The Blog of Harald

I went to the movies with Sib yesterday afternoon. On the way home, I was trying to pass someone when the engine suddenly lost power; just for a second, but enough to make me nervous.

Less than a minute later (at the top of the big hill at Finch & Don Mills, fortunately :-) the engine stalled. I tried to start it; no crank, just a feeble click. Sib and I pushed the car off the road, and waited for Michaéla and “CAA”:http://www.central.on.caa.ca/ to come rescue us. I was hoping that I had just thrown a fan belt; this was when we discovered that the hood release is broken (the latch mechanism had rusted, and so the cable popped out under the extra strain :-). So Sib and Michaéla crawled around under the car trying to release the hood, while I made sure that they didn’t get run over by passing cars :-)

They finally got the hood open just as the CAA tow truck arrived. The fan belts were in place, unfortunately. Some quick testing with the tow truck’s battery proved that the alternator had died. This is probably because the leaky power steering pump right above it has filled the alternator with power steering fluid…

We had been planning to replace this car, but not for another year. It’s a 1990 Eagle Vista, but with only 150,000km, and it runs just fine. However, there is a crack in the exhaust manifold, and the body is starting to rust through in places; those are both going to be expensive repairs, so there isn’t too much life left in the car.

So now we need to decide: invest money in the repairs (alternator, power steering pump, hood release) and keep the car on the road for another year, or write it off and get the new car a year early. The complete repair list just came in:

| alternator | $360 |
| power steering | $448 |
| cooling sytem | $225 |
| rear brakes | $41 |
| rear suspension | $174 |
| front struts | $495 |
| alignment | $59 |
| drive clean | $35 |

We don’t need to do the front struts right away, but the rest is stuff that has to be done within the next year; we’re looking at $1000 to $1300 to keep the car on the road.

“autotrader.ca”:http://www.autotrader.ca/ has quite a few medium age, medium mileage hatchbacks listed in our price range, so I’m not worried about being able to replace the car without breaking the bank. Since I’m about to be “driving to work”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/archives/000315.html, we need a more reliable car at this point anyway. On the other hand, the HP deal isn’t final yet, and Michaéla is still on probation in her new job, so we’re not exactly financially stable right now.

So, off to car shopping we go…

Our new office location is going to be 901 King Street West, at Strachan Avenue (just north of the Exhibition grounds). I’ve been spoiled by working within the downtown core for the last 8 years, so this is coming as a bit of a shock for me :-)

I live at Leslie and Sheppard. My current commute is about an hour, whether I take the GO train, the subway, or drive in with my wife. The GO train is the most pleasant; it is quieter, and doesn’t stop/start constantly like the subway does.

My new commute, on the other hand, is ugly. Add an extra 30 minutes each way for the TTC solution, because I have to take a streetcar across. The GO solution is no longer practical. There’s a train that leaves Union for Exhibition in the morning, but the Richmond Hill train is _always_ late, so I’d probably never catch it. That leaves the train to Union, then a streetcar, which is expensive, and doesn’t save any time.

Currently, I can leave home a bit early, leave a car at the GO station, leave work early, and go pick up the kids from school before 6PM; that plan (and variations on it) goes out the window with my new office location.

So that leaves driving. It’s apparently about $5/day to park, and the drive takes less than an hour (even at rush hour). I dislike driving to work; it’s completely wasted time for me. At least on the subway I can read, and on the trains I can read or work on my laptop. About the only thing I can accomplish in the car is Books On Tape :-)

Still, an extra _hour_ commuting each day doesn’t work for me; I simply don’t have an extra hour in my day right now. So I guess I get to start driving. That probably means getting a replacement for my 12-year-old beater…

Still, it could always be worse :-)

We spent a week in Italy, staying in Santa Margherita, a small town south of Genoa (next to Portofino, if you know where that is).

This put us within striking distance of Firenze, only a 3-4 hour train ride away. We have a fridge magnet of David with various items of clothing, so we wanted to show the kids the real thing. Even better, the trip requires changing trains in Pisa; why not stop there on the way? I’ll admit that I was a little skeptical; dragging the kids on an eight hour train ride could have been a nightmare!

