The Blog of Harald

35°C , at least ’til Saturday…

I can tell, because we’re in another 10-day long heat wave, as Dennis pushes hot wet air out of the United States up into Southern Ontario. Or so the weather guys say. This is late August weather, not early July weather! And here I sit with a dead air-conditioner…

And then there’s Emily:

bq. Emily’s formation late Monday was the earliest date on record for five named storms to develop, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

funfunfun.

I was standing in the store with melting ice cream, so decided to brave the relatively normal thunderstorm and run to the car. Of course the storm picks that moment to intensify!

In the 30 seconds it took me to run to the car and load the groceries, I was as wet as if I had just jumped into a swimming pool with all of my clothes on. Halfway through the parking lot an evil self-propelled buggy tried to take out my car, but I mananged to avoid it. Shortly after that I realized just how bad the storm was; there was an entire tree lying on the wrong side of the road (i.e. it snapped off and blew all the way across)!

On the plus side, I now have evidence of just how efficient my spiffy summer tires are at shedding water. Even at 20km/h, my tires shower the sidewalk (and pedestrians) whenever the water gets deep. Mu ha ha!

*Update:* the ice cream (with fresh strawberries) was very good :-)

*Update 2:* I’m not the only one:

* http://www.livejournal.com/users/olletho/244165.html
* http://www.livejournal.com/users/cielf/123156.html

Spent 3 days at Pinery, then 4 days at a friend’s cottage. Very tired (cos I don’t sleep in the kind of heat we’ve had recently) but also very relaxed. We get a two day respite from the heat, then it’s back on Monday… Ugh.

Anyway, the relaxation should wear off quickly; we just put mummy on a plane for a two-week business trip!

“Holly Lisle”:http://www.hollylisle.com/ has three new books out, and I missed them all because all of my usual book tracking sources stopped tracking new books at the same time! I happened to visit her website the other day and discovered this. Now I have to go track down all of the other authors I like and double-check that I haven’t missed anything else…

I despise people who shove in front of me, cutting me off, when I’m already too close to the guy in front *and* there’s at least 500m of open road *behind* me.

I must have a sign on my car that tells people to do this or something…

Taking 6 boys (and a girl) to Wonderland is a new form of insanity with which I was not previously acquainted.

Fortunately, it was an unbusy day, so we let them run from the exit to the entrance of several rides, allowing us to catch our collective breath :)

So Ipsos-Reid called me yesterday. I love giving them my opinion, because it tends to be different from the herd’s…

Speaking of herds, the big question series was about BSE. One pair of questions was:

* If other countries want to require that we test *all* cattle destined for export, should we?
* If we are testing all exported cattle, would it be acceptable to continue to spot-check domestically sold beef, or should we test all domestic cattle too?

I think that if we’re doing more testing in one arena than another, unscrupulous distributors are going to dump all suspect beef on the domestic market (instead of simply destroying it), thus *increasing* the risk to our food supply. So while I support full testing for export (because our economy requires exports), I believe it follows that we have to test all of our cattle (even though the scientific community believes that spot-checking is “safe enough”). C’est la vie, I guess.

The other thing they asked me about was waterfront property taxes in cottage country. The issue: Market Value Assessment means that when the market value of your house rises, so do your property taxes. Unfortunately, there’s been a boom in waterfront cottage prices, and so people who have had properties in their family for generations are suddenly unable to afford the taxes. It’s gotten so skewed that in many municipalities, 5% of the land is providing 50% of the tax revenue…

Now I don’t think pure, free-market MVA is a good way to set property taxes. (Of course, the old way of *not* adjusting for market value didn’t work either). So I came down firmly on the side of existing property owners in that part of the survey…

They also asked me about the relative social responsibility of Bell Canada and Telus, and about steak restaurants. Since I usually visit my local mom ‘n’ pop steak place, and haven’t been to The Keg in ages, I was able to skew those results too :-)

May sweeps are over. I still have to watch:

* 2 hours of CSI
* 3 hours of Alias
* 2 hours of The L Word
* 5 hours of Enterprise
* 4 hours of Earthsea
* 3 hours of Dr. Who
* 9 hours of Dr. Who Confidential (i.e. I haven’t started yet :-)
* 7 hours of Numb3rs

It’s a good thing I have an 80Gb drive in that machine!

On the plus side, I’m ahead of Michelle, who is still back somewhere in January on her videotape collection…

I have a kitchen; the breakfast nook is no longer buried in centuries of sedimentary buildup.

