborhood, I don't know where. I realize that was a bloody stupid thing to do, because I don't know where I am and now I'm stuck there. So I start walking down the sidewalk, and then this little (only as tall as me) baby elephant rushes up to me and tells me to move off the sidewalk. He head-butts me off the sidewalk and onto some grass.

The elephant was my height, still had some of the fluffy tufts of hair that baby elephants have... and spoke English.

So now that I'm fully awake, I realize that I'm very cold and I need to go get another blanket.

I find it extremely odd that my body has found a way to stop a dream and wake me up by simply making my dreams go odd past the limit of credulity. "That doesn't make any sense" is a feeling I've had many times when I've awoken after dreaming.

So is it just me? Do I need to do dream research on the meaning of baby elephants that appear in dreams... speaking English? Am I going a bit odd? Do I really need to just relax and let dreams go to odd places, because that's what dreams are supposed to do?

The thing is... every time I wake up from a dream because it didn't make sense, there is a good reason for waking up. Either I forgot to do something, and I remember it when I wake up, or I'm cold and need more blankets, or I'm sleeping in an awkward position and need to move, or something like that.

I just don't know if this elephant is a good thing, or something to worry about.

I guess I'll have to sleep on that.

Did you remember to bring the...?

It's taken ages to get everything together and you're outside your apartment waiting for the elevator now. Then someone says "Did you remember to bring the ..."

Now the elevator door opens and there's someone in the elevator. So you either:
* decide we really didn't need that anyway and go into the elevator
* split up and arrange to meet downstairs at the place you usually meet up when this happens
* apologize for making the elevator stop and everyone goes back into the apartment ... thus starting over again: "Did you remember to bring the ..."

On the outside of my apartment building there is a lot of construction work going on. This means that there are at least 5 construction platforms being used by the construction workers to go up and down the outside of the building. They are like little, slow elevators. They've been doing this for months, getting onto years now. Up and down. Slowly. The men on these little elevators wreak of body odor and cancer stick smoke and it all gets blown into our apartment. Day after day.

It's become quite obvious that the "Did you remember to bring the ..." problem is a plague on these construction workers. First thing in the morning, you hear the little motors going and the bumping on the outside wall begins. The babbling of radio programs gets louder as the platforms get closer to our floor, then fades as the platform goes higher. The stench of body odor and cancer stick smoke makes everyone inside wrinkle their noses in disgust. A few minutes later, the motors get louder again, the radio blabber gets louder, the smell gets worse. Then it fades again as they reach the ground. Half an hour later and yes, they are back, once again with the motor, the radio, the stench. They forgot to bring something.

It's annoying when you're going out for the day and have to go back to get something. But wouldn't you have a checklist if you spent your days going up and down on slow little elevators for a living? Wouldn't the aggravation of having to go back down to get a forgotten tool just drive you nuts?

Did I mention that the building is about 30 stories tall? Urgh.

Battle Plant Update: The Mint Wins In The End

So after a hard fought battle between left-over Mint plant seeds and left-over Bachelor Button plant seeds, the Mint has finally taken over the pot.



Back in April when I planted these seeds I was expecting the Mint to take over and squeeze out the Bachelor Buttons very quickly. I was surprised when I did get some flowers from the Bachelor Buttons, and the Mint has not taken over that side of the pot yet. The Bachelor Buttons have since given up due to the climate - there is a lot of construction being done on the outside of my appartment building, and the construction workers have to keep closing the windows of the balcony... thus making an oven out of my balcony. So I will remove the sad Bachelor Buttons from the pot soon... when we get a cloudy day.

All in all an interesting experiment with plant seeds that didn't seem to be viable, but I gave them a chance anyway. And I'm looking forward to more Mint Tea. I wonder what I will plant next Spring...

Isn't talking on your cell while driving rude?

So, ignoring the fact that talking on the phone while you are driving strikes terror into the hearts of pedestrians on the sidewalks around you, and flares anger from the other drivers around you as you do such a bad job of driving... isn't it rather rude?