We left in the morning, after a quick breakfast. The kids _loved_ the train ride, especially all of the tunnels through the cliffs along “Cinque Terre”:http://www.cinqueterreonline.com/. By the time we arrived in Pisa it was already hot (go figure; it’s July in Italy). Unfortunately, the wait to climb up the tower was over four hours, so we couldn’t do that, but we did eat lunch in its shadow before heading back to the train station.

We had planned to spend the hottest part of the day on the train, and it seemed to work; we arrived in Firenze around 4PM, and it was already starting to cool down. We made sure we had tickets and times for the return journey, and then headed off to the Piazza della Signoria, where David originally stood (there’s a copy there now, but the original is in a stuffy museum, so seeing the copy out in the square is better :-). We arrived to discover that the Palazzo Vecchio was being renovated, and David was surrounded by scaffolding!

The kids were a little disturbed by the “statue of Perseus”:http://www.vacationidea.com/florence/gallery/piazza_della_signoria_Gallery8.html in the Loggia dei Lanzi, but were soon distracted by a small group of art students sketching David. Charlotte wanted to ask what they were doing, but the question she eventually asked was “Can I help you colour?”. One _very_ nice young lady gave the kids a sheet of paper, and let them use her pastels; we now have two beautiful sketches of David (complete with scaffolding and the construction elevator :-) as souvenirs of the trip. This little exchange made the entire 8 hour journey worthwhile!

After a quick dinner we walked back to the train station, with Michaéla taking pictures of doors and windows along the way. Unfortunately, in order to get 20 extra minutes in Firenze, we ended up going home the long (slow) way, and arrived in S.Margherita just after midnight. The kids were completely spun (bouncing off the walls :) until about 20 minutes before the train stopped, when they both crashed. We ended up carrying them asleep up the (steep!) path to our rooms.

Three hours is definitely not enough time to see Firenze; we could have spent all day in the one Piazza :). Still, despite my misgivings, we had a very good time; Firenze is one place in Italy I will return to!

An update on the long day I hinted at yesterday…

So, we get up at 0630 to dress, wake the kids, and catch the 0730 train to Gatwick. We could have slept in 30 minutes longer, but the very nice ticket agent suggested that we take the earlier train, since it started empty at our station.

We change trains at Clapham junction (with four adults, three children, and lots of baggage this is harder than it sounds :-), and arrive in Gatwick airport at 0845 to check-in for our 1155 flight home; air transat wants you to checkin three hours early for international flights. We clear security, deal with some VAT refund issues, and have breakfast in the departure lounge; all normal so far.

At 1055, we discover that our flight is delayed to (at least) 1615. Turns out the airplane was still on the ground in Manchester with mechanical problems. transat gave us all free meal tickets, and we hurriedly shopped for some books etc. to keep the children entertained. We played, shopped, had a long lunch, and eventually our gate was called and we were off again! Fortunately we were stuck in a real airport; I can’t imagine a 7 hour wait in an airport like Pearson, which has _no_ facilities of any sort inside the security barrier.

Anyway, air transat had diverted the flight from Portugal through Gatwick to pick us up, so we all had to get new seat assignments, an entirely manual process (sigh). We finally left London at about 1715, after spending eight hours in the airport…

We then spent 6 hours in the air, with the cabin crew being extremely nice to us (and showering us with free alcohol :-), only to enter a holding pattern between Ottawa and Toronto thanks to storm activity! We finally land, and taxi to the terminal to find that our assigned gate is still occupied… 15 minutes later we _finally_ get off the plane, at around midnight London time.

Every _other_ flight that was waiting out the storm had offloaded before us, so there were long lines at customs, and to pick up baggage. Finally some luck; we had no wait for a taxi home.

So, 20 hours later, we arrive home. The kids were _really_ good; they only really lost the ability to cope with the long day after we had landed at Pearson.

I’m back from my vacation. I’ve been going for 20 hours now, thanks to various flight delays, so I’m going to bed now. More later…

This was a good weekend.

Saturday was GeoffCon, part of a weekend of gaming celebrating Geoff’s 30th birthday. (His actual birthday was back in March, but he decided he wanted the actual party later in the year).

