Peter Harvey

Happy New Year!!

We celebrated a New York new year (thats 9PM our time) with some friends along the water front. Its now 11PM - we are at home and the kids are in bed :)

We have hardly been to the pool but we have been up into the mountians on a number of occasions to spend time with the snow.

Things have been very busy with no school and many social events.

It has been an eventful month to be sure. I spent 3 weeks visiting family in Ontario (Toronto and Millbrook). I spent some time on the computer working on unixODBC but most importantly - I spent time catching up with the family. Of course 'the girls' (that even includes the dog) all missed my being around but I missed them even more.

Our car was total'd while I was in Ontario - and this a week or so after we spent $2500 on it! So I have spent this week (my first week back) distracted with looking for a replacement. In fact I just returned from White Rock (town near USA border) with a Land Rover Discovery. Yipeee - we can get rid of the rental now.

Meanwhile all the girls of the verticle type are out on the town (it would seem) as I write this.

A nice bit of wind has been whipping in here for the last few days (mostly the first two of those days) and, as a consequence, we have been without power for 1.5 days. Seems a tree or two went down on some power lines leading into our community. We fired up the generator to get our office equipment and phone going (all of our phones require an electrical outlet :( ). We BBQ up our meals (even our tea). We lit candles and pulled out the flash-lights. We fiddled with the gas fireplace to get some heat (with no success - service guy needed to figure out why battery fueled ignitor not working). It all went well considering but some lessons learned for next time.

I went back to the pool to sign myself and Maggie up for a seasons worth of passes but soon found a little hurdle. Seems buying the 12month passes for 1 adult and 1 child under 12 still costs almost $1000!! Now I know that we payed additional municiple taxs specifically to fund the building of the facility so now we feel like we are paying for it all over again (not just the upkeep). I am willing to pay it anyway because I know that it will be cheaper given that I will be taking Maggie at least 2 times a week (heck - even the monthly fee is almost $150) but Valerie is not too thrilled and is balking at the huge price. I think part of the problem is that the fee indicates that the folks managing things think going for a swim is like going to the movies - you just do it occasionally. Imagine if people had to pay $7.25 every time they went out on the roads with their bicycle? Regular cyclists would never exist. Seems the wrong direction to me. What does it cost in other places? Vancouver? Toronto? Here is one where the whole family gets a 1 year pass to use the pool for $397. I would imagine that the facility is not as nice but thats the whole family. It would cost us almost $2000 if our whole family signed up here.

On the upside is that the facility has much more than just a swimming pool and that the pass can be used by people other than the purchasing person. In other words Valerie and Molly could also use it as long as we do not all go at once. And Valerie does have a gymn membership which may not be needed anymore. So it could be a 'one stop shop' for indoor physical activity/recreation.

Valerie is back. Of course this is a good thing but a bad side affect is that I am, once again, being pushed out of our bed by the girls - I slept in Maggies bed last night (sigh).

Valerie's trip was an all-round success - she seems noticably happier.

The pool is open!!! We did not go swimming but we did go in and check it out. Its a good facility. This is very big news as there is too little to do around here with the girls in the winter (they are not quite old enough to be getting into skiing and such). My plan is to start going regularly with Maggie so I can teach her how to swim - then start bringing Molly in regularly.

Today was a very mellow day. I was/am feeling lousy so the girls and I stayed in the house for most of the day with me napping on the couch several times during the day.

I managed to get us into town to return the rental and pickup our now fully repaired car. Have you ever spent $2500 and not really feel like you have anything to show for it? Almost $500 for the mechanics (which I do not feel too bad about since it was mostly regular maintainence) and $2000 for the body shop (to repair damage caused when Valerie entered a road cut too fast and smushed in the bits below the front bumper).

Valerie has been gone for about 10 days now - she returns tomorrow on the 3:30 ferry. So I hope to get to the pool opening ceremony in town and pick Valerie up.

The youth exchange guys returned, this evening, from a 3 day group session in Langdale.

The boat is in the driveway and is covered with a tarp running off of the back of the house. Its a bit of an eye sore but not much caqn be done about that since the boat is much too large to fit into the garage. At least the boat can be kept relatively dry and can be worked on.

Put a number of pegs on the drift wood project in the entrance way so the girls can have a place where they can hang their jackets and back-packs. So hopefully they do not end up on the floor as often. The fix I made to a leak in the main bathroom shower seems to have worked so I now must put a new threshold between the main bedroom and the hall since it was wrecked by the leak. I am about half through getting the garage sorted out. I am moving much of it into a car-port, costco, tent in the driveway. I have moved the girls clothes to their bedroom and I have purged much into boxs. I have attempted to get something started where the girls know that their dirty laundry goes and where they can find their clothes. To do this I have seperated the clothes into;

1. common socks, underwear, and stockings
2. maggies tops and maggies bottoms
3. mollys tops and mollys bottoms

I have attached a little photo of maggie/molly to their bins and I have drawn a little pair of bottoms/tops to indicate use. Its a start.

The big news around here recently has been the fire in Southern California. Our place in San Diego is not likely to burn down in one of these events as it is near the centre of San Diego so our concern has primarily been regarding some of the people we know and the population at large. Valerie did a lot of disaster relief work after the Cedar fire (about 4 years ago) and was called to action on this one. So Valerie is back in San Diego on an unscheduled trip - after being back for just one week. This time she is gone for 10 days which means I will have Maggie and Molly full-time for about 5 of the next 10 days. Not exactly the week with the laptop I was hoping for.

