Still Alive

It has been a busy last week or so due to all of the snow we have been getting. Thank goodness for my snow blower. If I had to shovel by hand I think I would give up before I got started due to the amount of snow that needed to be moved around.

However, with the snow blower I am able to do my drive way, my neighbour's drive way behind me, the sidewalk for a block north, west and east of me and my next door neighbour's backyard and alleyway (so he can drive out of the alley). I decided to not do the sidewalk to the south of me as there are no houses on the block. All told it usually takes me about an hour (give or take) to get the blowing done.

The weather has been bitterly cold with the wind so strong, however, I bundle up and normally am sweating by the time I get back in the house. The snow blower does most of the work, however, I do have to try and steer the beast every now and then when it gets a mind of it's own. One thing though I do get lots of fresh air and a bit of exercise.

I do think that I may be jinxing things though with my snow blowing. It seems as soon as I get the darn walks cleared the wind picks up and blows them back in or the darn snow starts coming down once again. I have blown the snow around every day this week. I was out again today and the drifts were probably 24-30 inches across the walks again due to the wind.

We did make it into the city on Wednesday to enable Sam to get her INR work done, do a bit of grocery shopping and assist Connie with her a computer tuneup. The snow and wind were trying to stack the deck against us and keep us from not travelling. On the way into the city the road was snow covered in the passing lane and lots of ground drifting. When we headed home at about 5:30 pm I was a bit apprehensive of the way we'd find the highways, but it was all for naught. The highway was just excellent and we were able to zip right along.

We have no urgent trips planned for the near future so we can pick and choose when we next have to venture out highway. That sure is a lot better than 'having to' make a trip.

Finally Saskatchewan Catches Up

It was announced today on the local televison stations that Sask Justice has released a web site for the local citizens of the province (and all of the internet community) to be able to access 'High Risk Offenders' who are likely to re-offend. The link that takes you directly to the list of names is: High Risk Offenders.

My niece Shar-Lee put it bluntly and to the point Its about damn time that Saskatchewan put something out for the people to be able to view information on these offenders.

Everyone should read the preceeding pages that lead up to the direct list of the offenders as well. It advises visitors of why the site was created, who is included on the site and other worthwhile information. I don't feel you need to go through the whole gamut of clicking on 4 pages just to get a view of the offenders everytime you visit the site. To read the worthwhile information on the Sask Justice site on the High Risk Offenders you should start at Sask Justice High Risk Offender Program

I would hope that this is only the start of what should be published. Now that Sask Justice has started the ball rolling, maybe they can continue on and list bios and pics of the top 10 offenders from the major police services (ie Estevan, Moose Jaw, Prince, Albert, Regina, Saskatoon, and Weyburn) and the provincial list for the RCMP (if there was such a thing ?). Then Sask Justice should flog the heck out of the media with the internet link so people can easily access it without going through page after page of searching.

Why should the criminals get to be hidden away and yet the poor folks that are getting the brunt of their deeds are out in the open?

The Trucker's Travels

James headed out yesterday enroute to Lethbridge, Alberta. He was hoping that from there he would be able to head south to Kansas City. I talked to him this morning and sadly the trip south is not going to happen at this point in time. If he in fact headed south, he would end up sitting all weekend as this is the Thanksgiving weekend in the States. He might as well do some trucking in Canada and make a few miles rather than sitting idle doing nothing.

James arrived in Lethbridge last night and then had to sit over night to await to get unloaded. After unloading he had to continue to sit in Lethbridge for about another 3 hours waiting for the boss to find another load. He is now finally heading up to Vulcan, Alberta for another load. From there he is not sure which way he will be heading. There is a possibility that he may pick up a load of telephone poles in the Calgary area and then onto Regina, but at this point in time James just doesn't know.

Actually poor James is getting a bit frustrated with the current boss/company. Having to sit and wait in the middle of nowhere is not great at the best of times. Of course when you are sitting and parked, James makes no dollars as he get paid 'by the mile'. Then to have your pay cheque marked "NSF" is just about the end of the line for an employee. Hopefully, the company is just going through a phase and 'Roger' will get it together and get things back on track.

I'm sure James and the other drivers would definitely appreciate it.

Email Safety

I received the following email message about email safety and how to forward an email message correctly. I'm not sure who originated the message, but it definitely has some good ideas in the message. If we all followed the information, we sure could cut down on the SPAM we get everyday. Here is the message as I received it:

Quote:

A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly from a system administrator for a corporation. It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails. Please read the short letter below, even if you're sure you already follow proper procedure.

