Month: December 2013

As of January 1st, manufacturers are no longer allowed to make 75 and 100 watt incandescent bulbs in Canada. Once the existing supply is gone, that’s it. 40 and 60 watters get the boot at the other end of this year.

I don’t really care, but it strikes me as odd that the federal Conservatives decided to ban an energy-inefficient product. If the policy was consistently applied, I can think of many, many products that would have to go.

The gas furnace I’ve never liked is not liking me back. Dead as Marley this below-freezing night. Sometime tomorrow, I will pay to revive it but that’s the old beast’s last hurrah. In the Spring of the much better year to come, a quiet, new high efficiency furnace will take its place.
[Update] Some thermostat tweaking has persuaded the heat to come on. A flaky flame sensor is probably at fault. The service call will still be required, but at least we are warm for a while.

Detect a bit of buyer’s remorse in this short, yet positive assessment?

“It’s good butt don’t waste your money on it”

Wondering which of the millions of possible products drew this sage advice?

The icy weather, slippery roads, power outages and a developing head cold (in my case)… all feeding triskaidekaphobia. I really don’t fear the number 13, but on the other hand, I won’t mind getting 2013 behind me.
Daylight view of the oak branch that clobbered Ralph’s van. I heard that Ralph removed the branch himself and drove the van away.

Last night’s ice storm brought down many a branch around the city, and along with the branches, many power lines. These are across the road by our garage. Minor, compared to some streets.
Parked cars took wooden clubbings, suffering dents and broken windows and downed wires put about 250,000 Torontonians in the dark. Our lights came back on by 3:30 p.m. after an outage that lasted several hours. There could be more to come, especially if winds pick up, but so far, so good.
If you are a hardy lilac, its a chance to look rather beautiful.

Update: All’s not well for Ralph’s van and one city street light. A big oak branch gave them both a whacking.

YouTube provides code to embed videos into web pages and, until now, I have used it myself. Turns out, I don’t need it. I don’t have to bother figuring out what proportions I need to include to have it play at a custom size that fits my blog format.
Wordpress is so good now, all that’s needed is the URL of the video. As you see, it displays and works just fine. Not a bad little example to watch, either. Next, I’ll have to try a video that isn’t from YouTube.
How about one from Vimeo …

How about one from my server?

Hmmm. My turtle is slow to load and there is no poster frame showing at the beginning, in some web browsers. (It is there in some browsers, but just shows a blank space in others.)
BTW… we came across the big turtle, walking down to the Lake Ontario beach near Kathleen’s place. Summer, 2011

When I picked the place for lunch with Danica and a friend last week, I didn’t know the owners would be charged $100,000 in court this week, for human rights violations. Obviously, I won’t be going back to Papillon on the Park until it’s under different management.
This is the second place on the Beach south of Queen that I will avoid. The other one is on the Boardwalk Pub and its neighbouring restaurant. It was the subject of another kind of trouble.

Write A House is a charity on a mission in poor old down-trodden Detroit. The idea is to train young people in carpentry by renovating old, abandoned houses, then hand over ownership to … writers !!!
Renovations will be about 80% complete when the handover happens and the recipient is expected to put in the last 20% as sweat equity. The writer-owners will be responsible for paying the taxes and utility bills, like any other owner. If a house is sold within 5 years, there are rules but after that, writers will own their own homes outright.
Wouldn’t it be great if Detroit could reinvent itself as a creative centre? It would be wonderful for neighbouring Windsor, Ontario, too (Danica’s home town).

Fast, clear and a bit clunky
Safari crashes a lot on my new iPad Mini, so I googled and found that it’s a common experience. It’s probably a software glitch, but what if it’s bad hardware? I contacted Apple Support online.
Type in your phone number and they’ll call you… within 2 minutes!
My phone rang in about 10 seconds and I was speaking to a well-spoken woman whose native tongue is English. Her suggestions (quit Safari and restart it… or completely reinstall the software) were not particularly helpful, but at least they were fast and intelligible.

Apologies to anyone feeling that they have been lured here falsely…

Mark’s calls pants “Men’s Bottoms” and so shall I. Today’s subject is a recent experiment with winter wear: TMAX CORD LINED CANVAS JEAN vs LINED TMAX HEAT CARGO.
This is the first year I’ve tried fighting the chill with lined pants of any kind. Occasionly, I’ve resorted to long johns, but now that walking is part of my regular routine, lined pants make sense. Which lining to choose, though?
First purchase – the cord-lined wonders. Loved ’em at once. Warm, wind-cutting luxury.
But my experience with the featherlight insulation in my newish Gore-Tex jacket got me wondering. Could Mark’s claim to innovative technology be true? Could TMAX Heat really be as good as the cord lining, while offering lighter weight and less bulk?