Friday, August 5th, 2016 — 14°C / 56°F & Cool & Damp @7:00 am in Atlantic Canada —
I’m not sure whether this is a photo or a painting or a photo that’s been painted in photo shop – But I like it.
— It’s John Olerud’s Birthday – and it’s also Terry Seguin’s [ host of New Brunswick First / Information Morning out of Fredericton, NB “on CBC Radio One, local Cable TeeVee and live streaming on the web.” ] — Also a couple friends in Connecticut, Including Gail S. and a couple others who don’t want to be reminded that they’re getting older are either celebrating or trying to forget that today is their birthday. —
— We had a thunderstorm yesterday, and my malware program found a couple ‘potentially unwanted’ bits of schnarr in my files et cetera, which is odd, because that’s a computer I don’t connect to the internet much. But anyway, the “kabooms” were loud and I could feel them as well as hear them, so I shut everything down and then had a hard time getting everything back up and running. And when a browser that had been open to twitter came back up there was this photo – or whatever that is up there – that caught my eye, and I’m still checking in to see whose blogs need to have their plug ins and stuff updated, so I thought I’d change the sticky post on my eye candy blog.
— Habbin zee gooten Tahg – [he said in his fake German accent —]
— Sunday, March 20th, 2016 — // -2˚C / +27˚F in brilliant sunlight reflected on very white snow at 12:06 pm in Atlantic Canada — // — I believe today is Dona ( née Flynn ) from my hippy days in Brattleboro’s birthday —
One of Jim W.’s photos that he couldn’t load yesterday, I reduced the size from 3,000 + by 2,000 odd pixels to 1024 b less than 768 and it looks like ‘No Problem at all” here – I also painted the license plate blank for ya, Jim – —jda—
— Yup, looks good to me –
— Jim & Cathi’s House, Jassper’s ‘dog run’ – Funny – Jim calls this the ‘Front Yard’ because it faces Canada Street and that’s the face most people see – Cathi calls it their ‘back yard’ because they come in the door on the other side of the house. I don’t know, If that’s really the biggest disagreement these two have, I’d say they have an amazingly good relationship. —jda—
— Jim & Cathi’s East Side Yard At Sun-Up.
— This is the second of two photos Jim took Friday Morning, of the Deer and the Hill they feed on, he had to take this from a distance, and if his cell’s phone has a telephoto function, somebody should tell him how to use it. 😉 – I would have cropped this photo closer in and used it instead of the one he started yesterday’s post off with. —jda—
— Today dawned almost as picturesquely as yesterday –
— To prove a point, silly me, I cropped the photo from directly above this cropped version – Jim’s 2nd “Deer on the hill with great backlighting” photo – and did not reduce the size / number of pixels – The deer are so far to the left you can almost miss them in their lower corner there – Reminds me of Taoist Chinese Art – where the scenery is huge and the people are tiny? – And loading this photo did take so long at 2308 x 1766 pixels that I thought it just might crash WordPress’ interior workings. But it didn’t and it’s here, and I’m glad. —jda—
— yup, magic happens, isn’t it great when things work out better than you expect them to?
Hi – Jim W. Is having problems with his WordPress Theme or his connection and asked me to see if this works in my ‘blog’ – :
= = = = =
I went outside to photograph the sunrise after I brought a little bit of oats out to the Deer Hill, and was surprised to see a family of deer already there having breakfast – Then I tried to change the settings on the sizes of the photos & ‘Media’ for this WordPress Blog and it seems to want to over-ride my changes. Grrrrr- But anyway, This is a cropped photo with the deer and the wild backlighting in effect. I’ll try to load this at full size and see what it says. —jim w—
— Saturday, March 19th, 2016 — // -10˚C / +14˚F & Clear & quite bright out there at 9:00 am Atlantic Daylight Savings Time — I think today is my grammar school friend, Donald Hanichek’s Birthday. I could have the spelling wrong – and the last time I bumped into him we were in our twenties and both shopping at an art supply store where my friend, Kim, worked. I think Don was picking up art supplies for the place where he worked, and he pointed at me, smiled and said, “This is what I like about living here-” (bumping into childhood friends) —
— This week’s Media News included a bit on how consumers brought a complaint to the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Television Commission? — expanded to include cable and satellite etc. ? ) About the way Cable ‘Provider’s are handling things. The CRTC ordered cable companies to provide a cheap, stripped down ‘basic’ package that had to include the major Canadian Networks and possibly a couple US networks — I’m not 1,000 % ‘up’ on the details – But – They were also supposed to ‘provide’ single channel options, and not just offer channels inside ‘Bundles’ that a lot of people were complaining contain a bunch of channels they never watch and have no desire to pay for. & Now it seems that the cable ‘providers’ – “jacked” the price of all the single channels they offer – up as high as they could get away with – and people are complaining now that it would cost them more to get just the few channels they want than all the channels they didn’t want before.