Do you really know how to forward e-mail?

50% of us do, 50% DO NOT.

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it? Every time you forward an e-mail, there is information left over from the people who got the message before you--- their e-mail addresses and names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list builds and builds and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus and his or her computer can send that virus to every E-mail address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them, or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and that person will make five cents for each hit.

How do you stop it? There are several easy steps:

1. When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, DELETE them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second. You MUST click the "Forward" button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message. If you don't click on "Forward" first, you won't be able to edit the message at all.

2. Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the "To" or "Cc" fields for adding e-mail addresses. Always use the "BCC" (blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. This way the people you send to will only see their own e-mail address. If you don't see your "BCC," option click on "To" and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose "BCC." It's that easy. When you send to "BCC" your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients" in the "To" field of the ones who receive it.

3. Remove any "FW" in the subject line. You can re-name the subject or even fix spelling.

4. ALWAYS hit your "Forward" button from the actual e-mail you are reading, not from the one who sent it to you!! Ever get e-mails where you have to open ten pages first to read the one page with the wanted information on it? By Forwarding from the actual page you wish to be viewed, it eliminates extra e-mails people have to wade through.

5. Have you ever gotten an e-mail that is a petition? It states a position, asks you to add your name and address and then requests that you forward it to ten or 15 people or your entire address book. As it is forwarded on and on it can collect thousands of names and e-mail addresses.

FACT: That petition is worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and e-mail addresses on it. If you want to support the intent of the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the most effective source. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than does a laundry list of names and e-mail address on a petition. And think about this---Who is supposed to actually send the petition in after the names are collected? And don't believe the ones that say that the e-mail is being traced. It just ain't so!

6. One of the emails I hate is the one that says something like, "Send this e-mail to ten people and you'll see something cute run across your screen," or most times they just tease you by saying something really good will happen soon. IT AIN'T GONNA!!!!! Trust me, some of the same ones went around ten years ago! I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed (could be why I haven't won the lottery??)

7. Before you forward an Amber Alert or a Virus Alert, or some of the other ones floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them. Most of them are junk mail that have been circling the net for YEARS! Is it real or not? Almost everything that is questionable can easily be checked out at Snopes.com. Take that moment. If it's not real, don't pass it on.

Please, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses!

Now here's an idea!!! Let's send this to everyone we know, but strip my address off first, please. This is something that SHOULD be forwarded!

ADDED INFO: PLEASE go to Tools, Options, then Send tab, in the 'Mail sending Format section' click on plain Text Settings box and uncheck add > before each line of original text. Then you will not be adding >> as in the above message.

Unquote:

I think the above message says it all. I forward very few messages along mainly due to the SPAM factor. However, any email messages that I do forward has the email addresses deleted prior to the forward.

If we all did that, it would most definitely cut down on some of the SPAM we get in our Inbox folder daily.

Pleasant Surprise

What a nice surprise we had on Sunday. I was working away doing something or other and the next thing I know the door opened and Sheila, Wendall and the girls showed up. We had ordered some cookies from the girls school and the dough came in so they thought they would drive up and deliver it.

Of course another reason is that they are in the process of changing over from AccessComm internet/TV to SaskTel Max and the SaskTel will not be installed until December 5th. Their AccessComm has been removed so they have no tv or internet at all. After having tv/internet all the time, once you loose it you really notice the quietness in the house with the lack of the tv audio or the internet games, etc.

Still it was a darn nice surprise to have them come for a short visit anyway. As well the kids received their school photos and Sheila wanted to deliver them to us. I immediately got them put up on the wall to replace last years photos. I also did take the opportunity to grab a few pics of the kids on my camera so that I could upload them so Great Grandma & Grandpa can see how they have grown.

The Trucker

As I was typing the previous post I got a call from James. He is enroute to Manitoba, but wanted to stop by Hanley for some sustenance. He figured he should make it about supper time and wanted to make sure I would be cooking enough.

Hey, no problem there, I'll just throw another potato in the pot and we'll have lots for supper. Actually as it normally goes, we'll probably have lots for left-overs for tomorrow as well. The origial plan was to cook up some Drake sausage, scalloped potaotes, niblet corn and a few perogies. Now I'll just throw in a few more perogies and and an extra helping of sour scream and I know that the meal will stretch for the 3 (or 4) of us.

