Oct 5 - it'll be tight

Will it be tight or can't you do it ?  That was the essence of my conversation with Miles Brooks.

Backing up ...

I talked to Dean (MTO) first thing and he said that the gravel haul / work was starting today on our roads.  First up, work on Smiths Bay hill.  We're digging out the clay and putting down 2" to 0" stone/gravel and then capping the whole thing, essentially putting a "lift" on the hill.  I hope that it holds and isn't pushed down the hill by the trucks.

After that, Osprey.  We talked about all of Al's material piled up at the end of the road and whether or not trucks will be able to turn around.  I thought that they would. 

Back and forth with Pat Martin, the MTO foreman Steve wasn't sure about the turnaround.  I called Miles and he said "It'll be tight".  Being an anal type, I asked him -- "will it be tight / can do or tight / can't do".  Well, he said he'd be coming down here in about an hour to look at it and we made arrangements that he'd call when he was on his way, giving me an ETA.  If it wasn't going to work, I'd have to get Al to have his contractor do something with the material.

I met him at the end of the road and he talked about backing trucks into one of the driveways and then pulling forward.  He concluded that it would be tight / can do.  Since he's only bringing a few of these big belly-dump trucks in, he'd manage.  If he was working here for a week, that would be a different matter.  The issue only arises because these are not regular trucks.

We also walked down and looked at what Al is doing because Miles had given Al a rough quote at one point in time. 

Before we did all this, I asked him how his Mom was and talked about his Dad.  I commented -- "it's your Mom's birthday tomorrow, isn't it ?" -- "how did you know that ?" -- well, says I, it's the same day as my wife's.

When Dale and his men were working here, I'd bought a big birthday cake and shared it around with Dale, his men and Dave Lowry, our builder and Steve, Steve and Shane.  Dale took a piece home for his wife ... Joan ?  I think it's Joan.   I always get the names mixed up because Angelika's Mom's name is Ruth and my two Thompson-side aunts are/were Ruth and Joan.

We chatted away about his Dad and how he'd worked, basically, until he died.  That came up because Miles asked me if I was retired ... yup, and haven't looked back, never dabbled etc.  We talked about the fact that Dale loved what he did; that was his passion.  He was an artist with his hoe.  He could have quit work long ago but continued doing what he loved. 

Other stuff ... I brought in the mosquito catcher, did a little tidy-up in my workroom (that's an ongoing puttering job), did some rearranging in the garage (also ongoing puttering) as I'm leaving the concrete mixer in there this fall rather than moving it into the shed, which is a PITA because the wheelbase is wider than the doorway.  I also burned the small pile of greenery up at my burn pile.  It was a good time for that, being wet -- very, very slight drizzle coming down all day, on and off. 

I was going to go into town to pickup the mail but that plan went down the tubes working with Miles.  I"m not expecting anything in the mail; it's just routine.

I checked with Arnstein Garage to make sure that my new tires were delivered on Friday -- yes -- so I'll be there first thing Thursday a.m. for installation.  I'm going to bring the old X5 snow tires & rims to them for scrap.

Another thing on my hit-list was calling the Ontario Firearms Officer and finding out whether I'd be able to renew my expired-31-years-ago FAC to a Possession and Acquisition licence ... nope.  31 years is just too long.  If my training was pre 1994 (21 years) then I'd have to go through it again.  Rats.  Had I kept renewing, I'd be ok, but now I have to find someone who offers the course and test or continue to bring shotguns up from Florida when I want to hunt.  It's been 2-3 years since I went out with Alex or David; have to do something about that.

I'd lost my internet connection a couple of days earlier which was corrected by rebooting the Netgear switch.  It happened again, so I rebooted and then a few minutes later, it happened again.  Ok, that unit is dead.  I swapped it for a 10/100 unit that I had on the shelf.  I could purchase another 10/100/1000 unit but it really doesn't make any difference as most traffic goes through the satellite modem anyway.  I suppose that since my Windows setup has a separate tcp address from my Linux host, even though they are running in the same box any access to the Linux shared drives actually runs through the switch and now runs at 100 vs 1000.   There may be a measurable difference but ultimately disk access would be the limiting factor anyway.  

A couple of days earlier I'd been reading the label on my pressure tank and was reminded that the optimum pre-charge is 2 psi less than the cut-on pressure.  Well, mine was much below that, so I dropped the water pressure and brought the pre-charge up from about 20+ psi to just under 40 psi.  That's the most efficient, otherwise I guess that there's water sitting in the tank that can't pressurize ... water doesn't compress very well.

Copying Jason's video tapes is underway.  The 6th one is being copied to the DVR as I write this.  Each one takes two hours of play; there's no fast transcription.  I'll get all 15 recorded and then create DVD's.  I'll then rip the DVD's to MKV's to play on the computer, so he'll have both.  I've got the DVD's of my Dad's that I should also rip to MKV for posterity.  The transcribed files are still on the DVR but I'll do the MKV's in Florida.  If I run into any issues reading one or more of them, I'll re-create those DVD's at Christmas.  

Understand that this is all make-work stuff ...

It's time to start my backup process for all that I have on the computer here, getting ready to head to Florida.  I can take full snapshots of the Windows and Linux environments well in advance and then simply
make a copy of the current documents folders at the last minute.


We've hardly lost any leaves at this point.  Most trees are still green.  That's really unusual; by Thanksgiving the trees are usually/mostly bare, but not this year.  At this point there are no leaves to rake.  It looks like they'll all be coming down after we're gone.

The sky is clear.  It looks like I'll be able to get out for a bike ride.  Good.  I'm feeling the effects of doing nothing.

Onward !