Long Time No Post

So what's going on in the country? More farm fires, I kid you not, and this fascinating bit of mischief: apparently seniors from more rural areas are heading out towards the city and stealing bags of fliers out of mailboxes, because they are dissatisfied with the variety of advertising they get.

Yep, this is now "The Farm Fire Blog"

jul 4 07 010
Originally uploaded by Jim Carruthers

I was in Gloucester to see Transformers on opening day--which I enjoyed for what it was--and they were working in a field by my place just, let's call it "mulching" some low-quality hay before working the field to plant buckwheat, and I get a call from Dad asking if I have a fire extinguisher.

More Raving!

The following was printed in The Citizen sometime in June, about a City editorial about the issue of downtown parking....

I would like readers to note how it's all well and good for a Citizen editorial to say how great it is that downtown parking is becoming more difficult and expensive when The Citizen is itself located in a suburban commercial area right next to the freeway and one of the original "big box" stores, which they should also note is a concept that originated in supposedly superior, all-but-car-free Europe.

In a modern decentralized city like Ottawa there are few reasons for anyone who doesn't work there--which is most people in this city--to ever venture "downtown" at all. Making it less convenient to get downtown will not compel people to want to move there and open up their wallets for billion-dollar train projects, they will just go elsewhere. That's what personal transportation enables people to do, it empowers them to thwart the meticulous schemes of fad- and authoritarianism-worshipping "planners" who, among other sins, once saw those drab concrete high rise apartments blighting the cityscape as the heart of a Utopian vision of a perfect society, imported from the USSR.

Letter printed in today's Ottawa Citizen

I figured they might print this one, since for once I'm actually defending the editorial board. They had an editorial about the debate over water exports to the US, for some reason Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians came up, and she was accused of being prone to "mindless anti-Americanism" and "anti-trade." She wrote in and tried to refute those accusations, in my view unconvincingly.

Maude Barlow is not fooling anyone. Anti-Americanism is the world's most common pastime. I don't know if there is anyone in this country who can claim to be innocent of it -- and that includes me. It's practically the basis of our identity, and it's the glue that binds Europe.

If you do not support the basic common-sense principle that people should be able to do business with whom they see fit, whether they are around the block or around the world, with no "buts," then you absolutely are "anti-trade." And further, pandering to fear of American hegemony is the core argument of the antiglobalization movement, if that's not "mindless anti-Americanism" what is?

Well now this is getting a little ridiculous

I sure hope "barn fires" doesn't become the new theme of my blog. For the second time in less than a week, I leave the farm, head East, glance over to my right, and see a huge column of black smoke from a raging fire. This wasn't actually 5 or 6 miles away, though.

This was the view of my next-door neighbour's place early this afternoon--yes I only grabbed my camera after making sure the fire department was on the way. I wish I'd had it with me, it was a more spectacular fireball a few minutes earlier when all the wall boards were ablaze. Thankfully there were no animals inside. Now according to speculation from those like me who were just standing around gawking, it's unlikely this could be arson, who sets fires at this time of day? But,(adding this Saturday morning)it's obvious the cops haven't ruled it out yet(Update Apr 24th: they have now.) There are a couple more pics over on Flickr.

Barn fire

There's been a real spate of barn fires around in the last year or two, apparently not all arson but definitely some. Saw this on my way to the house last night, I thought for a moment is was at my place but it was several miles away, I believe this is or was the farm of my old Grade 1 teacher.

Sage advice for a lot of things, I say

Some time ago I got my Dad these model ships from Lee Valley Tools as a gift. The instructions are great:

As there are no component by component assembly diagrams, proceeding in an orderly manner is of the utmost importance.

Three Down*

I finally finished painting the "master" bedroom yesterday.



I guess the paint chip looked like a completely straight brown next to the green, this photo doesn't really show it(and the other pic on Flickr I took with the flash is a little light,) but it seems to lean just a little bit to the orange side. I think it'll be okay, but what won't be is that after finally expunging the walls of pink--and the stenciled border that took three coats of primer to hide--it's really brought out the dusty freaking rose in the carpet.

I also put up the Rubbermaid closet organizer you can see part of here. Installation was a bit of a pain--I could see how user opinions on it varied widely--but mostly just because I didn't have a stud finder and you do want to install the top rail everything hangs off of pretty precisely. And afterwards I remembered that I do have a laser that could have helped some.

I learned from Dad that the whole house is framed using only 2 X 4's(and it's not old enough to be from the "good old days" when "2X4" actually meant 2" by 4")but they're least spaced to the code requirement of 16", which was seen at the time as a ridiculous waste.




Looking around the property, I was concerned about these small spots of missing bark on a couple of the trees along the lane, but all I could find on the weeb says it's probably normal. At any rate, it probably woudn't be a bad idea to thin them out.

And finally for today, it's nice to see my collection of used tires and water tank/fire pit have survived the winter.




(*standard touch-ups disclaimer applicable)

I'll pencil it in, sigh...

Yesterday techs were out to the house from Storm to see if it'll be possible to get hooked up to the Net. I was going to move the connection from the farm out there but Dad decided to keep it. He doesn't use the Net much but when he does he's kinda used to the highspeed. So the good news is they say it will work. The bad news is, the tentative install date is the 28th of August.

Another Milestone....

My very first property tax bill arrived this week, as did my first Hydro bill! I'm thrilled, I think I'll frame them. Or not.

Two down...

Well not really, there are a few dozen things to touch up. I think it'll look pretty good though, as long as you ignore the kitchen.

Wow, that sure is...green!

As light as blogging's been...

It's about to get lighter. I shouldn't even be taking time to write this, let alone devising some pithy attempt at introduction for something like this bafflingly stupid(some sort of postmodern joke?) "Star Wars pinball" Flash game might have come about, or this apparently old but surprisingly well done fan-made Star Wars/COPS spoof.

Mid-week linkage

Yes it's been a slow month for blogging, and painting for that matter, the living room is now...well I'm ready to prime and paint the walls. Last night I decided I would start painting the walls and manged to...finish taping. It took two hours! How do those decorating shows do it?

This linkage installment is just one link, but it's all that's needed for this week, it's Wikipedia's list of unusual Wikipedia articles!

Would You Believe, More Trimblogging?

My aunt is rather health-conscious and was apparently not big on oil-based paint. She got away with it for the most part covering up the original stained trim, and so will I just painting over that, except for around the door here, I guess it's the oil from people's hands. I tried just priming over it and I think it actually helped loosen the paint. Sigh.

Anyway, on completely different subject, to put my trimtastrophe in perspective, this video from North Korea hit the Net a couple days ago, from the massive bread-and-circuses displays put on by the children(and by that I think I do mean all of them)of the ruling elite. I like how the submitter quaintly says "I don't know what it is, but there's something frightening about this." Geez buddy, what could it be, aside from the fact it's intended to be an intimidating display of power? Oh, if you really want to weep for humanity, read the comments to the video.