Month: February 2016

Wednesday – Expecting Weird Weather –

Wednesday, February 24th, 2016 — -4˚C / +25˚F & snowing @ 11:50 am in Atlantic Canada —

Orange cat in a little bit of snow.
Moe – The mischievous orange ‘Cat and a half’ escaped for a couple seconds this snowy morning, explored something he’s probably been obsessed with for weeks, decided he’d had enough and hurried back to where I was waiting at the door. “This isn’t ‘outside’ – This is Snow!” he seems to say.

— We’re supposed to get about 10 cm / 4 inches of snow before the precipitation turns to a projected couple hours of freezing rain and then transitions to a lot of rain later. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be +12˚C / +54˚F & might have more rain in store for us.

Moe inspecting the wood shed in the snow.
“But – But – There might be mice in there!” The object of Moe’s consternation, in spite of the morning’s snow – is our new side additions to our steel garden shed. The side additions now house cut and split firewood, nicely stacked and covered with plastic to keep the weather away from the wood. Moe has always been an expert mouser. I remember my sensitive step-daughter screaming when she saw the cats torturing a mouse. Moe’s reaction? When the mouse was no fun to play with any more – it disappeared in two bites and a swallow. Chomp chomp, gulp – yum?

— This time last year our driveway had about four or five foot high walls of snow around the area we had cleared with our snow-blower. This year we were day dreaming about an early spring. People on the radio keep arguing whether global warming or climate change is a scientific reality. Here in the ‘Real World’ our escapee cat loves the fact that he can dash out past who-ever just opened a door and run outside and smile at the grass instead of trying to keep his feet out of the white stuff.

Moe hurrying to the warmth and dry safety of our porch.
“Okay, Been There – Done That – & I’ve had enough of this cold wet white stuff!” Moe turned around and hurried back to the safety of the nice warm enclosed porch a split second after he decided that there weren’t any mice in the wood shed.

— We do have another pet. Jassper, the perennial puppy dog (Black Lab) who doesn’t understand that he weighs five times as much as Moe, and wants to sit on my lap, or jump on my chest any time he sees the cat get away with that. Jassper was out and about this morning, slipping and sliding around in the shallow snow over slick ice from recent thaw and re-freeze cycles.

Jassper in the snow of the dog run.
Slightly tipped photo of Jassper (shot through the door’s insulated glass window) out prowling around, slipping and sliding, and probably disappointed there was no one about to bark at, nothing to “Boof!” about. Three dogs from the house shown down the hill there sometimes hang out in that fenced in area. Last year at this time we knew the brown hound-type dog was in there only by seeing her head moving back and forth in the groove she wore down between the three feet deep untouched snow on both sides.

— And here we are, watching the weather – expecting it to turn treacherous soon, waiting to grit our teeth and hope Cathi gets home all right, knowing she’s found the safest route from where she works to here. ( There are steep hills in Town -)

— Other than that, I’ve been hearing weird “boom boom boom” sounds all morning, thought our neighbour might have been unloading large logs from the back of his pickup truck, but no – nothing is happening there. These booms are mildly shaking the house every time they happen. — Weird ? —

