Tag Archives: ikea

G4 667

By | |
4 Comments

Friday, October 14, 2016

I have never had a Mac die on me, until this year [revision, my iBook died, it was 9 years old 2004-2013, when it hit the dust, laptops have a shorter life span the desktop computers]. The Mac in question is my G4 667, purchased way back in 2001. It had a good run really, 15 years. I tried to fire it up this morning, and no, nothing, not a peep or a whir. It might be the battery, but since I have no use for the machine I won’t be trying to bring it back to life. It is a large computer, with a large monitor, and is taking up a lot of space in our small home, so it will be going to the eWaste bin at the Habitat store in a nearby city, along with the monitor, an old scanner, and speakers. The morning was spent removing the hard drive, and packing up all the related items to be taken to the recycling centre. I could try to sell some of the items, like the monitor, but I dread the process, and would only gain a few dollars, not really worth all that agony. In an attempt to give away the package I joined a vintage mac group on yahoo and attempted to post a free offer, but the admin rejected my post and I really don’t want to try to figure out what the problem was… too often it is just because I identified myself as a woman, things always go much more smoothly if I pretend to be a man; with tech groups your mileage may vary. I am not giving up the keyboard that came with the computer though, it is by far the best keyboard I own.

There is a box spring for a twin bed in the basement, which has been there for a year waiting for Terra to make up her mind if she wants it. I tracked her down and asked for a decision, and no, she doesn’t want it, so we will be looking for a good home for it in the next few weeks.

The new Garden Shed is beginning to fill up, and the domino effect on organizing and purging is kicking in.

Yesterday was cold and cloudy, with a bit of rain in the morning. This morning the sun is shining, and it is cold, dipping below freezing last night. Attila covered the garden last night, trying to preserve the last of the Scarlet Runner Beans for seed, and to give the tomatoes a few extra days to vine ripen.

I am slogging along with the free UK records access from Ancestry. I am following one line, but I am not entirely convinced I have the right family. Everything fits, but that one document that actually states that GGG Grandmother Elizabeth is a Newbery has not been located. Until then it is all speculation, and I don’t like working so hard on speculation. But there is nothing for it but to press on, it is about $20 to send for a copy of a document from England, which is a fairly bit investment when you are only guessing. English documents available on Ancestry for BMD (birth marriage death) are quarterly indexes, so it is very difficult to tell if the Elizabeth xxx is the Elizabeth you are looking for. I watch other researchers make huge leaps of faith. Sometimes it pays off and they are correct, but other times they have made an error and done years of work researching people who aren’t related at all. I might be going just that right now, it definitely curbs my enthusiasm!

Saturday, October 15, 2016

The weather was perfect, so we decided to take a break from our various projects and head for the park. We have been visiting various provincial parks this summer, and most of them were closing last weekend, so we decided to venture out to Bon Echo Provincial Park. It is a very beautiful park and we had no trouble spending the entire day there. We went on a boat tour to see the hieroglyphs, visited all the beaches, toured one of the campgrounds, and went for a hike. The fall colours were at their peak, so that the drive to and from the park was a feast for the eyes. We had packed a picnic lunch, which we ate at a picnic table in a stand of tall pines, the sun dappling all around us. On our hike we met a retired couple who told us they visit the park frequently, and were preparing to go for a swim in the lake. We were wearing jackets, so it was quite chilly, and earlier in the day Attila had put his hand in the water and said that it was rather cold. In they went though, very impressive I must say. I haven’t been swimming in many, many years. I used to love swimming when I was younger, but now I seem to have an aversion to it.