We have had the usual halloween stuff going on. In fact I think we started with this stuff 2 or 3 weeks ago.

I was able to squeeze in a trip to Vancouver and Bowen Island just before Valerie left for San Diego. I was in Vancouver to chat, over lunch, with some like minded techie folks - I think I did most of the chatting since everything they were working on seemed kinda secret. On the way back I did a side trip to Bowen Island to check in on an old friend (from the military days) and check out some property there.

Looking at the clock I see that I have just 4 hrs of no-kids time left until Monday morning so....

• pulled the boat out (first time in our driveway)
• purging toys from the kids room
• doing complete reorganizing of kids clothes
• may go skating with girls on Sunday again
• new local pool opens in just 8 days!!!
• parents not coming out this winter
• our youth exchange guys are back today

Last Saturday was a bit crazy. The boat launch organization was going on and all the while Valerie was on her way back. The boat launch organization turned out well with 99% of it done.

Unfortunately; I was late picking up Valerie - but she was a 'trooper' about it once I told her about what was going (and that she should have called on the cell phone since I was not at the house).

We had a great day weather-wise the other day - it really felt like summer. I called up a friend and he, his son, and I went out crabbing, prawning and fishing for the latter part of the day. It was great. Quite a change from the stormy weather in the prior days - which caused the swim deck to be ripped off of the back of the boat :(

I spent this morning helping with Maggies kindergarten class as they/we went out to do halloween things like visit a haunted house. I visited the RCMP office (again) to get my criminal check (so I can volunteer regularly at the school). This time they seemed to have done all the research they needed and handed me a clean sheet (in a sealed envelope) which I dropped off at the school. Now I just need to get them a copy of my auto insurance. Then I can get on the 'Parental Advisory'.

Looks like Valerie will be heading back to San Diego even sooner than planned. Valerie worked on the programs to assist folks after the Cedar fire in San Diego county and now she is being called upon for this one. So my week long get away with my laptop is going to have to wait. hmmm - perhaps, with the cold weather approaching, I should look into a trip up to the cabins in Tet. hmmm - I wonder what I would have to carry up with me to generate enough electricity (from the running water up there) to charge my laptop :)

Oh - and I now have complete success on getting openSuSE 10.3 x64 to work on my T60P.

Last night the girls stayed up way too late. We all attended a fight against poverty event put on by the youth exchange folks. They did a great job - but promotion could have been a bit better. It was held at the French elementary school in a room with a stage. We brought in juice and mic/amp. Maggie and Molly took to the mic/amp/stage almost as well as the Mozambique folks (who have much - more developed singing skills ;) ). On the way home we happened across someone walking along the side of the road with a gas can. It turned out to be someone I know from Sandy Hook who had the misfortune of running out of gas along a pitch black stretch of road. So we helped him out which meant that the girls had to be enterained (distracted) with a Barbie movie (with the youth exchange guys) while I ran about getting gas. It was almost 11Pm by the time the girls got to sleep! I slept with the girls so we could avoid the midnight wakeup. Molly did well in the morning (read; usual) while Maggie was acting up and did not want to go to school. Its a certianty that any disruption in sleep for these guys will lessen their ability to benefit from the work done at school. Bad on me.

So today was a Molly field trip - but I was off the hook for driving as Jo kicked in for hers and ours. Maggie was at ballet in the afternoon as usual. This evening Molly's preschool had a harvest dinner. I made roast chicken, onions, potatoes and carrots for the pot-luck. This time the girls went "straight" to bed upon our return home (just after 8PM). We came back with more food than I took in. Nice considering we have 'the guys' to feed :)

Tomorrow (Friday) would normally be a Molly/Daddy morning and a Maggie/Molly/Daddy afternoon but Maggies school has a PD day (tomorrow and Monday) so it will be a Maggie/Molly/Daddy day all day. A bonus is that 'the guys' are not in need of ride until 10am - so it should be a casual morning tomorrow.

The boat launch organization is falling into place but much needs to be done. I have to round up shovels, get a site leader, etc etc.

I have spent some time in software development mode today but I was distracted with getting my T60P to work with its max res. - no joy thus far - and rip'ing my music collection in mp3 format.

I have done some research on secularism activities (historically and globally). I am convinced that a properly run legal campaign will have the best chance of success for improving Canadian secularism. Unfortunately; the eagerness to get a higher profile has, and could again, lead to a 10 or more year set-back in what I think is inevitable in Canada. Case in point is Svend Robinson's effort. I am 100% confident that the legal case can be made but public opinion must be brought into motion - otherwise fringe groups will prevail. After all - there are international laws which protect athiests as they protect freedom of religion. The main point that has to be driven forward is that secularism = inclusiveness = tolerant = support for all religions - including athiesism (irreligion). Secularism (in terms of Humanists and certianly of FreeThinkers) is designed to support the ethical exploration of humanity to the common good. Moreover; that ethical behaviour does not have to come from religious folks - it can also come from athiests.