— And – um, That’s probably all for now –,

~~~~~ Jim

Monday – Um – Winter Is Still With Us –

Monday, February 22nd, 2016 —  -6˚C / +21˚F & Sunny & Bright in Atlantic Canada @ 12:42 pm // Where it was -11˚C @ 7:00 am this morning //   It’s Cousin Lori’s Birthday 🙂

Foggy Golf Course with no snow on the grass on February 20th of this year.
Local CBC Morning Radio And TeeVee News Person Terry Seguin took this photo on Saturday when he discovered that the golf course near his home was uncommonly bereft of snow for this time of year. The CBC’s morning meteorologist said he would fix that in a couple days 🙁 😉

— Yup, after a couple days thinkin’ the local groundhog with the unpronounce-able name might have been right and spring just might have already arrived here – This morning’s -11˚C temperature was a bit of a rude surprise. But I guess that isn’t too bad – we are enjoying life here in New Brunswick – for the most part – & No, I won’t mention neo-fascist federal schnarr from the previous government trying to ruin everybody’s picnic but their own – that would be just plain mean.

Sculpture of a Moose paddling a blue canoe.
Cathi and I finally found the legendary “Blue Canoe” restaurant south of us here – And captured this happy view of Bullwinkle, paddling or steering a blue canoe – not with a flying squirrel – but with a Beaver paddling at the front. What an amazing work of sculpture.

— And Cathi said, “We finally found our truck-stop restaurant.” With Genuine Home-Cooked flavours and a pretty good ambiance inside. It was a bit unnerving to feel so many people inside staring at me like they were sure they knew me from somewhere and wondered why I wasn’t saying hello on sight-

Beaver and moose Sculpture, paddling a blue canoe.
Here’s the entire Sculpture, or – as much as you can see from one angle –

— As we got closer to the door into the restaurant we discovered another work of sculpture –

Sculpture of a Comical fisherman with a lobster and a jumping fish in a blue rowboat.
I can’t read the plaque from here, (bad me) but I would guess this was the same sculpture artist who sculpted the moose and beaver in the canoe – Cathi had me jump into the photo for a couple inspired takes of her own – I’ll snitch one from facebook and add it here –

— This was yesterday, the 21st of February, with the uncharacteristic ‘No Snow’ on the ground look for this area.

Fisheman and me.
Cathi’s photo of the fisherman acknowledging that he and I are probably somehow related. 😉 – on facebook Cathi gave this photo a caption saying I’d found my long-lost uncle. 🙂

— So Yesterday was cloudy and warm and today is sunny and cold again – And I better get on to things I have to do as I’ve already spent at least twice as much time on this as I expected –

— Happy Fishing? –,

~~~~~ Jim

Saturday, Snow, Then Rain, Then Snow Again ?

Saturday, February 20th, 2016, —ƒƒ— +2˚C / +36˚F & raining at the moment in Atlantic Canada @ 1:11 pm  —ƒƒ— Kathy Krafchick’s Birthday ( & Patty Heart’s too) —ƒƒ—

light dusting of snow on trees and stone wall
– Um, I took this photo about an hour ago. It was still snowing then, but lightly. –

— “Yooks Yike another weird weather day in Atlantic Canada” It began with a light snow falling, the Weather Network expects we might get a centimeter – and then they expect rain ( they were right on that ) And then they expect the rain to turn back to snow –  I don’t think they wanted to guess how much snow we might get on the second round of white stuff, but they thought we might get “≅ 10 mm.” [ almost 10 millimeters ] of rain – But they only expected the temperature to reach 0˚C / 32˚F and we’ve already gone past/above and beyond that.

Crow in a tree against a grey (snowing) sky.
Two Crows were scolding me – When I picked up the camera and aimed at them, one flew away. If you can see the crow in this photo we’re both lucky. Yeah, I think I got him – Upper third & Right third of the photograph. I know what I was looking for.

— Yeah, Crow is one of my ‘totem animals’ – but I’m not about to call myself “Jim Crow”, or ‘Jim Mountain Lion” or Owl or Wolf or Turtle or Swan or Skunk – There’s a Dog in the mix too, and I think Possum shows up to protect my inner child by deflecting threats away – You can read all about that in “Medicine Cards” – don’t google it – go to smartpage dot com and protect your privacy –

 

Dusting of snow on a stone wall.
And This is the part of the stone wall that caught enough of this morning’s dusting to look interesting, at least to me.

— And while I was uploading photos from the camera’s SD card I realized I hadn’t uploaded the couple of photos I took during our latest visit to the north side’s Pizza Delight, ether on Maple Street or St Mary’s (street or road?)

Cathi in our Pizza Delight restaurant.
I might have mentioned this before, Cathi had some modeling experience as a teen-ager And she looks like a slightly different person in almost every photograph I’ve seen of her. I egged her on to pose for this one, Don’t know whether she’s putting on a modeling face of thinking I’ve lost my mind again for asking her to tip her head forward and look up at me. Almost every model I’ve ever talked to wished that professional photographers were a lot more human than they pretend to be.