James is supposed to be in Macgregor, Manitoba by tomorrow morning. According to trusty old 'Streets and Trips' that is only a 650 km trip and should only take about 7 hours to get there. The roads in the south should be good shape. It was so warm today I thought I saw Shar-Lee out sunbathing in her backyard today on 'Google Earth'. At least the pic on her blog today showed just a lovely day in the south country. Of course James won't be travelling into the 'banana belt' of Weyburn, but the weather report for the south part of the province did sound darn nice for November 16th.

Speaking of the date, of course it is Shar-Lee's birthday today - 'Happy Birthday Shar-Lee !!!'. Now she probably can't remember back that many years (early ahlzheimer's setting in you know), but in 1974 the temperatures in Saskatoon were very similar to what we had today. There was only a skif of snow around and rather nice temperatures. So in reality, this is about normal temperatures for this time of the year.

Now I'd better 'publish' this and get out to the kitchen and rattle the pots and pans or we'll have an unhappy trucker coming by.

Just A Thought

As I was reading some news from the North Country the article on the chain IKEA struck me as a little bit odd. Now I've never been to an IKEA store, however, I did travel past one when I was in Edmonton once on a course. Quite a few of the people on the course just 'had to' go shopping at the IKEA as it was just "THE" store to shop at. Of course there is no such store as IKEA in Saskatchewan.

As the conversation continued on I wondered aloud why we didn't have an IKEA in Saskatoon or Regina. The answer short and sweet was the cities in Saskatchewan and the trading areas just were not big enough to sustain a quality store such as IKEA. Now if any of you have ever shopped in some of the larger stores in Saskatoon or Regina, you will surely know that there definitely is money to be spent by the customers and the better stores always seem to be packed with people.

So getting back to the article from 'Circumpolar Newsings', what the article is saying is that there just was a grand opening of an IKEA in Haparanda, Finland. Nothing new there for sure as they are a growing company. But I thought I'd just take a peak and see a little about this town with the new store. A trusty search through Wikipedia and a little information on Haparanda comes to light. What struck me immediately was the population of the place. Wikipedia states it is a center of 4700 people. Huh? That is less people than we have in Humboldt, Saskatchewan.

The end result is that I figure that the people in Finland must have a wheel barrow full of money to be able to keep the IKEA store going. Or maybe IKEA just charges so much more money when they move the store over to Canada and it takes so many more people to keep it afloat.

Interesting :)

There He Was - Gone !!

James was able to have quite a break in the last while as his truck got serviced and re-safety'd. The boss wanted him in the city yesterday to head out to Calgary so he would be in position to deliver the load first thing today.

The old saying of 'best laid plans' went up in smoke though. At 3:45 p.m. today, James was just leaving the city and heading to Alberta with his load. The truck safety was not finished and so there was more work to be done. The end result was that James had to sit and bide his time in the city since yesterday. Of course he was not a happy camper.

Now that he is heading out the weather is not the best. It does seem that most of the poorer weather (ie snow, etc) is to the north, so I'm hoping the highways are not too bad for him. Mind you he is heavily loaded, so he does have lots of weight. But then you always have to watch out for the other idiots out on the highways and the byways.

Lest We Forget

Wonderful

I decided to check and see how the 'Tribute to the Canadian Forces' was doing so I re-checked the website for the video posted on Tuesday. It is interesting to see that when I first put up the link on my blog the web counter was at 416. On my most recent check the counter was showing 9108. That is quite an impressive jump in a day and a half for a 17+ mb download.

This jump is by no means because of the link I put in my blog. There are numerous emails floating around the system pointing to the video. I also just checked the UseNet and in the group on Canadian Military I also saw a few links to the video.

On my recent visit to the video site I see the creator of the video was also finding the increase in site visits to be causing some problems. Some folks are having a hard time downloading the video or the quality is poorer than it should normally be. This fellow has also created a higher quality copy of the video and placed a link on the site for downloading. I did download the file and found it to be zipped up. Unzipping the file it runs around 21 mb, so yes indeed it is a bit larger than the original.

Seeing as we are fast approaching the 11th day of the 11th month and on to the 11th hour, I find the video is so appropriate. However, as the site gets more and more hits, I'm sure you may find more problems downloading the video. If for any reason you can't view the video and want to view it, just send me an email and I will most definitely send a copy your way.