We’re currently excavating Charlotte’s bedroom. There’s actually a hardwood floor underneath the humus layer (decaying clothes and toys)…

On the other hand, the front hall is now a transition zone, and migratory herds of boxes and winter boots are trying to pass each other without excessive predation…

Ok, I think 15 days may be a new record for me…

I’ve posted pictures from the Trebuchet Party at “photos.rogers.com”:http://ca.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/chk@rogers.com/album?.dir=/cc74&.src=ph&.tok=phv5KADBm2pfHlCN and I plan a more formal writeup with locally hosted pictures sometime soon.

In other news, the episode of Planet Parent that was filmed at last years Four Winds Kite Festival (and Gareth’s birthday party) was broadcast on Wednesday. I recorded it, so we finally got to see Gareth talking about bathrooms on TV :-).

The car turning left in front of me this morning had the license plate:

PLAN AHE

Good thing I was stopped…

starring Tina Fey and … no wait, that’s not it!

Went up north on Saturday to visit a couple of proposed “Trebuchet party”:http://wiki.the-gang.ca/TrebuchetPage sites. We found a “good looking spot”:http://www.cfrq.net/gallery/trebsite and the kids had fun tromping around in the wilderness; they ignored the slight drizzle and even managed to finagle a couple of horseback rides from the neighbours!

Sunday we mostly finished the trebuchet. We “finished the arm”:http://www.cfrq.net/gallery/Trebuchet-a-la-CHABB/The_Arm, but still have to work on the axle support, sling, sling release, and trigger; and we only finished one of the two braces for the uprights. Still, we should be finished in time for the party in two weeks.

I have a car again!

My mechanic couldn’t find a rim quickly, so he put the bent wheel at the back of the car, where the vibration is less noticable. I picked up the car last night (I took the GO train to Langstaff, then took a GO bus north; I miss the GO train!). The brake lines weren’t quite as bad as we had feared; he only had to replace them from the middle of the car back. As for the radiator, apparently it’s common. The antifreeze that Daewoo used was unusually acidic. It eats away at everything; he’s had cylinder blocks in the shop that look like swiss cheese… It’s a good thing I did the cooling system flush when the lube guy recommended it, or my car would be in worse shape than it is!

Anyway, total damage <$1000 taxes included! (sigh of relief).

With the brakes ($600) and leaking radiator ($300) fixed, the mechanic took the car out to investigate the other problem: a vibration in the front end. Turns out that there are two problems: the left front wheel bearing is loose and needs replacing ($100), and the left front rim is *bent* ($unknown).

Maybe I’ll have my car back on Thursday :-). Ah well; safety first, right?

(I’m still ahead of the game; I did get the car cheap, after all…)

My car died on Friday. The brakes failed, because left-rear steel brake line had rusted through and ruptured under the pressure. It turns out that all of the brake lines (front and rear) need to be replaced, from the master cylinder on out. The mechanic’s going to be busy for a couple of days (it’s about an eight hour job, apparently; about $600).

We were both astonished; we’ve never seen that level of corrosion on a five year old car. It looks like they’ve been soaked in a salt bath and then fired with a blowtorch! I’ve seen this level of corrosion on cars that have been dumped at the back of the junkyard, but never on a young car! The rest of the underside of the car is in good shape; it’s just the breaking system. Very strange…

Anyway, I’m carless! Meanwhile, My wife and I still need to get to work; the kids have an Art and Music Festival on Tuesday afternoon; the roofer is coming on Tuesday to inspect the raccoon damage and give me an estimate; and I have a service appointment for the *other* car on Thursday (which I’ll probably just reschedule).

And on top of the new car repair expense, I owe money to CRA this year. *sigh.

Gareth’s synopsis:

bq. Cheesy!

later:

bq. Ok, cheesy and predictable!

The classics of my childhood, disemboweled by an eight-year-old… :-)

So my daughter was excited about today’s Da Vinci Google logo; apparently they were talking about his birthday in art class today.

Should I be afraid that my 6-year old knows how to “Google”:http://www.google.com/ ?

Some lowlife types broke into our car last night, tried to hotwire it (which you can’t :-), and so instead stole some makeup, my wife’s handsfree phone adapter, and the ownership, registration, and insurance papers. Grr.

The cops don’t think that identity theft is likely; the thieves want the ownership papers so that they can bleach out and replace the name on the paper with someone else’s. The cops don’t normally check VINs at traffic stops, so this helps them legitimize a different stolen car of the same make and colour.

Still, I’ve been on hold with Trans Union for over half an hour now, waiting to put a “fraud protection” flag on my credit info. (Equifax answered the phone right away :-)

It’s a good thing I was *planning* to stay home today (and do laundry :-), ‘cos it’s wintering outside!

Ok, so it snowed in mid-April last year, too. Still, I’ll be happy to see spring _really_ start…

I’d take pictures, but we seem to have misplaced our digital camera. I really hope we didn’t leave it in Ottawa somewhere (the hotel doesn’t have it, sadly).