Geoff (and Rob) played both “Titan CE”:http://www.mit.edu/activities/sgs/cetitan.txt and “Nippon Rails”:http://www.coolgames.com/mfg-cat/traingames/1450-00.htm at the same time; I was only in the Nippon Rails game. I won, I think partly because they weren’t paying as much attention with two games going simultaneously. It also helped that I lucked out on all of my cards…

The Nippon Rails crowd then tried “Unexploded Cow”:http://www.cheapass.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=CAG&Product_Code=CAG032, but we were all too brain-dead to appreciate its strategy, so switched to the mindless Uno Boomo. The guys downstairs apparently had a fabulous time with “U.S. Patent #1”:http://www.cheapass.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=CAG&Product_Code=CAG034, so I’ll have to find an excuse to play it sometime. As always, there were several games of “Settlers of Catan”:http://www.coolgames.com/mfg-cat/soc/0483-00.htm and its variants throughout the day.

Every once in a while I miss being able to play games until 3AM every night; then I shake my head in disbelief :)

Sunday was a nice relaxing day. Breakfast in bed (well, ok, I had to go _back_ to bed for it), an eye test, a bunch of shopping (including my kids buying me a bicycle), and a nice quiet dinner.

I didn’t get any housework done, though…

Fifteen years ago, we said “I do!”.

Fifteen years later, I wouldn’t change a thing.

I am _happy_.

Well, we had a bit of excitement today! My neighbour knocked on the door at about 4PM to tell us that a couple of kids had walked into our open garage and taken my son’s brand new bicycle. He’s had it for a week, and thanks to the weather he hadn’t even taken it for a ride yet! The garage had been open for about five minutes; my wife opened it and then went to the back yard to use the hose.

We immediately called the police, and I went out to try to find the kids. I explored a bit on foot, but then came back and got the car. I was politically correct; I drove the streets around my house first, before heading into the Ontario Housing project nearby. There were probably a 100 kids on 50 bikes there, but I did eventually see a kid on my son’s bike in a playground. He saw me at about the same time that I saw him and took off (on a footpath) with the bike. That’s when the first police car arrived, so I flagged it down instead of chasing the kid.

A very nice gentleman sitting on his front step told us that he had seen a couple of kids ditching a bike behind some garbage cans in the next housing development over. Sure enough, there was my son’s bike leaning on a parked car. I took it home, where I gave the police a description of the kid I saw on the bike. Strangely, the kid I saw didn’t match any of the kids my neighbour saw at the house; I wonder how that works…

So score one for the forces of good; my son’s bike was recovered. The kid abandoned his _old_ bike in front of our house when he took the new bike; the police now have it, and (if we’re lucky) some 12 year old has to explain to his parents why he no longer has a bicycle).

The kids were falling over each other thanking the nice policeman, and they baked brownies for the neighbour across the street to thank him for being alert and ringing our doorbell. I should go back and thank the gentleman who pointed out the hiding spot for the bicycle, too.

I’m sad that I now have to teach my seven year-old that he has to keep his bicycle locked all the time, even when it is in our garage or when he’s visiting the neighbour’s house. I’m sad to have my prejudices against Ontario Housing reinforced. I’m sad that a kid would feel entitled steal a bicycle (when he already has one!). I’m sad that a kid would be confident enough to steal from a garage, in broad daylight, and then ride around in the open; was he really so sure that he wouldn’t get caught?

There was an impressive police response; three cars for a stolen bicycle! I believe this was because the theft was so recent, and because the police really want to catch these kids. The nice policeman told me that they like to catch kids young; that gives us a change to scare them straight. Otherwise, they soon escalate from bicycles to money and jewelry. This would have been a good case; because they entered my garage, the charge is Break and Enter, not just Theft. He also said that they all get caught sooner or later. Sooner is just better, both for the neighbourhood and for the _kids_.

Kids who grow up in subsidized housing have enough trouble in life without buying more by stealing. I know it must be hard living right next to “the rich people”, and having to walk past them every day to get to school, but that’s not an excuse. Right now they’re young, and any crimes they commit will disappear. A few years older and any arrests will be part of their permanent record, and then what? Landlords all do background checks these days; good luck getting an apartment. Ditto many employers. That’s a whole lot of bad karma because a kid felt entitled to upgrade his bicycle.

It figures; a perfectly good eclipse to watch tonight, and it will be cloudy.

I should start keeping track of the number of times that happens :-)

Ok, so I didn’t get the grass cut :-). With this week’s weather, that means it will be scythable by Friday.