In case anyone wants the link again, it is at

Lest We Forget

Doctor's Report

Well I did make it to my appointment with the orthopedic surgeon on Monday the 6th. I got to take a few more xrays of my pelvis area. As if I haven't had enough pictures taken of this particular part of my body lately. As a matter of fact I think I should start wearing a radometer to ensure I'm not getting over my limit of radiation. I'm going to have Sam check to see if I glow in the dark yet.

The doctor went through some twisting and pulling on my legs to see if he could pinpoint the pain area. For the most part he was unsuccessful, however, he was able to find a fairly tender spot at least once. Then another doctor and this fellow came in and double teamed me to see how they could do. The end result was that the doctor did not feel I had anything to worry about.

I enquired about the so called break and about the only thing he could say was that if it was a fracture, then it was a healed fracture at this point in time. For the first time, I did finally get to see the actual xray that supposedly shows the fracture and it doesn't look too broken/fractured to me. But then I'm not a doctor.

After conferring a bit more, the good doctors felt they'd send me back across the hall for some more xrays. This time it was more on my thigh and knee area. I guess when I got nuclear xrayed, there was a bit of something in my knee area.

So I trotted off and got more radiation put through my body once again. On my return, the good doctors looked at the newest pictures and felt there was no problem whatsoever. The end result is that they will schedule me for a follow up in 6 months to see how I'm progressing. Just prior to seeing them the next time they will also get me another visit with the nuclear medicine people to get a whole body scan. My bladder can hardly wait :)

When I visited my family doctor today, I advised him what transpired. He looked at me with a thoughtful look. My question right back to him was if my pelvis/hip area is so fine, then why in heck to I have so much pain in the area. He advised that was his exact question too. He said, well I guess we have to be looking at getting you some pain medication for the area. I advised him that I was not ready for that at this particular point in time. The pain comes and goes and so far I'm not needing pain killers. Just sitting with some heat or cold relieves the soreness so far.

The end result was that I asked both the surgeon and the family doctor about curling and they both gave me the go ahead. Of course they said to be careful, but there was nothing medically they could see that would prevent me from curling. That news was great to hear as I do enjoy the curling and mingling with the other folks in town.

I'm just a bit leery about re-injuring or further aggravating the hip if in fact I do curl. I'll probably give it a try and if it does seem to aggravate it, then I can always 'retire' from curling as well.

So for now the news is somewhat good, but in other ways it isn't so good because I really don't know what went wrong. Or the $100 question of where my fractured pelvis actually came from?

Tense Driving

I just had to pick the worst day of the year (so far) to go to the city. Of course I didn't know it was going to be such a horrible day when I set up the appointments a week and a half ago.

My first appointment was set for 9:40 am. When we got up the weather was not great at all as it was starting to snow. Along about 2:30 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. the previous night I woke up to the sound of rain pelting down on the roof. It really rained there for awhile. So I just knew that the roads were going to be sheer ice. Top that with a nice dusting of 1-2 cm of fresh snow and it made for some tense moments on the road to the city.

We departed at 8:30 a.m. and I made it to my doctor's appointment at 9:38 a.m. The trip normally takes about 30 minutes of easy driving. Let me tell you, today was not easy driving. It was white knuckle driving at it's finest. As we got closer to the city, the snow got heavier and heavier. We were about 8 miles out of the city and the snow seemed to be a little thicker than it was a few minutes earlier. At this point I was traveling at about 55-60 kph. I let up on the gas a bit and got a view of what looked like something denser than snow. As I got a bit closer to the dense wall I found it was definitely a enclosed van semi trailer unit and the rear lights were totally encased in snow.

The semi was throwing up snow and it was very hard to see with the blowing as well as the freshly falling snow. However, the passing lane was very heavy with snow at this particular time as well. I matched the semi's speed at about 45-50 kph and just stayed in behind him for the last 8 miles into the city. Of course there was one idiot that just had to pass me and also the semi. He got by me okay, but the driver almost lost it going by the semi. I just shook my head.

About a 1/2 mile further down the road we came upon another semi that lost the road and was parked half in the ditch and half on the road. Thank goodness he didn't go in further and roll. We just kept puttering along and made it to the city in time for the appointment.

Once we were in the city the roads were just horrible. Heavy snow every which way you looked. The intersections were just a mass of ice and everyone was slip sliding away. After the doc's appointment I had set up another appointment to have the truck in for servicing at 10:30 a.m. Of course this was right across the city. We did make it to Wheaton's prior to the allotted time and got the truck serviced. Then we were onto Costco to pick up a few groceries, back to Wal Mart to get the prescriptions refilled and finally home.