I have been thinking about what I need to work remotely (ie - from the boat) for a week. I have an inverter. I can take my Thinkpad. Actually; my Thinkpad would be fine but SuSE Enterprise Desktop v10.0 x64 does not support my T60P (8744-J2U) very well. It does not support power managment nor wireless - but most importantly - it does not support sound. So I decided to try out, the just finalized, openSUSE 10.3. So I stuck a 30gig drive into my T41 Ultra Bay caddy and stuck it into my T60P. Nice surprise to find that this totally works (in contradiction to what an IBM sales guy once advised me). I then installed openSUSE 10.3 on the extra drive using a USB DVD. The idea is that I can try it without nuking my existing Vista x64 and SLED installs.

And it works! The power management and wireless both seem to work. Most importantly - the sound works. I always work with music so this is important for this reason - but lack of sound also prevented the KDE and GNOME desktops from booting (as almost any sound would cause a kind of endless wait). Unfortunately; Grub grief - menu options show up for the existing Vista and SLED installs but neither will boot :(

Well with a good working linux seemingly at hand I have decided to reinstall openSUSE 10.3 x64 such that it uses the entire disk and then use the extra 30gig drive as removable media. I will probably format the extra drive as FAT32 and store music and other such stuff there. NOTE: FAT32 seems to be a bad idea for storing rip'd music as it seems to be less flexible with file names than ext3 (this is using default amaroK settings).

My T60P comes with an ATI FireGL 5250 video adapter and a 15.4" LCD capable of 1650x1050. I end up with a generic VESA based configuration with a lesser resolution after install (and slow perf.). I know X can be made to work at the max res of the LCD (its one of the things which did work on v10.0) but I just spent some time on it and no joy :(

Work on the computer has been virtually non-existent over the last couple of weeks - perhaps 20 solid hrs a week. This is, in part, because I have taken additional time off for the kids. The challenge this week is the fact that Valerie is in San Diego and another couple of school schedule exceptions. Molly is on a field trip this time (it was Maggie last time) so I will volunteer to drive again. This is for Thursday. On Friday - Maggie is off due to a Profesional Development Day. Wednesday evening is a function with the youth exchange folks. I hope to jump on the boat with my laptop and disappear for a week (when Valerie gets back) because I really need to get some work done.

But there has been a number of pure fun things going on. I have managed to go fishing a few times with Duncan (youth exchange person) and Colin. Duncan and I even climbed up to Mt Steele on Thanks Giving Saturday where we stayed overnight in the cabin up there. That was neat because I did not expect snow but there was plenty of it - and a blizard as well!

On the volunteering front... I have attended a Humanist presented 'talk' re. getting God out of the preamble for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I also; managed to attend this months Humanist meeting where we decided to make that our primary focus. I thought Canada was a secular society but not according to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There are even blasphemy laws in there. The girls and I painted the numbers on the posts (38 of them) for the boat launch reorganization/cleanup this weekend.

More hardware problems on my main machine. My machine was shutting itself off because it was overheating. I recently replaced the power supply, front fan, and back fans on this machine (a dual xeon) but never replaced the CPU fans because they are not readily available. I now have two new CPU heat sinks and fans installed and the problem CPU has gone from 3 times its normal operating temp to about 30% above. This is not exactly the result I was looking for but it seems to be sufficient to get me running on this thing again. I am also NOT going to run this 4U box on its side anymore because I think the heat sinks are so heavy that they may become slightly seperated from the CPU without gravity holding it on (the mounting screws have springs in them). BTW: Two day delivery from Intel (I was thinking it could have been as much as 3 weeks) - very nice.

So whats happened in the last week or so? Well we had our Thanks Giving dinner a week early. We had some friends over and of course we have our exchange youth here. Valerie did a great job putting it together!

Not much success on the crab and prawn trap front - and not for lack of trying. Duncan (youth exchange person), a friend from Sandy Hook, and I were out fishing for salmon yesterday at the mouth of a creek in Porpoise Bay. There were plenty of salmon showing up on the fish finder but it would seem they were more intent on going up the creek than eating - so not even a bite :(

I spent this morning helping at Maggies school. Maggies class were introduced to a float plane (one of the other parents is a pilot) and then we went off to the grocery store where one of the employees gave a very nice spiel on fall vegetables and fruits. Finally; we ended off with some gymn games. This afternoon Maggie has ballet classes. So an all round busy day for miss Maggie. I liked being able to chat with the other parents this morning and seeing how Maggie was interacting with everyone and everything. The kids with parents present were definately aware of and pleased by the parents presence.

Michael Davidson has routed the numbers on the posts for the boat launch organization project. So I have to get the numbers painted white now. Hopefully we can get a date, very soon, for the effort to put them in (depends upon other volunteers).

Have been tending to the crab and prawn traps about every other day. Some with the exchange guys and some with Maggie and Molly. Did get a meals worth of prawns on one trip but have been more consistently catching something called Squat Lobster - which I have been throwing back. Well; we kept one by accident (mixed in with some prawns) and that turned out to be cool with Maggie and Molly because it provided us an opportunity to go to the computer and find out what the heck it was.

Today there is a big get together for the youth exchange folks and host families. Everyone will be going from the sounds of it - including Valerie, Maggie, Molly, and our youth exchange guys. I plan to stay at home and work on the computer because yesterday (every Friday) I had the girls all day.

I am planning an overnight trip up to Mt Steele (one of the mountians behind us). There should be some youth exchange folks (in particular our guys). I also want to take Maggie (even knowing that I will be carrying her most of the time) because I think she needs to start appreciating the outdoors more. A friend with same age daughter seem likely to join us and that will definately be better.