Putting aside the possibility that it really is All About You...

1. Are you really supposed to mount the curb while parallel parking?
2. Are bumpers really supposed to be used to hit the cars ahead and behind your parking spot when you are parking your car?
3. Is the terrified passenger in your car ever going to want a ride from you again?
4. If you are talking to someone while driving, shouldn't it be your passenger - or do they really enjoy having to hear half of someone else's phone conversation?
5. Does the person on the other end of the phone conversation really only deserve a small part of your attention?
6. Is talking to you really a pain in the ass for the person you are talking to on the phone - so they aren't really paying attention to you either?
7. Have you noticed that no one wants to talk to you when you don't catch them on your phone? Is that the only way you can pin them down to talk?

Hints are flying at you, lets hope they don't hit you like that telephone pole that just jumped out in front of you...

Why is the sky over BC a milky-white?

Allergies making you cough and sniffle? Is your throat dry, making it hard to talk? It could be smoke from forest fires in California - even if you live in BC.

The more than 2,000 wildfires burning in California are now being made worse by strong winds, and these winds are blowing smoke northwards as far up as BC. It's one planet, so what happens "over there" is just as important as what happens "here".

It's quite the lesson in global thinking. Nature's way of hitting you over the head with an idea, giving you a headache.

Do corn husks grow the other direction in South America?

On the weekend we acquired our first corn of the season from our local farmer's market. It was picked that morning, and we had it for lunch, so it was almost the sweetest corn-on-the-cob imaginable - it could only get better if we were sitting in the field it grew in and pulling it off the plant and popping it into our mouths right there!

While I was taking the leaves off from around the corn cob I noticed a definite pattern. If you hold the cob at the stem, with the small end facing up, the leaves grow around the corn cob to the left in a clockwise manner. Taking the leafs off one at a time starting at the left and working to the right works well. Taking the leafs off one at a time starting at the right will give you a big knot of leaves that is tough to pull off.

From what I've read, the petals of a daisy grow in a similar pattern to the corn husks. So playing "he loves me, he loves me not" with a daisy is much easier if you pluck the petals off in a counter-clockwise progression around the flower - if the flower is from north of the equator. But if the daisy has grown in an area south of the equator, the petals grow in the other direction!

It's a memorable part of listening to travelers who have been south of the equator, to hear them describe how the flushed water in a toilet swirls in the opposite direction to what we are used to in the northern hemisphere.

It seems that more than just the water swirls in the other direction.

If the daisy grows in the other direction, maybe other plants do too. I haven't found evidence for corn growing in the other direction yet, but apparently the swirly patterns on butterfly wings swirl in the other direction, and the ozone layer swirls differently at the different poles... so maybe swirling is an integral part of that planet thing.

What? No spreadsheet application on my MacBook?

After searching my MacBook, and then googling on the subject, I've discovered that my new computer does not have a spreadsheet application on it! Not even a light-weight one with minimal functions.

I may be in the minority, but I do have several spreadsheets I use and add to on a monthly basis, so I do need this type of application. I think since I have a few spreadsheets of 60+ connected sheets on the go that I can call myself a power user of spreadsheets. So a light-weight spreadsheet is not for me, but I'm not paying for MSExcel one more time...

So I've loaded Open Office (OOo) onto my MacBook. I was a bit worried after looking at several posts in blogs - was this still in Beta or not? I'm still not sure - but it has been working fine! It did have a bit of a hiccup the first time it tried to open a 60+ sheet spreadsheet for me, but the second time I tried it I had no problems... no satisfying reasons for starting the second time but not the first, but it works now, so I'm wary of it, but I can work with this.

I haven't tried other spreadsheet applications that work on the Mac, but I used OOo on my old Windows system as well, so there is no learning curve for me here. The transition to the Mac world has so far been easier than I expected.