— Yay? I should quit while I’m ahead –,

~~~~~ Jim

“This Week’s Surprising News Story? Apple Versus The F.B.I.? With Apple Sticking up for Consumer Privacy?” -from —jda—

Copied & Pasted:

= = = = =

Friday, February 19th, 2016  §§ — -7˚C / +19˚F — Clear with a nice warm sun om Atlantic Canada @ 10:45 am  §§  —

People demonstrating against Governments hacking their iPhones.
CBC Radio One News this morning aired a discussion between Those who believe that Apple would give away too much if they caved in to the F.B.I.’s demand that they hand over code to help the F.B.I. crack into the iPhone of accused Terrorists in the recent California mass killings & Those who claim that this would only be a ‘one-off’ event.

— The guy who was arguing that the F.B.I. should be able to protect civilians from terrorists scoffed at the ‘slippery slope’ argument that if Apple gave government agents any help in cracking into their iPhones Then nobody’s privacy would be protected. He called Apple’s argument ‘disingenuous’. — The other side in this discussion did not mention anything about the idea that Government should be the servants of the citizenry, not despotic dictators who believe they should control everything and everybody and should have the right to snoop on everybody’s private thoughts, words and deeds. — The weird thing was, as a kind of aside in this discussion, it was mentioned that young people don’t believe their potential lack of privacy is as big a deal as do older people.

"Truth is Treason in an Empire of Lies"
And – “[Telling The-] Truth is Treason In An Empire Of Lies”
— Whistle-Blowers are often stunned by the revelation that the people they believe they are protecting and defending by maintaining their high level of ethics don’t appreciate their efforts. — I remember hearing one US citizen announce that if he ever saw Ralph Nader crossing a road on a dark night he would not hesitate to attempt vehicular homicide. — This person bought the propaganda put out by the auto industry saying that automobile prices had to rise astronomically because of safety legislation brought on by Ralph Nader’s revealing that the industry knowingly sold vehicles that were “Unsafe At Any Speed”.

— Several Earthquakes in the past couple weeks have also caught my attention, and Earthquakes and Volcanic eruptions were accurately predicted by Astrologer Dr. Luis Turi.

— This will have to be all for now. I have some ‘Real World’ commitments to fulfill.

— jda —

=====

—Thank you, —jda—,

~~~~~ Jim

The Weather Network Says the Polar Vortex Is Back ?

Friday, February 12th, 2016 — -10˚C / +14˚F & Clear with Very Bright Sunlight reflecting off about a foot of snow on the ground in Atlantic Canada @ 3:15 pm — Today is Charles McCauley Sr’s Birthday — Yesterday was my good friend Pamm F.M.’s Birfday — The 10th was good friend – Richard Galdrian’s B’day — The 9th was Richard’s Daughter Chiara’s B’day  & The 9th was also our good friend Audrey M.’s Birthday —

Bright Sun Cold Air
Bright sun shining on a cold day in Canada –

— Cathi and I spent Wednesday evening stacking a cord of firewood in the still unfinished home-made (palletwood) extensions (wings?) of our steel garden shed.

Stacked firewood under plastic.
This is the side of the woodshed where Cathi stacked a lot of firewood. The plastic covering the wood is there to keep snow and other wetness from the sky from messing up the fire-ability of the wood.

— I probably shouldn’t publicize the photo Cathi took of me after we finished stacking the wood.

Jim & Jassper after stacking firewood.
I didn’t recognize the guy in the mirror after I took my hat off when we were finished stacking our firewood. Jassper looks like he wasn’t quite sure I was me.

— Yes, I was clowning, but the dog looks serious. He was probably worried that an evil twin might have taken my place, and he might not be able to con that guy into quite so many treats as he’s been able to manipulate me into giving him.