Attila on the beach at Bon Echo Provincial Park. Sunny, cool, and very windy, it was a great day! The property at Bon Echo was part of an travel route used by aboriginal people. Eventually it was visited by explorers, then logged and left so bare that it was called Canada’s Gibraltar, then purchased by rich a Christian who had a faith based resort there, then purchased by a rich suffragette who played hostess to many artists and was a big fan of Walt Whitman, who never visited the area. It was her son who willed the land to the people of Ontario, so that now it is a provincial park. I found myself wondering what it would have been like to pass this way when the trees were hundreds of years old and towered on the cliffs, and there were no resorts, or cottages, or motor boats on the water. I wonder how time really works, beyond what our weak human minds make of it, and if there is a chance I might ever find out what the silent rocks have seen.
DSCF9950
The Mazinaw Rock: These cliffs are 330 feet high, and continue down from the surface of the water for another 476 feet at the deepest point. You can take a ferry across the water for a fee, to access a hiking trail that takes you to viewing decks at the top of the Rock. We didn’t have time to take the hike, perhaps another year, the park is now closed until next spring.
DSCF9900

Sunday, October 15, 2016

Attila had plans, he wanted to grocery shop first thing in the morning. So off we went to take advantage of all the bargains he had found. I had plans too, I wanted to visit an Ikea store to test drive living room chairs. My old Poang chair from Ikea, purchased in 1990, wore out last year, and I haven’t been comfortable since. It is hard to find a comfortable chair, since I have severe arthritis of the coccyx, and I really missed my chair. The design has changed since 1990, so to make sure the new design was still as comfortable I needed to sit in it. The nearest Ikea was in Ottawa, which is a few hours away, so we packed snacks and headed out. It rained off and on all day. The leaves, the colours! It was a beautiful drive, despite the gray skies.

The Ikea store was crowded! I am unaccustomed to being around so many people, and also unaccustomed to the multicultural mix of humanity that were shopping at Ikea yesterday. So many languages! People were so polite! I discovered that I had dressed too warmly for prolonged shopping, so that after a few hours I was hot, sweating, and a little out of breath. I found a quiet corner and a piece of furniture in the showroom to sit on, and rested until I was quite myself again. We carried on for several more hours, but did not manage to peruse the entire store.

Eventually we found the Poang chairs, and I found that the rocker was very comfortable. I like the rocker because I can sit back with my feet up, and when I want to stand up I can rock forward and arise from the chair very easily. This is very easy on my bad knees. The chair is a large item in our very small living room!

My new Poang rocking chair. Comfortable to sit in, easy to arise from, easy to clean. The cushion cover is leather, which will be very easy to keep clean. My previous Poang chair had a beige cotton cushion cover, which was very hard to keep clean, and I found it totally miserable to try to stuff the cushion back into the cover after washing the cover. I can wipe the leather clean.
NewImage

Another item purchased was a foam twin mattress for Iris, for next spring. We decided to use a regular twin mattress on the front bed, leaving the table permanently folded down into a bed. Attila sleeps on the front bench, which is very narrow. He plans on building a pull-out slatted section, to widen the bed when needed, and new thick foam will be purchased to form the mattress he will need, cut to the exact size needed. Comfortable beds are what Iris is all about for us, she will be like a luxurious tent, that we don’t have to set up when we are camping. There were duvet cover sets on sale for $9.99 each, a bright orange colour, so two of those were purchased for use in the trailer next summer. It will be so much easier to use a duvet, than to try negotiating sheets and blankets in such a small space. We can roll the bedding up during the day, and use the beds as seating.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

-1°C
Date: 5:00 AM EDT Friday 14 October 2016
Condition: Not observed
Pressure: 102.8 kPa
Tendency: rising
Temperature: -0.5°C
Dewpoint: -1.2°C
Humidity: 96%
Wind: NNW 10 km/h
Wind Chill: -4

12°C
Date: 9:00 AM EDT Monday 17 October 2016
Condition: Cloudy
Pressure: 101.4 kPa
Tendency: rising
Visibility: 13 km
Temperature: 12.0°C
Dewpoint: 11.2°C
Humidity: 95%
Wind: NNE 18 km/h

Quote

“Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.”
John Dryden
1631 – 1700

“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
1844 – 1900

Chaos is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Shhhhh…

By | |
6 Comments

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Quiet please!