Battle Plant Update: Tea

A fitting update for my 42nd post, a nice cup of tea with mint flavour added by steeping some of my mint leaves in hot water and adding them to tea from my favourite blend!

There are still some flowers coming out from the Bachelor Buttons, and now I've been able to have some mint added to my tea. Not bad for having a pot with no plans for growing anything in it and old seeds that didn't do anything last year, so may not have even sprouted! I think I'll try this kind of random planting again!

Why are old road names used for new roads when the old roads still exist?

In Vancouver - well, in a suburb way outside of Vancouver, but kind-of attached - is Dewdney Trunk Road. A few blocks away there is another Dewdney Trunk Road. They both go in the same general direction, but one of them gets lost in the middle of a field and suddenly becomes 132 Avenue - and the other one starts where the first one ends off - but about 13 blocks south of it on what would be 119 Avenue if they had stuck to numbers! What vintage of BC Bud were the city planners smoking when they named these streets?

And Google Maps will give you a meandering route that uses both of the Dewdney Trunk Roads liberally to get to Golden Ears Provincial Park in Maple Ridge and waste a lot of gas and time doing it.

According to the early morning traffic news, Dewdney Trunk Road is a very important road that broadcasters keep their eye on when giving their audience advice on roads to take. But which one are they talking about?

"Well, everyone knows that one's the old Dewdney Trunk Road, and the other is the new one." Yeah, that helps. Did anyone ever consider naming one of them "old" or "new". Or better yet, there are 26 letters in the alphabet, if you put a single ounce of creativity into your life, you can use any combination of any of these 26 letters to create a new name for a new road!!! (They can't use the numbers because someone put the new road between 119 and 120 and there is no 119-and-a-half street. That was good planning too.)

Did anyone ever consider making the go lights green and the stop lights a different shade of green, just because everyone knows which one is which by their relative position on a set of traffic lights? Of course not!

Do city planners ever think that a person who hasn't lived somewhere for the past 40 years may want to travel through an area? Did they consider that naming a new road with the same name of a road about 13 blocks away might just be a tad confusing? Have they never heard of using new names for new roads?

The dearth of creativity in city planning is appalling.

What input device should I use?

My new MacBook is much easier to work with than I expected it to be! But now I have so many choices of keyboard and mouse pointers, what should I do?

My wrist started hurting after using the touch pad for the mouse movements, so I have bought a bluetooth mouse from Logitech. When I turned the mouse on I clicked on the symbol in the upper right hand corner of the screen (with the touchpad) that had the same symbol as on the mouse, the MacBook found the mouse. It was a brief period of hand shaking, and the mouse was off and running. No need for any opening of CDs for the software etc. etc.

When I put my new MacBook in my regular work area, I have a keyboard that I use for my PCs at an ergonomically good position. I plugged it in to one of the USB ports on the MacBook. The MacBook saw this as a foreign object that was likely a keyboard and I was guided though about a 10 second process to identify the keys to the left and right of the two shift keys and viola, my MacBook will work with my keyboard!

(OK, previous post about not having a spelling correction facility in this TextEdit program was wrong... I just used it with the right-mouse button on an underlined-in-red word and got the expected variety of possible words I meant to use... I guess the unique 3 finger mechanics of using the touchpad for the right button click was what had confused me... I am a right mouse button addict, and I guess Apple is new to the concept.)

So now the problem is... there are so many other interesting keys on the MacBook, but should I be exploring them, or doing something useful? Would exploring those keys actually be "doing something useful"?

From the looks of it, the "command" key on the MacBook is just like the flying windows key on the PC keyboard ... which I have dug out and removed due to it's annoying way of booting me out of video games when I accidentally hit it. This may be a concern.

Hmm, yes, there are some other interesting keys I've never seen before, but the MacBook is now up at a good viewing height, not a keyboard height. I guess this means a retreat to the comfy chair where I can use it in my lap! This is an exciting thing for me because my old Dell laptop has a touchy keyboard that doesn't work when you move the laptop off it's flat desktop surface... not really a laptop at all anymore, part of the reason I'm abandoning it!