— & Now, Yesterday, Our local CBC Morning News Program reported that a new complaint has come to the CRTC regarding one of the major Media Providers and the way they charge for Cell Phone ‘service’ – They made it very easy for anyone on a family’s plan, including the minor children, to go past the ‘Data Transfer’ limits on their family plan – As in Testing and connecting to radio and YouTube NetFlix and stuff like that. The woman who brought this one complaint in question to the CBC reporters discovered that her minor son was able to go to a ‘screen’ where the warning “You are about to exceed the monthly Data Transfer Limit associated with your family plan – If you wish to continue receiving the program you are attempting to connect to you must verify that you will pay for the additional Data transferred. Do you wish to continue? If So Type “Yes” – ” The woman got her bill for that month, opened it and nearly fell down. The additional data transfer the company said she owed amounted to over $1,700.00 Canadian. After she complained to the CRTC the Cell Phone ‘Service’ was ordered to pay most of that back to her. The reporter told us that some complaints reported much higher amounts the ‘provider’ claimed the consumer owed, whether a minor child or the actual bill payer ‘okayed’ the extra data transfer or whatever –
— The CBC reporter identified the company in this case as ‘Rogers’ who may now own the iconic tower in ‘Downtown Toronto’ and might even own the Toronto Blue Jays. I could be wrong on this point. But anyway. The love of my life had a family plan with Rogers and needed to watch her bills extremely closely because the company tried to bill her in accordance to one plan after numerous long phone calls complaining and explaining that she had the plan that allowed her teenaged daughter either unlimited or close to unlimited data transfer every month while holding the rest of us, who didn’t text much, or in my case, not at all – And every month they tried to tell her that that was not the plan she had and every month she fought and argued and said, “Yes it was the plan she agreed to-” And they would get those details correct and the company representative would say that ‘these are your contract’s terms’ – and read her what she wanted to hear, and then the very next month the bill would come in as if those conversations/complaints had never happened. She was close to tears every month over this nonsense. It seemed ver much like the company had a policy of: “Charge them whatever we freakin feel like charging them – and threaten them with legal action for breach of contract if they don’t pay our version of this- and to hell with what they think they want or what they think they agreed to-” And then they made their customers service complaints so contentious and maddening that they hoped their ‘treasured customers’ would just shut up and pay whatever was on their bills.
— Schnarr! —
And Now back to pretty pictures:
— “Wide Shot” of the deer that surprised me this morning – Here they began to run away as I was walking up close to where I had just stood and tossed cups full of oats up to ‘their spot’ on the hill. —jim w—
— Okay, this blog doesn’t like full sized photos, let me publish what I have here and see how it comes out and maybe edit some more later.
Tuesday, February 16th, 2016 -( -7°C / +19°F & snowing in the dark @ 6:15 am in Atlantic Canada )-
Weird Weather Strikes Again? Will start out Cold and snowy and end up warm (8˚C/46˚F) and raining – with a good chance for local flooding?
— Okay, so at 5:30 this morning I looked out and it was snowing. It’s supposed to be +8°C / +46°F and heavily raining later this afternoon?
This has nothing to do with today’s weather – or anything other than the fact that I saw this on twitter on thought, huh- reminds me of Lyons, France –
— Does that make any sense to anyone out there? It’s freakin February 16th –
– & – Well, I betcha kids will love this, but I know too many grown-ups who gotta go to work today, and with the threat of freezing rain before this turns to all rain, I think I’m gonna have some grumpy people all around me.
— Um, I resolved the following problem & am about to update this article here: { & Ooops – I can’t upload photos here – will have to try again later from another computer. }
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 – 🙂 —
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.
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.
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’
– 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?
– 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.
– 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.
Sunday, January 31st, 2016 -( 0˚C / +32˚F — Dark and fairly warm for this time of year in Atlantic Canada @ 8:37 pm )-
I had to look twice at the snowman before I realized what was up. 🙂
— I spent too much of last night trying to undo weird glitches on my laptop – Then I switched to this computer to look up “How do you delete a user account that isn’t working right on a Mac with OS X 10.9.5?” ( It won’t accept its passwords – and nobody logged in and changed those passwords, so I haven’t the foggiest what might be going on there. )
Jesse Ventura likes the idea that Donald Trump is dismantling the Republican Party in the U.S.A.
— But ya know what? There’s a lot of back and forth grumbling about politiks, especially back in the “States” where the Iowans are about to kick off another round of Presidential Election Season maneuvering.
Michael Moore has been tweeting up a storm about the differences between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. – Somebody from Fox News believes Michael Moore is laughable because he generalized about the Republicans stance on issues he believes are very important – Fox News Pointing their finger at anyone’s shortcomings? That’s what’s laughable.