Volunteer time has been a mixture of things. Another SHCA board member and myself put up another board-walk on a Heritage Park trail the other day. This should help walkers over a wet spot - during the rainy months ahead. I have also been organizing a boat launch cleanup/reorganization. The plan is to mark the small-boat park-spots with short, numbered, posts so that we can; identify owners of boats as needed (ie for cleanup), reduce confusion/friction between boat owners, and prevent abandoned boats from taking up valuable space for years at a time. So the District of Sechelt delivered the posts for us yesterday. A volunteer across the street will be routing numbers on them. A group of volunteers will be installing the posts.

I spent the weekend with 4 youth exchange guys - boating, fishing, and camping. We cruised up to Salmon Inlet with the starboard and port downriggers loaded with 1 rod each. We stopped, a short ways into Salmon Inlet, to pull up the downriggers and drop 2 prawn traps (at about 300') and 2 crab traps (at about 50'). We then cruised to the end of Salmon Inlet where managed to find a pretty good camp site along the shore. We setup camp just before dark, ate some dinner (burgers), and hung out by a small fire. Everyone slept in the tent while I slept on the boat.

I was up first in the monring so returned the food and stove and such to shore for the guys to cook breakfast and then headed back up the inlet to check the prawn and crab traps. All traps were empty so I moved them to the other side of the entrance to Salmon Inlet and returned to camp. I was surprised that only one person was up and about upon my return. Coincidently it was Chris - the other person from Toronto. So Chris and I got breakfast started (mostly pancakes, sausages, and beans) and turned the cooking over the others as they soon awoke. I hung out on my computer on the boat while I waited for breakfast to run its course. Others went out for a row or fished. Breakfast was declared done at 1:50 when Duncan finished off the pancakes. I joked that I was tempted to get lunch going but instead we broke camp and cruised back up the inlet. We snacked on the boat for the rest of the day while doing a combination of fishing (using downriggers) and trapping. Just before dark and we stopped to do some jigging along a rock face at the shore. Duncan caught the best catch of the trip within minutes of our stop (a nice size rock fish). All fish caught were small and/or undesirable and were put back. We did not catch anything in the traps. There was no drama to speak of and everyone had a good time.

So now I am back on the computer in my slightly rearranged office and I have just spent some time trying out the new Qt integration for Eclipse (not to mention the whole C++ support for Eclipse). I have to say that the 'writing is on the wall' for SlickEdit (for me anyway). The C++ support in Eclipse is much better than the last time I tried it and the Qt integration appears pretty solid. I thought hard about switching away from SlickEdit (my fave code editor for about 10 years now) and decided that I would stay with SlickEdit for some months but that I must take the time to switch. I will miss some features in SlickEdit and I will miss the simple U.I. (Eclipse has many more, tabbed, doc widgets for example).

We, a group of five, are off fishing/crabbing/prawning/camping/boating for the weekend. By "five" I mean; myself, 2 Mozambique youth and 2 out of province Canadian youth.

We were asked to answer a few questions (for Maggies first year at public school). This is Valeries response (I think its bang on).

Sechelt Elementary School
Maggie Harvey

Q.What do you feel are the strengths of your child?
A.Maggie has a wonderful imagination. She can make up stories and songs that are very creative. She can rhyme really well. She likes decorating things and organizing them and does a good job. She has good social skills and usually plays and works well with other children.

Q.In what areas does your child need support?
A.Maggie sometimes lacks confidence. If left to her own devices she will only do things that she 100% knows that she can do, but she responds well to encouragement and being involved in creating solutions. She will usually not volunteer to answer questions or do anything. However, if she is called upon she will happily answer or take part in an activity.

Q.What are your child?s interests/talents/hobbies?
A.Maggie is interested in nature, she likes learning about small animals and insects like crickets and butterflies. She likes fairies and make believe worlds. Right now she enjoys coloring in and drawing pictures. She is very good with jigsaw puzzles and can do 100 piece jigsaws without any adult help. She can focus on something for a long time as long and she feels like she is making progress ? I think this is why she likes jigsaw puzzles, she has figured out the formula for doing them and now that she knows that she is very confident that she can do it. She goes to ballet and enjoys dancing. She loves books and we read to her a lot.

Q.Does your child have any fears or behaviors that are of concern to you?
A.Maggie is very conscious of being younger and littler than her two best friends and often compares herself unfavorably to them. She sometimes puts herself down and says things like ?no one likes me?. She still sucks her thumb and while this is not a big concern we are hoping she will outgrow this in the next year or so.

Q.What are your main hopes for your child this year? Academically we are hoping she will make progress with her knowledge of letters and start to understand basic math concepts. We hope she will make good progress but don?t want her to feel under a lot of pressure. We want her to develop some good age appropriate study habits and enjoy learning.

Q.Do you have any concerns about your child or his/her program this year?
A.One of our concerns is that her lack of confidence and self-consciousness will become more ingrained and she will start to ?switch off?. At the same token we don?t want to underestimate her or encourage some of her insecure behaviors. We think this first year is a really important one for her and for us and want to do whatever we can to make it a successful and enjoyable year.

before	after

I think I am getting the hang of drywall/taping/mudding. I did not do a very good job in some bits but I know it was because I had to rush along. I guess I could say that this is also, to a lesser extent, true in regard to the tiling on the floor. In anycase; our 'youth exchange' folks will be here tomorrow evening and since I have Molly all day tomorrow and Maggie in the afternoon - I am done with the reno for the most part. The basic objectives were accomplished - our visitors have a pretty good space to live in while I now get a break along the road to the complete downstairs reno. The next 'deadline' is 3 months from now - at which time the kitchenette must be complete. For now my focus turns back to software development.
BTW: A friend from the community happened to be walking by and, after showing my work-in-progress, he offered to help. He stayed for a 'country hour'... our community rocks!