Such an adventure!

Is Google indexing my life?

Last weekend I wanted to make cornmeal puffs. They are something I've made before, and a great way to use up left-over egg whites. But I couldn't remember where the recipe was. I keep most of my favorite recipes on my "for fun" website when I've modified them, but not this one. So I checked the indexes of the recipe books I thought it was most likely to be in, but I couldn't find it.

After a short time searching through my recipe books I gave up and did a google. First I searched on "corn puffs" and got several thousand results. Then I searched on "cornmeal puffs" and got 74 results, which was getting better. So I searched on "cornmeal puffs" and "egg whites" and got 1 result!

Getting back 1 result in Google is a rare thing indeed, but it gets even more odd. The recipe that google found was a Google Books result, a scanned-in version of a book page. The recipe looked very familiar. I looked at the image of the book cover. The book looked very familiar. I have that book. I went to my bookshelf and found that book. I looked up the page I was seeing on the screen in my book, and there was my recipe! Google found the recipe in my book!

This is just too good! Has Google gone into my personal bookshelf and indexed all my recipes? Can I use it as an index to my own paper-based books? I've often wanted the ability to use an electronic search facility when reading a book - when I've forgotten who a character is and want to find where they were introduced or what city they were in.

Is this just an aberration, or will Google be indexing the rest of my life soon?

Is a power outage a good thing or a bad thing?

Due to a underground fire in downtown Vancouver yesterday the power to most of the business district was out yesterday and continues to be out today. So is this a good thing or a bad thing?

From a business point of view, productivity of workers is zero unless they can work from home. From a retail business point of view profits will suffer - but if they have insurance, maybe not. But from an individual's point of view, on a gorgeous sunny summer day, I'm thinking this is really a good thing.

Yesterday all of the traffic lights in the affected area were out. That meant many police officers found themselves directing traffic all day. But today there are portable generators on almost every intersection powering the lights so traffic is back to normal - just a bit noisier due to the generators humming. So that's not good, but it's not that bad either, it's interesting to find out that portable generators are enough to run the traffic lights in a downtown this size.

Workers from the power company are underground replacing more than a dozen power lines that were burnt in the fire, it's quite an education to see on TV news reports just how many power lines there are down there. Education is always a good thing. It's important for people to think about how much their lives depend upon things they don't see because they are underground - and to realize their lives won't end just because the power is out. There is a difference between necessity and convenience.

Some of the office buildings are completely closed and there are chains on the doors because the elevators won't work, so even if the daylight is enough for workers to do work in their offices, they can't get into the building. So that means a lot of people must have used the stairs to get out yesterday. That would suck. But why are people even bothering to try to get in today? That's a wake-up call that should make them think.

Oh look, over there, it's water, it's park, it's beach! So if you can't work from home... you've won a day off, and it's a great one! Celebrate!

I was walking through the affected area earlier today (on my way to a courier shop that was not in the outage area) and I actually found an open coffee shop! It was on the edge of the area that was hit, so they were open, and according to them, very busy yesterday. They were not as busy today, and when asked, the woman behind the counter said "It depends on how you look at it" when asked if she was happy the power outage didn't affect them. She looked like she longed for the beach. Words of wisdom in a coffee shop, the right place for them really.

I won't trivialize the inconvenience to hotels and apartment buildings in the area without power - for them it's a really bad thing, but for the office workers who have the day off today, take time to enjoy the bad thing that can be a good thing "depending on how you look at it".

Battle Plant Update: Flowers!

An early winner in Battle Plant! The Bachelor Buttons may look a bit short and the leaves are a bit stressed, but there are flowers!



I don't remember the Bachelor Buttons I grew last year actually flowering, so the left-over seeds that I planted this year just in case something would grow have done quite well!



The mint is getting a bit more bushy as well, but it hasn't taken over the pot and I do have flowers, so this is actually working quite well. I hope to report a surge in the mint so I can make some mint tea in the near future, I will wait and see.

