Tempus Fugit

Latin (tem-pu̇s-ˈfü-git): Time Flies

Author: Garry

  • What could be more annoying than PWC?

    At most lakes, the PWC (Personal Water Craft) is one of those annoying noisy things you put up with, unless you’re an owner or happen to be operating one, in which case they are great and a lot of fun. You didn’t think I meant this PWC did you?

    Well this weekend I discovered something even more annoying that the buzzing of a PWC, and it’s the roar of a G-164A! Specifically, this one!

    At 7am on Sunday morning this guy was making friends with a few hundred cottagers by flying up and down Big Stone Bay for about one hour, just above the tree tops. He passed directly over our cottage 3 or 4 times and in the general area another 3-4 time. While the plane seems to be equipped for spraying, I didn’t see any evidence of spraying in action and the flight pattern seemed to be covering the same area again and again. Hopefully he was working, otherwise it was just plane annoying.

    UPDATE: It turns out the guy was working! I emailed the Kenora Airport and got this reply.

    Hi Garry
    The Ministry of Natural Resources is
    doing Jack Pine Budworm  spraying in the Kenora area, they start
    flying around 5:00am and they also fly in the evenings.  Here is a contact
    number for the MNR     Mike Dawe @ 807-219-0422

    Grumman G-164A Super Ag-Cat

    Grumman designed the G-164 in the 1950s and it first flew on January 20, 1959. Grumman sold this and other programs to American Jet Industries in 1978. The new company was named Gulfstream American Corporation, but in early 1981 the program was sold to Schweizer who was a sub-contractor for many years. The G-164A numbered 1325 aircraft (c/n 401 to 1725), N48489 was manufactured in 1976.

  • Coffee on the dock

    It’s 6:30am and I’m just about to head down to the dock with a couple of cups of coffee and some reading material, it’s a clear sunny morning.

    Yesterday was a bunch of firsts for the year as we wend into Kenora by boat to pick up a few things. First boat trip, first Starbucks in Kenora, first sighting of a water skier without a wet suit, first time we docked at Annishinabie Park and walked up to Wal-Mart. I can’t believe how much shopping we did on such a nice summer weekend. Well, some of it was almost mandatory as we needed eggs and a wireless router. Yeah, the Linksys was acting funny the lat time we were out and this weekend it was dead, no lights, no blinking no nothing.

    I thought I’d just get another Linksys, but ended up with a Belkin and saved $25 plus it has a couple of features the Linksys doesn’t and a life time warranty. That could come in handy.

    I can hear the eagle out the front windows, so I think I’ll take the camera and my reading material and head off to the dock. There is a light breeze building, who knows, perhaps there will be some sailing. Where is my sailing buddy?

  • Wimped on Day 4

    It’s Day 4 of the Commuter Challenge, and I wimped out on riding to work on the bike. I used the excuse that I needed to get to a client meeting at 9am as the excuse, but the truth was that it was raining pretty hard at 7:30 am and I just didn’t want to deal with it.

    It may be raining tomorrow, I hope not, I need another riding day this week.

  • Google as a Spell checker

    It’s faster that going to dictionary.com and more fun too, except for the extra time you spend chasing random links that show up from your misteak.

  • Stuff around the house

    Maybe I should use this technique? update

  • Floyd, The Tour & Doping

    If you followed the 2006 Tour de France or Floyd ,or you weren’t living under a rock, you’ve probabley heard about the doping alligations and probably think the issue is all over, he’s guilty (according to the press) and that it’s old news.

    I picked up a Cycling magazine the other day to learn it’s far from over. The challenge and hearings are just heating up. Did you know that there still has not been a tour winner declared and that no prize money has been awarded pending the outcome of the hearings?  Check out the other side of the story, the one the press really has been ignoring.

    floydlandis.com

    FLOYD LANDIS HEARING WEB STREAMING INFORMATION May 14th, 2007 Malibu, Ca., May 14, 2007 – The American Arbitration Association – North American Court of Arbitration for Sport will convene today to hear the case of the United States Anti-Doping Agency vs. Floyd Landis. Scheduled to run from May 14-23, the proceedings will be heard each day form 9:30am-5:00pm PST. Landis, the 2006 Tour de France champion, has invoked for the first time a rule of the American Arbitration Association – the legal body that presides over athlete doping cases – that allows for athletes contesting doping charges to request that their hearing be made open to the public.

    Technorati Tags: Floyd Landis, Tour de France, doping

  • Automated Comment Spam

    Wow, is this stuff wicked!

    I turned of the Akismet spam filter for a few minutes while I upgraded my WordPress blog to 2.2. In those few minutes some automated system was able to squeeze in 4 spam comments to my low traffic site. What happens to popular sites?

    Sidenote: America’c Cup yacht race is warming up as the Louis Vuitton Finals get under way on June 1. I’ll be watching live on TSN Broadband.

    32nd America’s Cup Official Website

    All three teams training
    All three teams remaining in competition at the 32nd America’s Cup were on the water training on Wednesday afternoon. The two Luna Rossa Challenge boats sailed together, while Emirates Team New Zealand and Alinghi had two races against each other.
    » More

  • Time consuming

    I’m at home, alone. Shirley is working, Scott is gone. It’s quiet, and the morning is almost gone. I’ve had many cups of coffee as I work on a building a presentation for Monday.

    I have the bulk of the presentation material and I’m just creating two custom slides. How long can it take? Longer that I’d like. One slide has a lot of animation. Yeah, I know, not a good move for a presentation, but it should work and be a lot of fun.

    The harder one has been lifting a mySpace video in FLV format and converting it to something I can put into Powerpoint. Well, after 3 hrs of hacking around and getting video with no audio, audio with no video and video with audio that sounds like the chipmunks, and getting some help from a friend I bought some FLV to AVI software. Free is not always better and the demo version worked for me quick & easy. So, it’s a company expense because this was all about a company presentations.

    Technorati Tags: mySpace, FLV, AVI, FLV to AVI

  • Treasure hunt update

    This morning Eric, Dez, Scott and I went hunting for treasure.  Dez found the first two, Eric found three more, I found a couple to save myself some $s and unfortunately, Scott didn’t fine any. Good thing it’s his birthday! 

    Happy Birthday Scott!

  • Memory

    It’s interesting how memory works.

    When I was about 12 my parents took my sister and I on a fabulous road trip to New York City and Washington, D.C.  It was quite a memorable experience. Lately I’ve been thinking about one of the stops we made on this epic trip.

    As part of the trip we spend several days on Mackinac Island. This portion of the trip was a GWL convention location for my dad and as kids we were all over the place with pretty much unlimited access to food & fun. The strange part is that all these years I thought the island was in Canada! Well, not so. Its an island in the Great Lakes but clearly in U.S. waters close to where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron join, and the Mackinac bridge spans the water with the worlds third longest suspension bridge.

    We stayed at The Grand Hotel and had a great time. After looking at some of the website and remembering the fun I had as a child, I think I’ll put this on our “must visit” destination list. I’m not sure we’ll be staying at The Grand at $330+ US/night, but somewhere on the island. And for sure we’ll being the bikes, as no cars are allowed, very cool. Just bikes, hourses & walking. That will slow you right down.

    Technorati Tags: Mackinac, “Grand Hotel”