Today I am surrounded by silence. Why? Because FedEx says they are delivering a parcel from Ikea today. Our house is very hard to find, at least for delivery people. Several deliveries were only made because I followed the truck down the street, to catch up when the confused driver stopped to try and figure out where the heck we are. So now I keep the house in silence when a delivery is expected, so that I can hear the truck come down the street, and step outside to flag it down before it passes the house. I have considered getting a blinking neon house number sign, to place temporarily at the end of the driveway when a delivery is expected.

We bought wonderful new beds when we moved into Mist Cottage, twins with lots of drawers underneath, perfect for a tiny 10×10 bedroom. Our former bedding is a hodge podge of really old blankets and sheets (over 30 years old, even older, some from Attila’s childhood), sheets and comforters purchased at sales, and bedding purchased from thrift stores, then sterilized for use. I have one set of really nice flannel sheets purchased to withstand the cold nights at The Country House. But now we have new beds and a thermostat! When I saw “cool” twin size duvets on sale at Ikea for $7.99 each, I was sold!

We had frost again last night, but Attila hadn’t covered the garden, so it remains to be seen what lived through the night, and what did not.

We are being audited, yet again. I don’t understand how we get targeted for so many tax audits. Every time we are audited it is discovered that everything is above board and as it should be. This time we need to provide all the documentation for our move, which a year later is a big job, finding all the receipts and related materials, getting written letters from employers, a real pain in the patootie. I spent my morning scanning receipts, and Attila has to find time to make another trip into the personnel office to remind them about that letter he needs for Canada Revenue. We knew this might happen, but were hoping to avoid all this work!

I have been working away at my genealogy book, when darned ancestry offered temporary free access to UK records. I couldn’t pass that offer up, so I’ve been sidetracked into researching the English side of my family history, which is not the side of the family that are the subject of my book. Ancestry is so very expensive!

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Yesterday the duvets arrived from Ikea. The driver said he had no problem finding us, because the extra instructions I had tried to type into the Address 2 field when I ordered the items online actually got printed on the shipping label, a first. I had also ordered two duvet cover sets, and two “warm” duvets. The first thing I did was to wash the cover sets, then hang them on the clothesline out on the back porch to dry in the sun. Attila helped me stuff the duvets into the covers when he got home from work, and then we made up our beds. The real test came overnight, we were comfortably warm during the night, at a nighttime temperature of 18C. Since we turn the thermostat down to 17C at night during the winter months, it seems the “cool” duvets will keep us warm at night all winter long. I am ver impressed with my $7.99 duvets! But who knows, we might want to use the “warm” duvets when winter sets in, we have that option.

For the last three weeks Attila has been on mouse patrol. He has set traps in the garage every night. So far he has caught over a dozen mice. We are not in the least sentimental about mice, they have destroyed too many of our belongings and contaminated too much of our food. They carry disease. If they venture into our living space they must go. A trap was also set in the new garden shed, but so far no mice have been caught there, so we are hoping our careful efforts to build a “mouseproof” shed have met with success. There have been no mice caught since last week, but we will not relax our vigilance, as this is the time of year when they are actively seeking sheltered places to winter.

Today I have a few errands to run, which will take me downtown. I plan on parking at one end of town, then walking the length of downtown and back. I haven’t been going out for my walks of late. The results of this negligence were obvious last night when Attila and went for a walk, and I was out of breath early on. I have been working on my book and doing more research at Ancestry these past few weeks, which has resulted in relative inactivity. I am up and down all day, puttering around the house, up and down the stairs, but it isn’t the same as sustained exercise.

The free Ancestry access is allowing me to find information from England about my Grandmother’s Great Grandparents, which is lots of fun. Records prior to the 1841 census are not easy to pry information out of, but sustained access allows me to follow up on leads that would otherwise be dead ends.

One of the things that I find very sad about this period in my English history, is that the children must work in factories from about the age of eleven. Both parents work as well, in my ancestral families. Most of the English population did not experience the media presented romantic version of life, females were not delicate flowers, and children were not well dressed in short pants with ringlets. Whole families worked just to provide themselves with shelter and food.