Is this a MacBook I see before me?

Why, yes, it is. I have acquired a new toy! After working since 1982 almost exclusively with Microsoft's Windows operating system (with a few blissful years on IBM's OS/2 and a foray into Sun's Unix, Red Hat Linux and then Suse Linux, and VM and MVS just to hit the high spots) I have purchased my first Mac.

I have worked with Macs before, in the 1980s. ( Yes, I'm old, thus this blog exploring questions in my 42nd year on the planet.) Back then I found Macs extremely aggravating. It wasn't the boxy shape, it wasn't the funky clicking of the keyboard, but it was the most annoying little icon of a smiling computer that smiled out at me every time I went to the computer lab at my University that turned me off Macs. That may seem odd - it does to me - but the touchy-feely, "don't be afraid", kid-gloves approach was just too condescending for me to live with.

So now I'm exploring this new Mac - I've had it for 2 days now and no smiley faces yet, so we're doing well. Some interesting mental shifts have had to be made. Instead of picking a file and then right-mouse-button clicking to "open with" whatever program I felt like using at the time as I did on Windows I've decided to give all the native Mac applications a go. I've found I was actually getting quite manic about choosing which program to open on Windose - I was flipping back and forth between Opera and Firefox - Excel and Open Office Calc - MSWord and Open Office Writer and Notepad - it was all getting quite focussed on the application rather than what I wanted to do with it.

So I'm using TextEdit to write up a draft of this post - I didn't feel like using the blogger editing tool today. TextEdit seems to be a step up from Notepad, it does flag a word that it thinks is spelt wrong, but I don't think it has a correction facility - nope, I can't find one.

I just found out the Mac comes with a dictionary - with Canadian spellings for me Yay! (even though TextEdit thinks humour is spelt wrong, silly thing, and the dictionary gives the definition of humor for the word humour, it does still have humour there) - and it also has a thesaurus and a link to Wikipedia in the dictionary application. Now that was good thinking on someone's part! It's a giant leap from MSWord that guesses about your spelling and often "corrects" misspelling by using the wrong word - homonyms are deadly for MSWord. I like having a dictionary an easy click away, rather than a program doing guessing at which word I meant to use!

So far, so good. I like this Mac. It's not smiling, but I am, that's good. Now I'm off to explore some more applications...

Why would anyone import pie?

It used to be that we could get some locally grown or packaged food at Capers Community Market in Vancouver. Now that it has been taken over by Whole Foods, an American chain store, it has mostly American, Chinese or Argentinian food. So much for the local food movement.

But they have gone too far now. Last weekend we were looking around their baked goods area, and we were dumbstruck. Apple Pie IMPORTED from the US. We swung around slightly to view the kitchen in Capers on Robson. On a second floor in the Northwest corner they have a full industrial kitchen. Steps away. So close you could spit on it, and we almost felt like it.

Oranges and lemons don't grow in B.C., so they need to be imported. Vanilla and coffee don't grow in B.C., so they need to be imported. Apples DO grow in B.C. so you can get them locally. Pies DO taste better when baked fresh, not when they've been baked, packaged in non-biodegradable plastic, shipped across the border using way too much fuel, and sitting on a shelf waiting for some sap to buy it.

There is no way a pie crust will get better with age and shipping. Even if the apples were superior to the local ones – which they are not – why would anyone buy, and why are these idiots trying to sell, imported pies?

We have greatly reduced the amount of food we buy at Capers now, and are seriously considering giving it a pass altogether. It doesn't make sense anymore. They are mentioned in the book The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating but the food they stock now has nothing to do with eating locally. They are going out of their way to import food with no good reason.

Did anyone press the button?