Anyway, I had a nice weekend; even the house cleaning wasn’t as onerous as expected. It apparently also used up all of my extra calories from last week, since I didn’t gain any weight this week!

I’m never under-gruntled for long. This is probably a good thing…

I want a cheap digital camera, just to play with. Probably 2 megapixel, since they’re well, cheap :-) Other features: USB (not serial), and some kind of expandable storage (Probably Compact Flash). Analog zoom would be nice, although that probably still pushes it out of “cheap”. I’m perfectly happy with an older generation (i.e. used) camera. Small/light would be nice too.

I’ve seen an older 2M Kodak that comes well reviewed at Henry’s for $130 CDN; it’s tempting, although it doesn’t have the zoom.

Any recommendations?

I dislike tracking down nebulous bugs. It crashes, under heavy load, probably due to a memory stomp; good luck duplicating that one!

My house is a disaster area, and my wife is hosting the local bridal shower for my sister, _tomorrow_. I’m going to be spending the next 24 hours cleaning and tidying, when what I want to do is crawl into bed with a good book (and I’m about to go buy three of them at Bakka).

Somewhere in there I have to mow the lawn, and clean out the eavestroughs. At least my new grass is growing :-)

Well, no kite pictures. I was having _way_ too much fun flying kites to bother with the camera.

The three of us woke up early, and even with a lazy morning we still arrived at the kite field at around 9:30. I helped a bit with setup while the kids ran around saying “hello!” to all of the TKF members the recognized. It’s nice that everyone is now treating them as just part of the gang. Speaking of which, the kids were angels all day; they flew kites, they made paper airplanes, they helped people, they entertained themselves. It was a pleasant break from normal sibling squabbling.

The weather on Sunday was fantastic; sunny and not too warm. The winds were a little unpredictable (it is called the Four Winds Kite Festival for a _reason_ :-). I think I flew almost every kite in my bag, although some of them performed better than others! Michaela picked up several new kites from a bargain bin; I was pretty sure that the Wright Flyer wasn’t going to fly well, although it could just need a little tuning.

The Kortright staff were selling kites, including a funky penguin kite (which didn’t look enough like Tux, otherwise I might own one :-). There must have been a dozen penguins in the sky by the time we started packing up, along with even more rainbow deltas.

Afterwards a few of us went out to dinner, and while there celebrated Gareth’s birthday. What seven-year-old doesn’t love being the center of attention?

Sadly, we’re out of town for the next two events; Polo for Heart is the same day as my sister’s wedding, and Over the Edge is while we’re in Italy. I guess we won’t see everyone again until Canal Days…

So he’s about to turn seven on Monday. Eeek! They grow up too quickly.

After a long winter, it’s always nice to get outside in the sun and fresh air, so we always hold Gareth’s birthday party in a nearby park. The weather has been obliging so far; this year it was slightly chilly (13°C), but sunny and with a nice breeze. We flew some kites, played on the climbers, ate sandwiches and cake, and even had a water balloon fight!

Of course, there had to be a geek angle. Through a marketing promotion, we were able to borrow a digital camera for the party, so I’ve got one to put in this blog entry :-)

Tomorrow we drop by the Four Winds kitefest at the Kortright Centre; I might have some more pictures then.

[ Crud. The picture doesn’t work well with my current pretty box layout. Not quite sure how to fix that; I’ll leave it alone for now. ]

Prompted by “an entry”:http://www.unix-girl.com/blog/archives/000875.html on “Kasia’s weblog”:http://www.unix-girl.com/blog/, I started updating “my bio”:http://www.cfrq.net/~chk/bio.html, and ended up completely revamping (and substantially simplifying) “my homepage”:http://www.cfrq.net/~chk/ . It was fun, and a good way to absorb coffee after my son woke me up too early this morning…

So I’m four weeks into Weight Watchers’ maintenance program. The idea is that you try to be consistent (so that your weekly weigh-ins are reasonably accurate), and add points to your daily regimen until your weightloss flattens out.

As you can see from the new graph on the left, I haven’t flattened out yet. Instead, I’ve lost another 4.6 pounds; in fact, I’m losing _more_ weight now than I was in the last month of my regular program, even though I’m eating more. Frankly, I’m confused :-). I don’t think I’ve significantly increased my activity level; I haven’t started my formal spring exercise program yet, and I’m a week off curling now.