The trip home was faster, but not by a whole lot as the road is just a mass of ice and the edges are heavy with snow.

Today I definitely was thankful for 'all wheel' drive on the Trailblazer.

What A Tribute


I received a link to a Windows Media Player file that was sent to me recently via an email. I found the video to be a very powerful (for me at least) and certainly a timely video for this time of the year.

Seeing as some folks still have 'dial up' connections, I will only place a link here so that you can click on the link to go to the site. The video file is approximately 17 mb and for any people that are on high speed it should only take 30-40 seconds to load. For those of you on dialup it will most definitely take quite a bit longer. Mind you I do feel it is probably one of the best videos I have seen as it relates to Canada's participation in Afghanistan.

The video was put together by a current member of the Canadian Armed Forces in memory of a hometown hero of Cpl David Braun of Raymore, Saskatchewan who lost his life in Afghanistan on 22 August 2006.

The video can be found by clicking on the words Lest We Forget and reading to the bottom of the page to the actual link for the video.

Time Flying

For some reason there doesn't appear to be enough hours in the day of late. It seems that I'm going here there and everywhere and really haven't had a lot of time to sit down at the keyboard to play for what seems like ages.

It is a busy time of the season for Hanley folks in that it is coming up Remembrance Day time. The local Auxillary, of which Sandra is a member, has a Poppy Tea today, so I'll also be making an appearance to show the Legion colours. The ladies make up dainties and you can have tea, coffee or juice to go along with the dainty. My contribution was to make minature cheesecakes along with the sis-in-law. They are not a lot of work as the machines that the sis-in-law has does most of the hard work of stirring, etc. It was just a matter of filling up the cup cake trays with the mixture and cooking and cooling.

As well the yearly Hanley Supper Theatre is in production starting Nov 15 to 19th so many of the local folks are getting ready for that. There is the play itself but also the folks that cook the meal, set up the hall, etc. I did get a phone call yesterday looking for a donation for the meal. Local people are called and they have the option to donate a few items for the meals. My contribution this year will be cool-whip and a couple of packages of strawberries. It doesn't cost a lot and with more people contributing, the costs are spread around even more.

In the spirit of the season, I sat at the local hall yesterday to sell poppies. There was 60th wedding anniversary going on and a few folks had not gotten their poppies yet. Or more likely with the straight pins on poppies, they lost a poppy or two. However, the monies do definitely go to a great cause and for the most part is recycled back into the local community.

I also have a computer I'm working on as the fellow had some problems with spyware or whatnot. I put in about 4 hours at his residence the other day and the computer definitely needed some more work so I brought it home. The computer certainly was acting as if there was a virus on board, so I got a anti-virus program installed and did a scan. I have never seen a computer with as many problems as this one. It had over 300,000 files that were infected by approximately 70 different virus problems. Then there is the normal everyday spyware type problems to deal with. I worked on this computer for about 8 hours yesterday and I am definitely making progress and hope to get the computer all cleaned up by tomorrow or Tuesday.

On Monday I finally have my appointment with the orthopedic surgeon in Saskatoon. There is some anxiety in the appointment, but hopefully it will go fine. The doc has been scheduled for a 2 1/2 hour appointment, so I'm hoping he can figure out what the deal is with the broken pelvis. As of today there is not alot of pain or anything, unless I move in the wrong way of course. I should know more tomorrow for sure.

I also have a lady in the city who wants me to take a look at her computer as she is having some problems. This person is a brand new computer person who is getting up there in age. I originally set up her system for her and when I sat her down and told her to click the red X to close a screen, she lifted the mouse up and placed it against the monitor to try and click it close. I knew my work was cut out for me. Surprising enough though I have been able to help her mainly through email messages and a few phone calls. That being said, I'm a little worried to sit down behind her keyboard and see exactly what shape the computer is actually in. I'm sure that it will be a long frustrating day with spyware etc. I originally had set up an anti-virus and firewall for her, so hopefully that helped in alleviating some of the problems. If all goes according to plan, I'm hoping to get to her about mid week when I have have to go back into the city to see my doctor.

I just finished up doing a anti-virus scan on the computer I'm fixing and "TaDa", no virus were found. You gotta love that :-) Sam says to hurry up and turn it off and take it back to the owner.