— Yeah, it’s cold today, but it’s been a lot colder, and the nice warm people and pets around me can make me forget how cold the ‘real world’ has gotten lately.

~~~~~ Jim

Winter 2.0 ? Microsoft executives should rot in boiling pools of festering sewage in hell –

Saturday, February 6th, 2016  §§ -4˚C / +25˚F with Very Bright Sun Shining @ 2:00 pm in Atlantic Canada §§ My Aunt Phyliss’s Birthday –

Snowy Yard
“It” snowed yesterday. Forecasts ahead of time thought we might get anything from less that five Centimeters (2 inches?) to 20 even 30 cm – (8 to 12 inches?) And there might be more white stuff coming at us Sunday night / Monday morning – We actually get a little bit of winter this year.

More later –

— It’s Later — ( We went out for brunch and to get a couple things, got back home after 6 pm.)

Cathi with a real coffee mill/part of one behind her.
Cathi at our late brunch today at the Coffee Mill. This was probably around 2:30 pm.

— Tried to pick up a replacement computer yesterday. Got one at the friendly neighbourhood upscale pawn shop / used stuff store. & I got a pretty good buy from somebody who knows what he’s doing. — $175.00 for a Refurbished computer that’s pretty much the same make & model as the one I bought in 2012 — Remember? When the world was supposed to end, I think – at least three times? And that computer, back in 2012, cost five times as much as this one. 

— I got the computer home, put 10 more Gigs of RAM into it, plugged it in, turned it on — it fired up and smiled at me – and to make sure it worked okay for what I need it for (game design work) , I loaded a game onto it and played it, got frustrated with inconsistancies in that commercial game and gave up, quit the game, told the computer to shut down. But the computer told me, “You can’t tell me to shut down, I’m busy installing 220 updates and telling the NSA all about everything on this computer, where it is, who you are, where you are – what you dreamed about last night and all sorts of stuff that is none of their bleeping business. —

— And then, this morning, after snowblowing the driveway clear for the second time — I turned the computer back on and tried to bring the game up and it told me, “Access Denied” / “Please login with administrator privileges and try again.”

— Schnarr! —

— But anyway, stupid me, after trying to reinstall that stupid game half a dozen times this morning and early afternoon, I’m sitting her thinking I just might try again from a different angle here.

— What’s the definition of insanity? — But — But — I am not attempting to try the same thing over and over again with exactly the same procedure — each time I tried something different —

— AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa —

— *** Update *** —

— System restore worked. For a few scary moments I thought the unwanted updates had installed Windows 10 on me — Micro-sh[censored]t is threatening to do that — Which would go along with Jesse Ventura’s warning through twitter a couple hours ago “Fascists have taken over your government -” —

— But the System Restore worked (after I told it not to go with its suggestion but to back up to yesterday before the bloody freakin updates hijacked the computer).

— And by the way, It’s not connected to the internet until I manage to make sure I can get legitimate updates and not the bull-chips.

~~~~~ Jim

Wednesday – “Winter Today – Springlike Tomorrow” ?

Wednesday, February 3rd  ∞  -9˚C / +16˚F & snowing in Atlantic Canada @ 11:11 am ∴ I think it might be Ian Anderson’s Birthday ψ

Walking Dogs in Snow Photo
The CBC – Canadian Broadcasting Company – encourages regular people to send in photos and videos. I hope this is not to cut down on the number of employees they might otherwise  need to pay to do that.

— It just took me two hours to wade through a lot of beautiful and sometimes disturbing tweets. Eek.

Jefferson versus Corporations.
– Thomas Jefferson – Author of many famous quotes, including “Banking Establishments are more Dangerous than Standing Armies.” Who’d’a thunk an Aries could be so prophetic?

— I was the recording engineer for an interview between Dr John Battista – a Psychiatrist and Green Party Activist in Connecticut – and David Cobb – a Texas Lawyer who was part of a group that had researched the history of corporations in the United States – and that group was fighting against Corporate Fascism – David Cobb, I do believe, ran for President of the USA as the Green Party Candidate in 2004 – After I had followed my heart to Canada and was trying to first become a permanent resident, and later, a dual citizen of the US & Canada. In 2004 I couldn’t leave Canada – unless I wanted to start the long and expensive process of applying for permanent residency all over again.

— & speaking of evil corporations – Canada has ruled that cable teevee providers must offer channels that they currently only offer as part of bundles – and so lower the cost that consumers need to pay to get what they want. Rogers Cable is blitzing the airwaves with propaganda commercials trying to lure customers into falling for their – “Get our packaged bundles now and lock yourself in to wonderful lower prices for three years!” b.s. — And Bell Aliant – who promised us three years of low prices and later informed us that we misinterpreted what they told us – had MTV in our channel line up on Monday, and no MTV was there on Tuesday, when the Shannara  Chronicles air. So I guess that proves that Bell is definitely on the side of the demons that the ‘Druid’ and the three young hero types in that series are trying to defeat. Yup, Bell is probably one of the bad guys.

Michael Moore advertizing his newest movie.
Michael Moore has another movie about to come out. He’s gotta be one of my favourite people.

— The Mouse that Roared? In Reverse?

Ground Hog Against the TPP
– Well, a groundhog with a social conscience? – Hmm – Don’t’cha wish the politicians and oligarchs who want to rule over you and run your life had as much intelligence and compassion as this guy? 😉

— Your government is lying to you. They want you to voluntarily give up every right and privilege you have. They want to say you voted away your rights. They want to be able to point their fingers at you and say, “They made me do it-” & When they get to Hell, they want to show the devils there that they really were on the side of darkness and deceit, so they can get a job as one of the demons torturing the decent folks they deceived into backing policies and programs that drove other good people into despair and economic slavery.