The school drama has been resolved at Maggies school. The end result is that we get to stay with our morning schedule (yipee). This means I can reasonably expect a 40/hr work week (Fridays being a Daddy, Maggie, Molly day).

The TV thing went fine. I found out, just minutes before, that it was being broadcast live and that there will be callers. This made be nervous for the first few minutes but after that I fealt pretty comfortable.

Slowly ramping myself up to an 8 hr day with the downstairs renovation now that school has started and since the 15th is coming up quick. Picked up the 'waterbed pine' (nice stuff) for the trim around the enlarged opening for the living room. I so totally suck at dry-wall - in particular at the mudding/taping bit. But I have decided to give it another try. I am much more interested in getting that trim fab'd and installed.

Looks like we will know, based upon last minute (uhg) school schedule changes, whether or not I will be getting a 40hr work-week (as expected) or a 20hr work-week. I will have to get pretty creative if I want to get any serious software development work done at 20hrs/week.

Darn near had my trailer land on my legs today. I have been using our boat trailer to haul long planks and dry-wall back from the hardware store. This works exceptionaly well (I think most pick-up truck owners should seriously consider a trailer). But today the 'linkage' in the hitch area became stuck and I did not notice. I continued to raise the trailer off of the car not noticing that I was actually raising the car. Eventually I maxed out the height for the trailer jack and it ceased to function. So removed it by using the car jack to support the trailer. At one point, while the trailer was being supported by the car jack - I decided (very much without thought) to use the trailer as leverage to stand up. This pulled the trailer off of the car jack and - very fortunately for me - onto the bumper of the Subaru (barely). Now I must find myself a new trailer jack ASAP but I somehow find myself feeling lucky.

Tomorrow night is TV night. I am being interviewed, along with a couple of other community figures, on how to make better community on the Sunshine Coast.

The first day of school!

I guess there is some drama as Maggie's school is probably going to try to switch from morning to afternoon classes. This would totally mess with the plans we, and others, have made. So we hope to stop that change. We will see how that goes. It is very possible that we will have to pull Maggie out if that were the case... and have her go back to Montessori for the mornings.

Get ready - this is a long update.

The girls are starting school tomorrow. They have their new clothes/gear and are very excited. For Molly it will be the first day of preschool (Montessori) and for Maggie it will be the first day of public school (Sechelt Elementary). In both cases it will be mornings only and in the case of Molly - no school on Fridays. This means that I will have Molly to myself on Friday mornings and Maggie to join us Friday afternoons. The rest of the non-school week is covered with day-care. Maggie should feel at home in her kindergarten class because of the 9 students she already plays with or otherwise knows - 4 of them. She also knows the teacher as she is a friend of ours who lives in Sandy Hook. Maggie will be the youngest (most likely) in the class as she is in that grey zone birthdate wise. I think its neat that she will be attending in the original school house for Sechelt - but thats just the history fan in me I suppose. Molly will also know 2 or 3 of the kids in preschool - not that we worry about Molly being shy in class.

Picked up a bit of music recently on iTunes. The 'Mad Caddies' and the latest from 'Bedouin Soundclash'. I also purchased the 'Gnarls Barkley' 'Crazy' song - including the video (because it is so uniquely cool). My old office (in a nook in the garage) is shaping up to be a music oriented space. Its the most sound proof of all the spaces we have - as long as one avoids making noise while Valerie and I are trying to sleep. So I have the keyboard in there, an amp/speaker with microphone, a guitar, and a couple of computers. I like to take Maggie and Molly in there and just get crazy music wise (read; make noise). BTW: Currently listening to 'Social Distortion' 'Sex Love and Rock & Roll'. I was listening to iTunes -> Radio -> Alternative -> Fresh Air (from Edinburgh) most of today.

Summer is pretty much gone (weather wise) and so it is time to take care of some trail maintainence (to address the normally rained out sections). So I put the house reno aside for today and instead spent a few hours with another community volunteer building a boardwalk (bit of a bridge really) over a particularly nasty spot.

The house reno is coming along fine. The slate tile floor is looking nice and is very near complete. I have to grout the kitchenette area. I have deferred the bathroom floor for later in the project. I have been trying to come up with a way to add character to the space via the trim work - and I think I have some good ideas that will do the job - stay tuned.

We had a few people over the other day. Well; Valerie got involved in the planning and it turned into more than a few people. The food was Mexican pot-luck and the common thread was the children we all contributed to the environment (which definately created a bit of excitement about the house). One of Maggies friends stayed over night - which seams straightforward on the surface of it. But Maggie and Molly end up in our bed most mornings which often has me running to Maggie or Mollys bed for space to sleep. So Valerie slept up in the kids room leaving me to sleep in our bed - alone.

Valerie has taken on some work - to try to negotiate a Nash family (including our family) vacation for next summer - without being repsonsible for everyones happiness. It may not be feesable - will see. Meanwhile - I am not used to planning vacations that far in advance - I feel like I just came back from Germany and Italy. And we should (just from our POV) be focused more on planning our vacation for this winter (which may not happen now that we are about to start a 2nd reno - down in San Diego).