The weather was wonderful today! Warm and sunny with a nice breeze.

Sometimes I read young people (mostly males) talking about “old people” as if they don’t understand computers and technology. Comments such as “so easy my Grandmother could do it!” I find really offensive, and if I am honest, stupid and rude.

Case in point: My Mom, 85 years old, has an Apple iPhone. She had x-rays today at the hospital, just a routine thing, and after that her iPhone stopped sending text messages. We chatted, and since I don’t use one I have no clue. However, I found a helpful web page discussing the issue, sent her the link, and she fixed her phone. She is just as savvy with computers as any of of the young people around, and could probably teach them a thing or two about HOW to learn new things, because that is what she has been doing for 85 years, consistently and successfully. That’s my Mom!

Worldly Distractions

Weather

2°C
Date: 8:00 AM EDT Tuesday 11 October 2016
Condition: Mainly Sunny
Pressure: 103.1 kPa
Tendency: rising
Visibility: 24 km
Temperature: 2.0°C
Dewpoint: 0.8°C
Humidity: 92%
Wind: N 6 km/h

14°C
Date: 5:00 AM EDT Wednesday 12 October 2016
Condition: Not observed
Pressure: 102.4 kPa
Tendency: falling
Temperature: 14.4°C
Dewpoint: 8.5°C
Humidity: 67%
Wind: S 27 km/h

Quote

“The thing women have got to learn is that nobody gives you power. You just take it.”
Roseanne Barr

I had one of the best teacher’s ever, thanks Mom!

Post Computer Shock Syndrome

By | | , ,
Comments Off on Post Computer Shock Syndrome
A photo from last spring, taken along the road on a trip to the little house in the city, taken from the moving car.
Old barn

It is all done, almost dusted. All files are now moved to the computers on which they need to reside. All computer hard drives are backed up. The old G4 tower is ready to head down to the little house in the city, where it will serve as a sound system, a youtube movie system, a cookbook, and a reference library of collected domestic tomes and manuals. It might even be connected to the high speed internet connection using an RJ45 cable. I had been hoping the Airport Extreme wireless card from the iBook would be compatible with the older computer, but alas, it is not. The iBook is whole in its box, ready for recycling or whatever fate awaits it, and some of its parts are sitting on my desk to be sold.

It has taken a few weeks to get to this point with the computers. It occupied my time and my mind. No more! I feel somewhat at a loss as to what to do with my time, a sort of temporary post computer shock syndrome. It will not last long, reality awaits.

At the little house in the city the seating has been whatever we could find. My seat in the living room is a wooden rocking chair, that I sat on, and slept on, with newborn Terra always in my arms, when I brought her home from the hospital. At that time her arrival was such a miracle that I refused to put her down, and held her close for the first few months of her life. She and I spent a lot of hours sitting in that chair. Now that I am older the chair is no longer comfortable for me, and so it will go to Terra as soon as a replacement has been installed. To that end I have dismantled an aging Ikea chair that we have been using at the country house, to use at the little house in the city. My old bones find the Ikea chair much more comfortable.

In the shower this morning, a random though popped into my head. It concerns yesterday’s quote:

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
George Orwell (1903 – 1950)

As the water poured over my face, I thought, “There is another element of time to this statement. Each generation, when they are young, imagines themselves to be more intelligent than those who came before them. But when they have matured, mostly with time, age, and experience, they feel wiser than the generation that comes after them, because they now understand that they were not actually more intelligent than the generation that came before them.”

Life is cyclical.

Thoughts can be very amusing at times.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

1°C
Date: 11:04 AM EST Saturday 9 November 2013
Condition: Cloudy
Pressure: 101.6 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: 1.2°C
Dewpoint: 0.5°C
Humidity: 95%
Wind: SE 17 km/h

Quote

“I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.”
Harry S Truman (1884 – 1972)

[Does not always work out well with minors! It is the only sane approach with adult children.]