+6˚C/+43˚F @4:37 pm, Saturday, March 7, 2009.

-Jassper, the puppy horse seen walking Cathi at a beach on warmer days last summer, took me for a walk down by the Madawaska River, just north of the area where this morning’s photo was taken.

We met a German Shepard-Husky mix named Kenobe (Like Obi Wan of star wars fame) and we stepped off to the side while a snow mobile pulling a snow trailer full of what looked like logs and other camp site stuff noisily zoomed past us.

Jassper was okay with the snow mobile. I’m hoping the guy didn’t go out onto the ‘lake’/Ottawa River (that’s the Ottawa River/Chats Lake behind Cathi and the dog in the summer photo). It’s getting to be the time of year when at least one snow mobile and rider goes through the ice somewhere within 25 kilometres of here.

Maybe now it’s time for me to rant about the economy.

General Motors.

Last year I was sitting in the Jeep-Dodge-Chrysler dealer’s Service Area waiting room while the mechanics and technicians gave our 2005 Jeep Liberty its periodic check up. An older guy sitting beside me related some of his adventures in auto mechanics. (He’d put a car together from spare parts of several different makes and giochi gonfiabili models and years and the Motor Vehicle people didn’t know what to put on the registration when he went to have it inspected and registered.)

He also told me he’d been a GM Mechanic for several years and had been sent to a big pep talk meeting with corporate big shots showing off a few of their latest innovations.

When they showed him (and his group) a plastic engine part he looked worried and said, “That makes no sense- the damned thing’s going to wear out too fast, they were always made of regular metal before-”

His observation angered the big shot who snarled back, “Do you like your job? Do you want to keep working? We’re paying people two million dollars a year to come up with ideas like this so the parts do wear out so the customers have to come in and get their vehicles serviced-”

The mechanic was stunned, shocked, and apparently never got over that. He shook his head as he told me.

-Seems like basic dishonesty to me, misleading marketing practices, manipulation, betrayal of the public trust.

-So now General Motors is hurting and crying for help.

-I think General Motors should be temporarily nationalized. Fire everybody in management and turn it over to the unions. Give them a deadline, tell them to try to come up with the most reliable, least expensive, most versatile vehicles they know how to build, and see what they come up with. If this fails, try something else.

-But give the people who know what they’re doing, and don’t know how to cheat and manipulate their customers, a chance.

See what they come up with.

—rantingly yours,

—–Jim

Friday, March 6th, 2009.

-3˚C / +27˚F @ 5:08 a.m. & we’ve had freezing rain over night, not a lot, just enough to make everything slippery & mess up windshields big time.

Jassper, the graduate, (wearing his vehicle harness, not a tuxedo) with most of Cathi visible in this photograph, grinning along with him.

This was last year (2008) I forget exactly when-

Now let’s see- I was thinking about saying something political a few minutes ago, but I went completely brain dead when I sat down to type here. (Maybe “brain dud” would be more like it.) But anyway, I’m going to add a ‘politix’ category to stuff I’m posting here. And that is probably the most parque acuatico hinchable political statement I’m about to make in this installment.

yayyyyy?

—–Jim

Wednesday, March 4, 2009 ((Marcia Logan’s Birthday)) -13˚C/+9˚F @ 5:38 am.

(((Temperatures in the warmer range are from the same Weather Network”s applet, I think at the Ottawa Airport)))

That’s still cold.

The elf house here is something that I picked up on the internet way way back when I attempted my first web site. Angelfire had pages of free images and told you how to use them. This house was on a ‘Fairies’ site maintained by a woman in California who frequented Renaissance Faires and kept Fairies etc on her site to support kids who needed emotional support. I asked her about the house gif and she said she’d forgotten where she got it from, but nobody’s come after me with a chainsaw or a lawyer screaming anything like copyright infringement, so I guess it’s safe to use it.

Which brings me to the buried issue of the day.

The CRTC has been holding hearings about taxing the internet. (The CRTC is the Canadian version of the FCC) In the U.S., I’ve heard what sounds like serious rumours that the government wants to tax downloads.

I remember tons of rumours flying around before the turn of the millenium that governments were going to try to tax email, like charge something as if it was regular mail. I remember armies of little old ladies rattling their canes and shooting worried messages to all their friends and stuff.

Now this rumour showed up in a legitimate newspaper. The CRTC has been looking into taxing the internet. They want to charge the ISPs (internet service providers). They’ve become so bogged down in confusion that they decided to hang up their gavels and take some time off for a while.

Should we be worried?

Who actually is trying to tax the internet? Are all the governments in the world trying to quietly sneak up on us while we surf, getting ready castillo hinchable to throw a net over our heads (and all the other parts of our bodies in the process?)? Are the wild wild west days of the internet numbered?

Where are the internet freedom fighters (aka the ‘hackers’) and what kind of guerilla operations are they planning to discourage anybody foolish enough to try to rein in on the internet?

Or are we asleep at our wheels (and keyboards?) unaware that men in black are creeping up on us, ready to spring and try to pound us into submission (I knew I never liked those buttons at the bottom of most internet forms that say “submit”)

Will we all be here same time, same place tomorrow?

hmmmmmmmmm-

Stay tuned, folks, lets see what tomorrow may bring.

—–Jim

(Edited at 8:12 PM) Here’s the book I mentioned in the previous post.

Not only did an Exxon Executive tell a room full of Exxon Supervisors and an honorary officer (in the form of a Chaplain, who was working for free, as a missionary, looking after the souls of men away from home, working on the
Alaskan pipeline, keeping the men out of trouble, sober and on the job, cutting down on absentee-ism, hangovers and all that) “There is no oil shortage, there never was an oil shortage, And with what we know now, there never will be an oil shortage.” {{-There’s enough oil under Gull Island (Alaska) to keep them all in hefty bonuses for as far ahead as I can see…}} He told them they were pumping enough natural gas back into the ground to light and power the whole east coast (of the USA) for free- for 3 years.

Now, this winter, I learned that the price of gasoline rises and falls, not due to supply and demand, or the cost of getting the slime up out of the ground and to the refineries and refined and carted to where-ever. The prices are set by the geeks you elected to represent you in Congress or Parliament- or in backrooms and shadowy nether worlds by those castillo hinchable who pull the strings that control those geeks you thought were representing you… Prices rise to bolster the Russian economy or fall to undermine the Soviets’ ability to put down velvet revolutions or even challenge East Berlinners who want to push down their gawd awful walls…. Prices are agreed upon by world players… The Chinese agree to help the US undermine the Russians- The Russians agree to help the US undermine the Chinese… whatever….

So today our coffee maker died. Is there anybody out there who thinks it’s worse than hideous that the whole culture goes nod nod wink wink or maybe even endorses planned obsolescence?

schnarr—

—thanks anyway,

—–Jim