Thursday
May 31, 2001

Cold Comfort

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Here are a few of my favorite online haunts:

REALTOR.ca
[This is the site I visit to fantasize about living in Toronto again, which is almost every single day during the winter]

Jonathan Cainer's Zodiac Forecasts
[This is where I visit in the morning, when I need a positive spin on things past, present and future.]

Living Local
[This is where I go to see what Canadians are up to, sometimes I even buy things from the businesses listed there.]

Environment Canada Weather
[This is the site I visit every morning, and before every road trip during the winter]

This week has been busy but not satisfying. Sometimes life is just like that.

Attila had a day off work last Sunday. However, our short time together had to work around our daughter's comings and goings, as they planned and purchased bridesmaid's dresses and accessories. We had an exciting but not a restful day. Attila and I hope that this weekend brings another day that we might spend together. We are planning to leave the city in the early morning hours, before "The Teenager" is awake, if we are lucky enough to find ourselves with a free day.

The weather has been very cool, certainly too cool to sit on the back deck and take in the day. The windows have been shut tight against the brisk breezes for over a week. I find myself longing to throw open the window beside my computer, to listen to the wind in the trees and the calls of the birds. The weather report says that the temperature will rise to 19 degrees centigrade today, if only it was true, it is 4 degrees centigrade this morning.

The garden is green and lush. Irises bloom contentedly. Spirea sprays bob and sway, showering the plants below them with billows of small white petals with every gust of wind. The sky is patches of blue through the trees. The Rhubarb is flourishing and has provided us with our first domestic crop. Small green shoots are emerging from the soil where the basil seeds were planted. Perhaps I will fetch my parka from storage and sit out on the back deck after all. I could take my laptop out with me, no danger of overheating in this weather.

Quicken, and other computer challenges, have eaten my week alive. I doggedly searched online help files and the built-in help documents of the program until I pieced together its basic structures. All the bank accounts are now recorded and coordinated with online banking.

This has been the most stressful time I have ever spent on a computer, with the exception of trying to get theses into a printable format, which were notable, time-delimited nightmares. All that is behind me now. The Quicken file has been carefully backed up and my understanding of the program has increased to a barely adequate level, allowing some peace of mind.

Attila says that if I were learning Quicken by manipulating other people's money, I would have had no problems at all. Perhaps he is right; I really don't like balancing my budget.

My other computer project has been to install both Windows 95 and Windows 98 on Marjory the Macintosh. I purchased the upgrade for my emulation software, Virtual PC. The upgrade process has been fraught with frustration; but again, I have searched the online help files and program documentation and managed to get the whole thing running smoothly.

What I like most about running Windows on Marjory is that when Windows gets hopelessly corrupted I can format the drive by simply deleting the drive volume and creating a new one. A simple click and drag to the trash can takes care of the corrupted operating system. I backup all my Windows documents on Marjory, so that nothing is lost with the Windows drive. In addition, there are no hardware puzzles to deal with. I seldom boot up the old Intel on my desk.

My next computer challenge will be to either install the new Macintosh OS X that is UNIX based or install LINUX using Virtual PC. I am leaning towards LINUX as it will be installed via an emulator and will not affect the basic operations on my computer. I am very fond of my current OS 9.1 and like my digital environment just the way it is. Marjory and I are happy with one another at present. Decisions, decisions...

What I like most about computers is that there is always something new to learn; boredom is seldom an issue. What I like least about computers is that they are a one-on-one activity with a machine and preclude concrete human contact.

I very much look forward to Attila's next day off work.

Attila arrived home early today and the temperature made it all the way to 17 degrees centigrade. Both unexpected pleasant surprises. Can you see me waving from the back deck? No? Surely you can see me smiling.



Top of Page
RECIPES :: Cast

Worldly Distractions

Iris is bloom.
A Garden Iris



By the Easy Chair
Casanova in Love
by Andrew Miller (1998)



Airwaves
Sweet Jane
by the Cowboy Junkies



Weather
2:22 PM DST
Temp: 17` C
Humidity: 34%
Wind: N9 mph
Barometric:102.0 kPa

Sunrise 5:48 AM DST
Sunset 8:55 PM DST
 

Page by Page: A Woman's Journal
Photography
Poetry
by Maggie Turner

Canadian Maggie Turner writes and publishes poetry, photography, and a personal journal online. Her work reflects the current way of life in Canada, embracing Canada's past, present, and future in a unique portrayal of everyday life. Maggie's voice is one of the many that actively depict the rich diversity of Canadian culture.

Photography: "a term which comes from the Greek words photos (light) and graphos (drawing). A photograph is made with a camera by exposing film to light in order to create a negative. The negative is then used in the darkroom to print a photograph (positive) onto light-sensitive paper.
Source: University of Arizona Glossary

Poetry: "a form of speech or writing that harmonizes the music of its language with its subject. To read a great poem is to bring out the perfect marriage of its sound and thought in a silent or voiced performance. At least from the time of Aristotle's Poetics, drama was conceived of as a species of poetry."
Source: Creative Studios

Journal: " "Though a journal may be many things - a treasury, a storehouse, a jewelry box, a laboratory, a drafting board, a collector's cabinet, a snapshot album, a history, a travelogue..., a letter to oneself - it has some definable characteristics. It is a record, an entry-book, kept regularly, though not necessarily daily.... Some (entries) will be nearly illegible, written in the dark in the middle of the night.... Not only is it a record for oneself, but of oneself. Every memorable journal, any successful journal, is honest. Nothing sham, phony, false...." (Dorothy Lambert from Ken Macrorie's book, Writing to be Read )
A journal is a way to keep track of your thoughts about what you read... as well as what you did on any given day."
Source: Journal Writing

A Blog is an online journal created by server side software, often hosted by a commercial interest.

"The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger[4] on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.[5][6][7] Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_blogging


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