When my grandson was born in January 2009, we clicked from the moment I held him in my arms at the hospital. He’s the most like me in appearance and temperament and many people have remarked that he is sort of a mini-me (poor kid.) We are still extemely close and he appreciates my sense ...
Winter can get here in a hurry at the 45th parallel. Now that the World Series is over, the hockey and basketball seasons are in full swing and the weather is forecast to turn sharply colder, it was time to get ready. We finished up the outside stuff today. Took down the Muskoka chairs from ...
I was up at 7 AM today – taking out the trash. Not my favorite morning activity at the best of times, but today it seemed far worse stumbling about in the morning gloom. For this we can thank the authorities in North America who have decreed a month longer stretch of Daylight Savings Time ...
Back in 2006 I had an old Dell Dimension 4100 desktop I wanted to refurbish and use in the basement. I didn’t want to spend $100 to upgrade the operating system from Windows ME to XP. A friend on an online forum suggested I try Linux. I went to a local computer shop to get ...
Tomorrow marks a special birth anniversary of a very special person. I won’t say how old Maria will be, but suffice it to say she’s had a long and eventful life. Hopefully many more years ahead. She has been (and continues to be) a devoted daughter and sister, also an excellent student, loving wife, mother ...
In a couple of months I’ll be celebrating my 10th anniversary as a retiree. 10 years! In a couple more I’ll have been retired 1/3 as long as I worked. Maybe this would be a good time to look at the things that worked out great and the things that have yet to come to ...
When we moved to the Valley in 2005 we got a new home and a set of 7 new appliances for it. 5 of these were Maytag, but the brand name doesn’t really matter. What happens is that we then became subject to the inevitable laws of appliance failure. It took a few years but ...
A young soldier of the Argylls killed while standing on guard at one of our most sacred monuments. His killer – radicalized by a twisted view of a great faith tradition – shot dead in the Hall of Honour. It was a day not many of us will soon forget. But at the end of ...
Flight simulation still is a killer app for the game business. Train simulation came out later and always has been regarded as Flight’s ugly younger sibling. After all, most folks would rather soar through the clouds than grind it out on a grimy locomotive in the rain, right? Well I am not like most folks, ...
When I first got online in 1996 – using a 28.8 Kbit dial-up modem – the first serious thing I did was join an online discussion forum. Back then it cost so much to be online that you dialed in, downloaded your messages, logged out and read them offline with special software. I’m sure the ...