Ack-

Thursday, March 5, 2009. (Lyn’s birthday) (& Chelsea R’s birthday, too.)

-10˚C/+14˚F @ 4:59 am ((the weather network thinks it’s -18˚C/0˚F, that’s probably up at the Army base in Petawawa.))

Sigh, Wizard- the Keeshund (sp?) in the photo
to the right, died yesterday (March/4/2009) of an apparent stroke.

Pets should never die.

Cathi’s worried about how the boy will be today, she said he didn’t take it very well last night when his Dad called and told him.

I’m praying / sending out the intention to the universe… that they get an affectionate, low maintenance, not very high energy (definitely not a puppy horse) replacement, real soon.

Gack. Things like this take the wind right out of your sails. I mean how can I write a story about mean people doing evil things to each other when kids are hurting because their dog died?

Quick- think up an alternative castillo hinchable world where pets don’t die, they regenerate or something, and retain all the memories from their previous existance. There needs to be an escape clause, I mean if a kid beats his dog, the dog can regenerate, look the kid in the eye and say, “You were mean to me, I’ll go give my unconditional love to somebody else- loser-” or something like that.

shrug-

—–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

Yeah, today was freakin cold. Or friggin cold. one of them words lights up red in Eudora’s naughty word warning routines.

I hear the wind roaring now.

We didn’t get any part of the 25 plus inches that people in New England got (or were supposed to get)

And that picture on the right is not the legendary ice storm of ’98. That’s a pretty morning in ’08.

Sigh.

I felt sick for a while.

Thought I had another revision parque acuatico hinchable of another flu bug or something. (shrug)

Then I wondered how I’d know whether I had chills or was only freezing my bum (butt to youse southe of ye border types) off.

Berrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-

—–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

DreamCat & TaleRocker Simpsonized.

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009. -20˚C (-4˚F?) at 4:46 am.

There’s a guy on the radio, talking to George Noory about using alcohol for auto fuel. He likes Flex Fuel vehicles. He says that every dollar spent on alcohol fuel is a dollar less aufblasbare spiele going to big oil. (Yum) And a dollar less going to big oil companies is a dollar they can’t spend trying to keep you down.

Do a google search on “The Energy Non Crisis” by Lindsey Williams. Get it, read it.

Yay.

—–Jim

Monday, March 2, 2009. ((4:38 AM))

It’s -18˚C / 0˚F, & it sounds a bit windy out there. ((( -30˚C Wind Chill…)))

Yurt: This is a 28 foot yurt that ‘lives’ at the Antrim Flea Market, & Is open every Sunday, year round.

Saturday, I went to see a 32 foot (diameter) yurt in Cumberland, Ontario. The guy who owns it and sells them had his electrical person there, they were fine tuning his electrical system. We talked a bit (I got there late, and didn’t have long to talk, I had to pick up the kids, as this was our weekend to have the kids here. The boy had his usual skiing lesson and the young woman had an unusual skiing lesson with her Mom, Cathi.) I should go grab a photo of a yurt and post it here with this. Yup- I did.

So anyway, I also figured out how to make it look like this with the text wrapped around it. Now let’s hope everything goes well and you can read all this. And  I’m talking to the guy who sells the yurts and the alternate technology stuff about doing something with video.

(((( I think I might leave this text in whatever colour it defaults to. ))))

I’m feeling like we’ll get a couple more parc aquatique gonflable snow storms before Spring warms us all the way through.

Anyway, Happy March! Spring is on the way and my sister Nancy might get something like fifteen inches of snow and blizzard conditions today… hmmmmmm-

—–Jim

And this is our new van. We haven’t given it a name yet, Ben wanted to know whether we should call it the van or the Dodge, or what? So far it’s “The New Van” (luckily, nobody has called it “Morrison” yet…. shudder). I took this photo on Friday, February 27, 2009 (the Day after Aunt Reggie’s Birthday) in the parking lot at Robert Simpson Park (Not related to Bart- I don’t think) Down the hill behind the pile of snow beyond the van is the beach, one of two town beaches. The white stuff you might be able to see aufblasbarer wasserpark back there is snow on top of ice. People drive out on the ice all the time, just not from here, because the town is real good at piling up a nice, tall barrier of white stuff that keeps people from trying to drive vehicles (other than snow mobiles?) down the steepish, winding hill…

—Yum?

—–Jim

This is Moe, yes, he’s in charge of things, and doing a good job of it. (from February 2009).

—–Jim

“Boooof-“

This is Jassper. He came from Montreal before we first met him in the Gatineau (Quebec) Animal Shelter. He understood both French and English (or rather, ignored commands in both languages) and when he began barking at things out inflatable slide for sale the window, sounding like, “Booof- Booof-” we thought maybe he was barking in French.

—–Jim

-Arnprior, Ontario, Canada, Friday, February 13th, 2009-

Local reporter Peter DeWolf became an ex employee of the Arnprior Chronicle Guide just after telling somebody that the inflatable games newspaper was leaving town.

The newspaper denied that.

Now its office is up for sale.

I wonder if Arnprior needs a blogged newspaper.

(shrug)

—–Jim