Month: November 2023

EconomicsFamilyLife ExperienceTravel

So Nobody Should Retire?

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

I recently read an article in The Walrus that postulated that nobody should retire -largely because they either can’t afford to or the future is too uncertain.

I found this a bit strange, to be honest. Maria and I retired early and at the time I felt we were OK to do so financially. We were fortunate enough to have pensions; we had been careful and had additional savings set aside. After some years away from the workplace, I still believe we can be OK – even if our health care costs increase a lot. And I have no interest in getting back on the bike, thank you. There are many reasons for this:

I don’t miss the job. When I retired, I had pretty well lost interest in my career. I enjoyed some of the technical aspects, but I was tired and burned out – depressed even – with the politics, performance management, and endless meetings that were part of my life back then. I left after my final day and never went back. Never wanted to.

I took a couple of years to taper off. When we moved to Almonte I volunteered as a tech officer/production worker with a small local coffee roasting business. I probably made a difference, but after a couple of years I wanted more time to travel, work on computers, learn about Linux. So at that point I just shut things down.

I never really identified as a person with my career. Sure, I was a chemist and food scientist – I still remember a lot of my training and practical experience. But that was never who I am – I didn’t disappear as a person when I didn’t go into the lab any longer.

My former job has disappeared. Unilever had two factories in the Toronto area where I worked. They closed one and sold the other one along with the spreads business. As well, Unilever phased out local product development in Canada. So even had I wanted to continue working, there wouldn’t be any job for me to do. Any termination settlement for me would have been in the form of a retirement agreement.

I have no desire to be a WalMart greeter, Tim Horton’s barista, or McDonald’s burger flipper. I did plenty of McJobs in my early years; right now all they would do for me is keep me on my feet for hours, and raise my marginal income tax level.

I am not minimizing the problems of many who want to retire and are faced with low income or economic uncertainty. Nor am I ungrateful for our good fortune in having decent jobs and benefits in our working years. However, I think the author of The Walrus article is a bit ingenuous to expect all seniors to work an additional 20 years after the traditional retirement date – because it’s good for them. In many cases it isn’t.

FamilyLife ExperiencePets

Peace at the Last

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

We lost our dearest old ginger friend today. Mr.Oates had not been well for a month. He had his good days and not so good days. The vet thought he had a neurological issue – maybe a brain tumor.

The last 24 hours he just went downhill – crawled off to the closet in our bedroom to be alone. He was unresponsive and falling over when he tried to walk.

So we cuddled him up in a big towel – no point in using the cat cage – and took a final journey to the vet. He was gentle to the end – slept away while we held him close.

Right now I’d say we are halfway between depression and acceptance on the Kuebler-Ross scale. Think of us today. We are grateful we could give him a good life and a warm bed to sleep in.

The pic above is how we always want to remember him. May he have had peace at the last.

FamilyLife ExperiencePets

My Old Pal

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

Mr. Oates will be nine years old tomorrow. Of all the cats we’ve been owned by, he is by far the most affectionate. He sleeps with us every night, has done that since the first night he arrived in our home.

Oates was a shelter cat, surrendered by his previous owners after a marriage breakdown. We took him from desolation to consolation, changing his life forever.

He’s had some health issues lately and may be suffering from a neurological issue. He has good days and bad days. So do we but we are taking it day by day.

Usually I reserve birthday wishes for those who can read them, but I think my old pal deserves one this year. So Happy Birthday Oatsey.

EconomicsHobbiesLife ExperienceTechnologyTravel

End of the Line

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

In my 60-odd years of taking photographs I have made a few changes in my equipment, for what I considered to be good reasons:

  1. From 127 film slides to 35 mm slides with a rangefinder camera – to have more control over image quality, and get more images per roll of film.
  2. From 35mm rangefinder to manual focus SLR slides – to improve focusing and see the proposed image better.
  3. From 35 mm slide film to 35 mm print film – to make albums of vacation trips.
  4. From manual focus film SLR to Autofocus film SLR – because my eyesight was failing and I couldn’t focus properly.
  5. From AF film SLR to various and sundry digital rangefinder cameras – because I didn’t want the hassle of film any longer, and I was storing everything on the computer anyway.
  6. To both digital rangefinder and SLR cameras – because finally the problem of dust on a DSLR sensor got fixed – mostly.

That is where I am today. I have a tiny superzoom unit I can take on holiday, and a Nikon DSLR system for serious image making.

Here is an example with the small superzoom.

And this one was taken with the digital SLR and a wide angle zoom.

Now I’ve had my latest digicams since 2016 or so, and a lot has happened in photography since then. Smartphones are now used for 95% of all photographs taken these days, and sales of “real cameras” have declined by about the same percentage. The latest thing in the camera biz is “mirrorless.” Mirrorless cameras have largely replaced the DSLR, and the superzoom type camera market is hanging on by a thread.

Several times in the past I have replaced my equipment because the old stuff was obsolete or just didn’t work for me anymore (See above.) Should I be doing that in this day and age? I don’t think so because:

  • We aren’t traveling as much these days, and when we do it is shorter trips in the car. So I can take along my very best camera equipment – Nikon D5500 system. This solves the only problem I have with travel cameras – sometimes I have trouble in very low light if I have my tiny Lumix superzoom.
  • Most upgrades in digital camera technology in the past 5 years has been in video capability. Since I am really a still photo photographer that doesn’t apply to me. The older cameras still take wonderful still photographs.
  • I have a full set of Nikon DX lenses and a bunch of older Nikon film lenses from the early 1990s that still work – although I have to manually focus them. Replacing all those lenses with a mirrorless camera system would be very expensive.

The above was taken with one of the old school Nikon manual focus lenses. Since my cataract surgery I can accurately focus again – and the camera gives me an indication when I’ve got it right.

  • I can still take film photos with the old lenses and my 2002 F80 SLR but honestly I probably won’t. However if any of the grandkids gets into vintage photography classes in high school. I can donate a pretty good film system to them.
  • With my Pixel 7 smartphone I now have another capable camera I can experiment with. Initial impressions are pretty good, if you can live with limited telephoto capability.

Here is a November morning as captured by the Pixel 7.

  • Mostly I changed or upgraded my equipment because of frustration when I could not get the type of image I wanted. This has not been the case for several years now. Nor do I think that I have exhausted all the possibilities with either of my current “real” cameras. And I am just getting started with computational photography via my smartphone.

Although I may have reached the end of the line when it comes to buying new cameras, I certainly have NOT reached that point as a photographer. And one’s photographic skills are far more important than the type of equipment you have.

My Uncle Howard made wonderful images with a cruddy old 35mm Kodak back in the 1960s. I should always remember that.

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