Fredericton Skies this morning.
But New Brunswick had a spectacular sunrise this morning, and this person from Fredericton caught it digitally on her camera.

— Today’s weather report, “Well, this afternoon we will experience Winter and by tomorrow it will feel like Spring.”

Opportunity or obstacle?
And here’s a bit of daily inspiration from Roy Bennett.

— I do like to have at least something positive to add any time I go through the trouble to write up what I see coming at us via the ‘Tweet-Us-Sphere’ and in real life beyond.

Very interesting waterfall.
And if thoughtfully reassuring words can’t inspire you right now, maybe a photo like this can –

— Looks like another place I’d like to visit and stay for a while.

— But I have other real world stuff to attend to, so I better end here – Have a wonderful, spiritually enlightening day –,

~~~~~ Jim

Ground Hog Day – 2016

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016 — -6˚C / +21˚F — Sunny & bright, clear, and colder than yesterday in Atlantic Canada @ 9:11 am — Birthdays today: Close Friend Lisa and Cousin Lyn in Connecticut 🙂 & I think our friend Angie ( née Shean ) up here has a birthday too – 🙂 —

"Icebergs"
I don’t know if this will be readable – but a friend impressed me by doing this on an obsolete computer with an obsolete operating system and an obsolete photo program.

— Draelen Shantivarta ( ‘Somewhere out west’ -) managed to download a screen shot from the game that several of us are still working on, and, using a G5 Mac running OS X 10.4-something which supports OS 9 “Classic”, where he used Photo Deluxe, a program from the early 90’s, to import, trim, and write every line ( one at a time ) then drag and resize the text (one line at a time). & to tell ya the truth, the screen shot looks like icebergs are floating close to shore somewhere.

Bernie and Barbara.
Barbara Walters interviewing Bernie Sanders before anybody had any idea that he could do so well in Iowa

— A lot of people were buzzing this morning about how well Bernie Sanders did in the Iowa Caucus yesterday. He started out polling in single digits and ended up in a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton, who is backed by big money and a powerful political machine.

Caucus Results
Hillary received 49.9% of the Democratic Votes tallied in yesterday’s Iowa Caucuses, Bernie received 49.5%? That should scare a lot of the wrong people. And six of the delegates were awarded by a coin toss?

— Hillary’s supporters were tweeting up a storm yesterday while Bernie had Michael Moore and a handful of activist celebrities ( including Susan Sarandon ( “Dammit – Janet!” ) and Wil Wheaton? – ( Wesley from Star Trek Next Generation? ) Plus a lot of dedicated grass-roots people. Exit polls cited by the BBC said 84-91% of voters under 30 years old voted for ‘The Bern’

California Bridge over shallow water stream
– This is in California? Wow –

— & As for me, I think I’d like to be in a nice warm place like the photo above right now. The person who tweeted it said, “California”? Must be upstate, north of San Francisco?

Water falling lazily around an old castle somewhere?
– And I have no idea where this is, but I do believe I could live there and love it. –

— Looks like the inspiration for the Elven City of Rivendel, as portrayed in The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings Movies.

Bridge over a river somewhere.
– And this is another beautiful, intriguing place that I think I’d like to at least visit –

— I think my friend, Draelen, knows more about where this photographer/Tweeter is from, I think he told me she’s from Germany – But wow – what a beautiful world we live in. I think somebody tweeted a photo of Leonard Nimoy as Spock with a quote that went something like, [ understatement alert ] “Anybody who would destroy their home planet – is illogical.”

— I spent yesterday doing carpentry stuff, reinforcing the wobbly legs to a computer desk, and then brought an overheating iMac back from its most recent ‘near-death-experience’, caught up with a couple of friends on effbook and twitter, and watched ‘Supergirl’ and ‘X-Files’ before making sure computers were still okay and hadn’t blown up yet and forgot to take one of my medications. ( And No – I’m not one of the people doug otterson cited as needing to self medicate after seeing the photograph of an upright black cat playing a guitar – 😉

— And – I’m still wracking my brains over how to handle difficult passages in a novel that I’m trying to finish.

— Happy Ground Hog Day!

~~~~~ Jim