In Vancouver, and indeed in many places on the planet, we have pedestrian controlled cross-walks. This means a pedestrian can press a button on a post at a corner, and when the timing is appropriate for the greater traffic flow, the motorized traffic will get a red light and the pedestrian is then mostly safe to cross the street without too much fear of being hit by a motorized vehicle. (Note the caveats “mostly” and “too much” are from my advanced years of experience that make me not automatically trust any human in control of a motorized vehicle, you still have to look before you cross.)

Also, we have elevators which are summoned by pressing a button usually found on a panel on the wall beside the elevator doors.

So when do you press the buttons? When you want the light to turn red and the pedestrian sign to light up, or the elevator to come to your floor and the door to open.

That's why it's so much fun to sit and watch people.

I admit I am assuming that everyone is familiar with this button pressing action. But it is so much fun to be sitting at a bus stop watching as people slowly congregate at the corner of a cross roads, waiting for a red light that none of them have requested by pressing the button. It's not just one person who may never have pressed a button and doesn't know about it, but it's 4 corners full of people of various ages, backgrounds, and group sizes, next to 4 different buttons, one on each corner.

Surely one of them must know about pressing the button!

Oh finally, someone presses the button! The light changes and people start moving. Oh relief! I thought they'd all be stuck forever!

So why are people so reluctant to press a button? I think it's from experiences with overly hostile elevator riders.

I have seen people get downright pissed off at strangers because they have come up and pressed the button for the elevator when it has already been pressed. They take it as a personal affront, as if the strangers either didn't acknowledge their existence, or saw them and assumed they were too stupid to press the button themselves. These angry people can then go on and on about the assumed affront for half an hour after they get off the elevator.

Message to the angry people: You know, it's not always about you.

Sometimes people are in the midst of their own thoughts, and just haven't noticed you, you're not Elvis. Sometimes it's hard to see if the light around the button is glowing, or people have vision problems. Sometimes people who are talking are in mid-sentence and the pressing is a tangible note to punctuate something they are saying. But sadly, sometimes people are just like you and need to hit something, the only socially acceptable thing to hit is that little button with the glowing light.

If you walk around downtown Vancouver, or likely in the downtown core of many other cities, you will see homeless people, angry homeless people. These people will curse bad drivers in traffic with a variety of racial slurs, gender-specific insults, and general swears and spitting. They will curse other people who are walking down the same street. They will curse the government, health-care workers, squirrels, anything on the planet actually. But if you look closely, they aren't that much different than the business-suite attired elevator riders who are cursing the people who hit the elevator button. They may smell worse, and are in more danger of falling over their own feet, but the cloud of rage that surrounds them is just like the one around the angry elevator rider.

So relax. It's just a button. Press it if you want to. Don't worry if someone has already pressed it. Don't take it personally if someone else presses it too. You all want the same thing anyway.

And if that's not enough, just remember that you may be providing some very humorous viewing for strangers at the bus stop!

Battle Plant Update: Mushrooms!

On Friday we found new univited guests in our battle plant pot! Mushrooms!



By Saturday they had, well, mushroomed!

This was an unexpected learning experience... so that's what the term "mushrooming" means. I always though it meant blowing up like a nuclear explosion that resembled a mushroom in shape. Now I see it means growing and poofing at an incredible rate like a mushroom plant - we could almost see them get bigger!

And the next day, they were shriveled and gone, so I removed the carcasses... but they have left a fine dust on the pot and soil which will likely grow into more mushrooms. This could be a problem. I have other plants in other pots that I don't want to be part of this experiment... will I be fighting battle mushroom for the rest of the summer???

Mint vs. Bachelor Buttons: Update!

In our last look in on Battle Plant, our intrepid plants had been overrun by mold. But being the sturdy - some say weed-like - plants that they are they have survived for another installment of who will take over the pot?

At this point, I can tell that the little plants are the mint, and the tall skinny plants are the bachelor buttons.

In terms of numbers, the mint seems to be winning. In terms of how much room it has taken over in the pot, the bachelor button seems to be winning.

I think the mint will eventually prevail, but will the bachelor button plants flower before they loose the battle? Stay tuned for more Battle Plant installments!