One theory is that I wasn’t eating _enough_ on the weightloss regimen, and so my body was hoarding calories; now that I’m eating more, my metabolism has increased? I dunno; that’s merely a SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess). Ah well, I’m going to try not to fret, and just enjoy eating some of the things that I didn’t have enough points for before…

So I’m sittin’ on the Group W bench…

No! I mean I’m sitting on the front porch, reading e-mail and writing this blog entry; my daughter (home from school today, remember?) is playing on the sidewalk. We’re waiting for the towels and swimsuits to dry, so that we can pack them up and head to the park for the rest of the afternoon before swim class.

It’s _summer_ out here, about 25°C and _sunny_. It’s only going to last today, apparently; tomorrow’s forecast is for a high of 16°C in the morning, them falling to 0°C with a freezing rain warning, so I’m enjoying the weather while it lasts.

I’ve discovered that my 802.11b only works with the front door open. It is steel; apparently it blocks just enough of the signal from the hub when it is closed. Defintely time to move the hub from the basement to the living room :-)

It’s a rough life, I know.

[ Update: it didn’t get that cold, and no freezing rain… ]

Well, ok, one sick kid.

Charlotte got up yesterday morning and started throwing up, even with no food in her. It’s amazing how pathetic she looks when she’s sick; she looks just like her grandmother :-). Every time she fell asleep she would feel sick again, wake up, and vomit. When we started seeing traces of blood we took her to the local pediatric clinic…

It turns out that it’s fairly common for 4-year old children to develop esophogial tears when they vomit a lot. Still, the doctor did all the usual tests, and sent her home to clear fluids (and no school on Monday). One dose of gravol later, and she slept the entire afternoon away.

Turns out the doctor made a good call; she has (Group A) strep. Time for antibiotics, and another day off school. Charlotte’s enjoying all of the attention, I think :-) It’s a good thing she _loves_ Jell-O!

It’s amazing how disruptive one throat infection can be. Michaela was supposed to work today, but is home with Charlotte instead. She moved her work day to Tuesday instead (bumping a job interview to first thing Wednesday morning), so I have to stay home tomorrow. Should be fun…

Gareth wants to be a Mad Scientist; I think he’s already well on his way. But with the role models he’s got, it could easily be Evil Genius instead… <grin>

Last week we drove up to Ottawa, to celebrate Christmas with my family there. Christmas? In March? well, for a lot of different reasons we had decided to stay in Toronto over Christmas this year, instead of our usual, hectic, visit everyone whirlwind tour. Then in January my mum got sick, and this is the first chance we’ve had to visit since then.

We left Wednesday. The drive up was pleasant; good weather and less traffic than we’re used to. We stopped at Ponderosa in Belleville, and I had my first steak since I started Weight Watchers. I’d forgotten how _good_ they tasted! The kids slept most of the rest of the way to Ottawa, a pleasant surprise!

Because of Mum’s illness, we couldn’t stay at her house, so we we found a local hotel that has two-room suites, each with a kitchenette. A little grocery shopping and we were set for meals for the week. With my sister’s tenant discount for living in a building run by the same property managers, the week wasn’t that expensive.

The kids were climbing the walls (literally) on Thursday, so we needed to find a place for them to run off some of that energy before seeing granny for dinner. A quick trip to the yellow pages yielded a possibility, so we drove over (nothing is far away in Ottawa). It turned out to be _huge_; the climber was about 30′ tall, and big enough for the adults. I spent a couple of hours chasing the kids around the thing! There was a large game of “monster” going, with several parents chasing many children, by the time we had to leave for dinner.

On Saturday night my sister took the kids to Disney on Ice and a sleepover; we had an entire night to ourselves! We saw Chicago, which we loved… Saturday was Christmas (where the kids made out like bandits :-). Sunday we drove back to Toronto in our best time ever; 5:15 from downtown Ottawa to home, including a stop for lunch at Wendy’s in Perth. The weather was excellent for driving, and the kids played nicely with each other (and with us) the whole trip home.

It was good to see my sister again, although as usual we didn’t get much time together. Mum is looking better than I expected. All in all, a very good trip!