One of the people renting in San Diego has given notice that she is planning on moving out. This has engaged our plan to renovate the house down there. The idea is to put a kitchen back into the upstairs and make the main building into a duplex again. I am interested in going down there to GC the project (and do some of the work) but its not likley I could get a visa (yes I need a visa to travel to the USA these days due to many TN visa's) in time to make it practical. The garage -> guest house reno in San Diego is looking like a 7 year payback, the downstairs granny suite in Sandy Hook is looking like a 1 year payback, and the duplex reno in San Diego is likley to be a 5-10 payback.... that means holding the financing for a bit of time :( But 'its the right thing to do'.

. o O ( oh crap - i sound like Bush - hmmm - better sell the boat )

The camera battery finally showed up so I took some time to upload some images. For example;

The main event for today was the girls harvesting some potato's from the garden. They planted them about 3 or so months ago and the plants have been 'on their way out' recently. They dug up two pail full from a small portion of the garden. I had the girls wash them off and we cut some of them up and boiled them. We then covered them with a mixture of olive oil, butter, salt and pepper and put in the oven on a tray with some breaded fish. I added peas when I served it up (for lunch). So they went from garden to mouth in about 1 hr and the girls know that we are saving some to plant again. Yum.

We purchased a bunch of stuff for the community picnic - some of which will be picked up by the SHCA. Most notable were the; 2 car-port tents, amp/speaker & mic, bocci ball, and 2 picnic tables. I think it is all worth it as it will all be used again and again to support not only the picnic but other events.

As it was the predicted rain did not come until the end of the day so the picnic was not affected by any bad weather - but the rain came down very hard later in the day and the 2 tents would have allowed the event to go on despite the weather. It was a good picnic; we had games, prizes, food, many nice people. We had guest speakers (bear person from regional authority, conservation officer) and a live musician (classical guitar). The main thing we can do to improve next year is to do a better job of 'getting the word out'.

The cancelled trip up to Princess Louis Inlet (Chatterbox falls) may happen yet. Valerie is keeping an open mind to the idea of going up there in the coming week. Stay tuned.

I should be working on the computer now - having completed the new office and such. BUT I am committed to the downstairs reno and, phase I, has expanded and is looking more like phase I & II. As a result I am adjusting walls (including a load bearing wall which is done) and tearing out a lot of trim and all floor material. I am also reworking the electrical, putting in additional cable (CAT5 and COAX), and if that is not enough I have happened across a solution to a problem with the built-in vac. (need to replace a T joint with a Y joint).

Blame the lack of pictures on the fact that the camera charger is AWOL. But you can check out the SHCA provided pictures here.

Well the plan was to cruise up the inlet to Chatterbox falls (for a bit of a birthday outing). The idea was to spend a day cruising up there, stay overnight, and then cruise back. But the forcast was for 4 days of rain so that was cancelled. So Valerie took me out for dinner and we were joined by friends.

This change of plans freed up Sunday so I decided to go to the Humanist picnic/meeting which happens once a year in the 'no mans land' area at the US border. Various Humanist groups from BC and WA were there. It fealt a little strange to be in the US again - even if only by about 50 feet or so.

We will be hosting 2 youths from an international youth exchange program. There will be 1 Canadian and 1 person from Mozambique here for 3 months. It should be neat to have them here but it means I have to complete a majour remodel by Sept. 15 at a time when I have been trying to spend more time on the computer.

Maggie had a sleep over at a friends the other day - it so tickled her to do that. Other than that its the usual routine with the kids. We are starting to sense the end of summer and Maggies 1st day of public school on the horizon.

Took the kids to Vancouver to meet Valerie (who was returning from San Diego). We stayed for a night (Saturday night) at the Pan Pacific Hotel. We spent most of Sunday hanging out at Granville Island and then travelling back to Sechelt.

Finally got around to replacing the power supply on my dual xeon box. So its up and running and allowed me to upload some missing album entries; 2007_06_26, 2007_06_27, 2007_06_28, and 2007_07_01.

We were out on the boat today with Jo (day-care person) and her kids as well as our kids (just no dog). We did some fishing for the kids in the shallows at Half Way Island. We caught 3 little fish in short order and then headed back home.

Tomorrow morning we are back out on the boat again. This time it will be with two other boat owning families and their kids for; some boat access only beach fun, some fishing, and camping overnight.

Valerie is off to San Diego sometime around lunch on Sunday so I will have the kids alone for the week. Unfortunately; the timing of the trip is such that they will not be in day-care until Wednesday. So I will have to think about activities to keep the kids happy/occupied during those days.

Just back from a family vacation to Vancouver Island. Valerie arranged to swap our time-share in Cabo for time at the Pacific Shores Resort (near Parksville which is just north of Nanaimo).

We took a side trip to Tofino where we stayed for one night at a cabin on its own little beach - right in Tofino!

Check out photo album entries for July 20 - July 29.