— Michael Moore has been poking holes in a lot of arguments about the Republicrats’ race to the White House, including citing poles that say that Bernie can’t get enough Democrats’ votes to beat Trump – But when Independent voters are figured into the mix Sanders clobbers Trump – But Hillary wouldn’t.
Meanwhile, in Canada, There are ‘Spin-Wars’ going on with Conservatives claiming they handed the new Liberal Government a Big Surplus. As this series of tweets and retweets (above) points out, The Conservatives tried to un-fund several areas and with-held funds earmarked – for instance – for Veterans Health care – Where they shut down 9 regional offices – which made it harder, nearly impossible for some vets to get help for their PTSD issues – which resulted in and “Epidemic” of Veterans committing suicide, and then the Minister of Veterans Affairs became extraordinarily unpopular by appearing on television newsbyte news handing the Prime Minister a cheque for a Billion Dollars in ‘savings’/money not spent saving veterans’ lives. So what we had here was the rich robbing the poor and powerless and handing each other the spoils of their privateering. EI = Employment Insurance. The Harper Conservatives tried to make it so hard for downsized / laid off and retired workers to get help that the middle class is shrinking catastrophically up here – Retirement Benefits were basically ‘put on hold’ with retired citizens waiting so long for their benefits to start that it really looked like the Conservatives were hoping the retirees would drop dead before they could collect any of the money they’d earned over their life times.
— A lot of people are now openly calling ex-Prime Minister Stephen Harper a Corporate Fascist.
And in the United Kingdom – Something that some of us thought was a joke that couldn’t be true – looks like it’s reality : The elected government over there wants to institute a “Bedroom Tax” with provisions that exclude the Royalty and the very rich from having to pay anywhere near as much as the middle class and especially the poor – who would be paying for this new tax – which sounds like an old Monty Python Routine.
— [ ‘Carers’ listed above would be ‘Home Health Care Providers’, as in: someone taking care of a sick parent or relative, or foster child, etc. ]
– I’m not entirely sure who the ‘she’ is – referred to in the comment that accompanied this tweet. I’m not even sure it’s someone in the UK, but that would be my best guess – And the quote is something worth pondering, if only to wonder if it might be more true if a couple of the words were slightly changed.
— How about, “The problem is that Sensitive People take their time to think about the consequences of their propsed actions while Belligerant people turn their minds off and charge straight ahead swinging virtual and verbal clubs and axes at anything in their way.” ?
And this final photograph of the evening reminds me both of times when New York City felt like a wondrous and almost strangely beautiful place and it ‘scared the living cement out of me’ with the brutality of its indifference and greed.
— This is probably enough damage for anyone’s peace of mind to suffer through tonight –
Sunday, January 10th, 2016 -( I began this @ 8:58 am in Atlantic Canada — where it still seemed to be -4˚C / +25˚F — but now grey and damp and chilly out there beyond my windows )-
— “Interesting -: Don’t-cha think?
— I sent invitations to two blogging buddies. The wrong people got those invitations.
— At Least — That’s the way it looks now.
This is a photo of the “Peace Tower” — Yoko Ono’s tribute to John Lennon. Long may it shine.
— You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through to upload the Peace Tower photo above. Pages bled into one another. The buttons went invisible. I managed to click where I thought the invisible “Insert into Blog” button was and everything cleared up – but then I went to type this here paragraph in and blew up firefox. Ka boom. It is now 9:23 am.
— And, like I said above, Mercury sure as bleep IS Retrograde. But I now have two more authors/contributors that I know and trust signed in and ready to rock and roll.
— So things are not all bad –, even if the weird set backs and browser crashes have kept me trying to get this done for, duh? two hours? it is now about eleven minutes after eleven am. okay with you if I lean back and scream?
Just don’t even think about believing the above message – The part that says, “Switch to the improved posting experience.” ??? That will in no way contribute to any kind of happy experience,
— Okay – so there I was, minding my own business, going along with the stupid message one of the blogs I manage for a couple less-tech-savvy friends when the blogs begin telling me there’s a brand new security update that I absolutely need to install before the whole freakin universe imploads and kills millions of innocent children and their unconditionally loving pets – So, silly me, I go ahead and do that – some of the updates go smoothly, run without a hiccup, almost completely automatically – and then some need a couple tries and a couple need manual updates. This takes me a couple hours.
— And then – après updating – a cute little message popped up and said I should avoid security problems by clicking ‘here’.
— I did that & the next weird message said I should “connect with WordPress.”
— Silly me, I clicked that too.
— And. I’ll admit I was slightly tired at the time, [ more like nearly exhausted? ] & when the the next screen finished loading – I found myself hijacked to where the software wanted me to pick a theme and move on – then pick a domain name at wordpress dot com and in my nearly sleepwalking state – well – here I am trying to explain myself to nobody there –