Happy Canada Day!! Ok - so that was a few days ago :P There are a number of photos and blog entries tied up on a machine which has blown its power supply. I do not need to fix that machine right now so I have tucked it away for a rainy day project. So here is a quick catch up in bullet form;

• Canada Day celebrated in Sechelt (parade and fair)
• overnight on the boat with the kids
• new office complete (so time to get back to work)
• much bear activity (I think there are 4 in the immediate area)

More progress on the new office. My guess is that it will be about 1 week before it is usable with most of that being drying time for the multiple applications of verathane on the floor. This is pretty much taking all my non-kids time now. The floor has turned out pretty nice - it eludes to a ships deck with caulking between dado'd T&G. It took some time as its not pre-fab stuff but it looks nice. Will add some dowls for further affect.

A side affect of the progress is less wood and clutter in the garage :)

Making 'slow but sure' progress on the new office now that I am back to it. I am probably averaging about 4 hrs/day on it.

Bill (Valerie's ex) came visiting (from San Fran) for a couple of days. Bill, Valerie, and Maggie went off to Vancouver for the second day.

Woke up to a bear on the upper deck this morning. No stairs up there but it managed to climb up. Missed some great shots of it standing up but did get some photos. Seems it came around, as it often does, on garbage day, but then took an interest in our bird feeder (aka bird seed).

The kids were at a big birthday party over the weekend. I have the kids today - hope to get them to the pool for a swim.

Maggie had great fun with the 4 ballet shows. Valerie and I were very suprised at how big the show is... in terms of the number of performers and the number of routines. The whole thing seemed much more professional than we expected.

The office project is moving along. The ceiling looks neat.

Currently working on making and installing the raised panels. Hopefully I learn enough to be able to upgrade the kitchen cabinets with this technique. 'So far so good'.

Maggie has had her last pre-kindergarten class. I am not sure if it was much more useful than a social thing for parents.

I have been involved in a lot of community stuff as President of the Sandy Hook Community Association. Meetings with the mayor and some councel members and numerous chats with other Sandy Hookers.

Tomorrow I will drop in at the local humanist gathering to so how that goes.

I picked up a couple of hitch-hikers the other day. They had no place to stay and about no money so Valerie and I have offered up some space in our house for them until they get/start a new job. Looks like a few days.

Chatter among parents of 4/5 year olds was reaching a fever pitch so some of us arranged to meet one of the elementary school principles to cut through the gossip and get to the facts in regard to such things as; low enrollment, school performance, merging of classes, and building upkeep. The result is a much better feeling about Maggie going to Sechelt Elementary. At this time there are only 4 kids signed up so its probable that two grade (kindergarten and 1) will be blended. Sechelt Elementary is our default school but we could feasably send Maggie to one of 5 other elementary schools - 4 of which have about 15 kids signed up for kindergarten alone and the remainder is staying in Montessori. Looks like Sechelt Elementary for Maggie.

Maggie's ballet class is putting on a show this weekend. The show is something like 2 hrs and Maggie's age group will be in about 10 min of it. It will be televised on the local cable channel so we should be able to get a recording of it - neat!

I have spent some time on the shed/office project. It has been quite awhile (more than a month) since I last worked on it. All of the extra work (and it has been considerable) to do the arched door and window has proven to be worth it.

The boat has not been working perfectly - I have not been able to get the RPM's from the motor (even as the motor seems to run smooth) to get it up on plane. I need 4,000 RPM and I can only get 3500 RPM at the moment. I think I will have to get a pro on it.

The Sandy Hook Annual General Meeting (AGM) is this evening so I will be taking some time to do that.

Maggie, Molly, Dwight and I went on a little excursion to the 'big city' on Friday. We took in Shrek III at a movie theater and then checked into a hotel for the night. The next day; we dropped Dwight off and then headed to the Science Centre. The Vancouver Science Centre is like a very compact version of the one in Toronto. We had a great time there - I am certian we will look at returning sometime soon.

We had a bit of lunch and then headed to the airport to pickup Valerie. We arrived at the airport plenty early with the plan to have Maggie and Molly nap but there was no nap to be had as the girls were just too excited at the impending arrival of Mummy. At one point Maggie was so excited that I had to unceremoniously tether her to myself using my belt as a kind of leash. This allowed me to keep an 'eye out' for Valerie without loosing Maggie in the large crowds that came and went. Molly just clung to Maggie as they playfully wrestled with the restraint and with each other.

Its good to finally be looking at settling into a regular routine for awhile - no travel for at least the next 4 weeks.

The Victoria Day long weekend did not feel like a long weekend at all but it did at least feel like a regular weekend. The highlights of the long weekend were; Molly suffering from a stomach bug and - about a day later - Valerie getting the same thing. On the up side the girls made it up to Pendor Harbour for some sort of spring festival and I and the girls made it into Gibsons for a swim.

I have been out on the boat for some crabbing and a little bit of fishing and I managed to make some progress helping Colin with his trailer renovation.

Somewhere in all of this I actually started to get some work done - mostly because Valerie decided to take holiday Monday off (mostly) and recover with the kids.

So today the usual routine starts. Maggie off to school for the morning and day-care until 3pm. Molly will be in day-care for the day. I pickup both at 3pm and take to Maggies ballet class and then its whatever - probably home. Somewhere around 10am I have to get Valerie to the ferry in Langdale so she can catch her flight and ultimately find herself in San Diego. Valerie is returning on Saturday - so a short time away. So does not sound like I will be getting any work done today :(

I have also been trying hard to get a real estate agent in Ontario to work with me in purchasing an investment property. I say 'trying' because he does not seem able to tell the seller, who is close to accepting an offer, that another buyer (me) is interested in putting in a better offer. [groan] I should find out how this going to pan out within next 24hours.

Maggie, Molly, and I spent the last 10 days visiting relatives in Ontario. Valerie had to stay at home because she has a lot of work piled up.

I have added more pictures to the album and created a new video area.

Jo & Sandra came up from Vancouver for a visit. Very nice visit - thanks!

Boat is useful again and crab traps are in. Tomorrow Maggie and Molly are at home so I plan to take them out on the boat for a cruise and to pull the crab traps.

Did some work on the boat. Managed to disassemble the throttle, sort out the mess in there, and put it all together with a happy end-result. Still need to work on the kicker (backup) motor. Took Molly for a tour up the inlet to charge the batteries. Will get Maggie and Molly out for some crab trapping in coming days.

Valerie and Maggie have returned from San Diego. They had a great time - taking in all the majour tourist sites as well as visiting a few friends.

Valerie avec Maggie are off. Maggie is tickled to be spending solo time with Mummy.

My fight to get a working Linux (SuSE 10) and my T60P (8744-J2U) has inched forward. I resigned myself to using this as a Vista x64 box only but continued to peck at the Linux side of it. I have the kernel booting ok with some stuff disabled. This is an excerpt from /boot/grub/menu.lst.

title SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 root (hd0,5) kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda6 vga=0x314 acpi=off resume=/dev/sda5 splash=silent showopts initrd /boot/initrd

I boot into run level 3 so I can do a little before I try to fire up a GUI. Here is an excerpt from /etc/inittab.

id:3:initdefault:

I login without the GUI and then, as root, I run sax2 - accepting default. I have to do this most of the time after reboot. This seems to do something to help get the GUI to run properly. I suppose some auto hardware detection is messing things up - will look into that later. This results in an fglrx setup. Here is an excerpt from my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Section "Device" BoardName "MOBILITY FireGL V5250 (M66GL 71D4)" BusID "1:0:0" Driver "fglrx" Identifier "Device[0]" #Option "NoDDC" Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no" Option "no_accel" "no" Option "no_dri" "no" Option "mtrr" "off" Option "ScreenOverlap" "0" Option "GammaCorrectionI" "0x00000000" Option "GammaCorrectionII" "0x00000000" Option "Capabilities" "0x00000000" Option "CapabilitiesEx" "0x00000000" Option "VideoOverlay" "on" Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off" Option "CenterMode" "off" Option "PseudoColorVisuals" "off" Option "Stereo" "off" Option "StereoSyncEnable" "1" Option "FSAAEnable" "no" Option "FSAAScale" "1" Option "FSAADisableGamma" "no" Option "FSAACustomizeMSPos" "no" Option "FSAAMSPosX0" "0.000000" Option "FSAAMSPosY0" "0.000000" Option "FSAAMSPosX1" "0.000000" Option "FSAAMSPosY1" "0.000000" Option "FSAAMSPosX2" "0.000000" Option "FSAAMSPosY2" "0.000000" Option "FSAAMSPosX3" "0.000000" Option "FSAAMSPosY3" "0.000000" Option "FSAAMSPosX4" "0.000000" Option "FSAAMSPosY4" "0.000000" Option "FSAAMSPosX5" "0.000000" Option "FSAAMSPosY5" "0.000000" Option "UseFastTLS" "0" Option "BlockSignalsOnLock" "on" Option "ForceGenericCPU" "no" VendorName "ATI" EndSection

I then fire up my GUI using startx. My wireless does not work so I am still using the wired net connection I found working during install. Of course the power management stuff is disabled at boot time with kernel options. Perhaps most importantly - the sound is not working. In fact I suspect that it is the cause of the GUI lockups during some situations (whenever music is played) as the sound will start to play (not always audible) but never get past the first 1/2 second or so. It then repeats that 1/2 second indefinately. In some cases it locks up waiting processes but if you are lucky you can open a term and, as root, run alsaconf. alsaconf does not get it working but will stop the annoying noise and probably allow the machine to get back to operating at its proper speed.

I have installed OpenMotif (from sources) and this allows me to run a less complicated GUI - without sound and such. I fall back on this when KDE noises and such are causing me a problem. to be honest; I would run Motif most of the time anyway - but thats just me ;) So I have a custom ~/.xinitrc (notice the leading dot) which I edit to indicate mwm or startkde should be run via startx. Here is most of my ~/.xinitrc.

#!/bin/bash xsetroot -solid black xrdb -merge "$HOME/.Xresources" xscreensaver -no-splash & # uncomment to run motif... mwm # uncomment to run kde... # startkde

I have found very little in the way of solutions to linux on this T60P so if you have some stuff to add to this please send me an email so I can share with others.

Valerie is back in San Diego for the next week. In this case she is going with Maggie. It will be just Molly and I for the next 7 days.

Stop the press! Wordpress that is. I have decided to go 'old school' with this blog.

- I am using digikam to manage the photos
- I am replacing Wordpress with static content

Uploading all of the family media to the server in original format made sense when the server was in the house. But now the server is remote and uploading takes way too much time. So I am going back to managing the media on a local machine (my workstation) and backing up the local machine. I am only uploading scaled down images now and I am not uploading any video (my version of digikam gacks on large video files and besides).

I am replacing Wordpress content with static content because its easier to archive and share and move about. I still like Wordpress but it may not be the best solution for this blog. Unfortunately keeping it simple means I loose the ability for comments to be posted - sorry.