The Squamidian Report – March 3 / 07
Issue #249
Also in this issue:
Greetings From Cindy
A Note From Ewan
The Ontarion
Hi All,
The ongoing problem of poorly though out Spam filtering has raised its ugly head again. Last weeks letter was blocked to all of you who are on either the Rogers system or the Yahoo system. That meant a dozen of you didn’t get your newsletter until I resent it under a different subject line. Yahoo owns or controls what gets to the Rogers mail server (Ewan, correct me if I’m wrong and suggest any possible fixes please). After consulting with the Shaw tech support people I’ve been assured that the blocking is happening at the receiver end. Greg checked with Rogers and he has been assured that it isn’t Rogers doing the blocking. So that leaves Yahoo as the culprit. That and the fact that the rejection notice for each Rogers and Yahoo address was issued by Yahoo. Many ISPs are using crude methods to identify Spam and end up blocking legitimate mail while the real Spam slips on through. That’s what’s happening here. So unless we can somehow communicate with the Yahoo server and get them to back off, the newsletter will have to use an ever changing subject line which makes it hard for you to identify each week’s addition. I re-sent last weeks issue using a different subject and it went through. So that’s working for now. If that stops working and we can’t get Yahoo to back off, we may be out of luck and perhaps even out of business at some point in the future. I did manage to find and fill out a long and confusing form from Yahoo that pleads my non-Spam case so we shall see.
*
Their visit is over. We drove Lorne, Vivyan and Cindy to the airport on Wednesday for their flight back to Southern Ontario. They pretty well ran me ragged as I scrambled to find interesting things for them to see and do. I could barely keep up with them. One highlight from my point of view was the fact that Vivyan brought enough of her home made pie dough out with her to make 5 fresh pies, which she did make once they were here. 3 of them are now history but the other 2 are safely hidden away in the freezer. Kind of like a culinary savings account.
The weather was it’s usual February unpredictable self, showing them all its faces. We had a fresh dusting of snow on their first morning. That was followed by some sunny breaks as we explored the Upper Squamish area and then into Garibaldi Park on the east side of the valley. We had a bit of rain and we had a clear brilliant day when we explored up past Whistler and into the Pemberton area. That night we watched Venus set and looked at the rings of Saturn through my small scope. We ate way too much, including breakfast in Whistler twice and a couple of overly abundant BBQs here at home. They were subjected to Warren and I playing a gig one evening at Gelato’s as part of a local Arts thing as well as sit in on a jam session that was part of the two-day birthday party we had for Vivyan. Cindy wore a path into the living room and dining room floor as she went back and forth each day, checking the ever-changing views out the front and back porches. If they enjoyed being here half as much as we enjoyed having them, they just may come back some time. Sure hope so.
Their trip home wasn’t all that pleasant though. They had a planned 2-hour wait in Calgary for a connecting flight. Our current airlines operating in Canada don’t seem to give a rat’s patooee about keeping their customers waiting and Westjet is no exception. That 2 hours turned into 5 hours. That put them into Hamilton at 4 AM. That is no way to treat the paying traveling public, never mind the fact that they are senior citizens who are trying very hard just to get to the proper airport gate.
However, home they are now and our house somehow seems just a bit on the lonely side now that they are no longer here.
doug
****
Mountains, eagles and robins! I saw them all. Spectacular views wherever you look! Whether snowflakes, sunshine or clouds, still spectacular views. The atmosphere is so clear I felt I could touch the moon and stars, they seemed so close.
The other day, a cloud floated down our street. From Whistler to Shannon Falls to Britannia and almost up into Garibaldi Park, the scenery took my breath away. Today (Tuesday), a brilliant sunshine drive to Whistler for breakfast and then on up to Pemberton, a rich agricultural valley between snow topped mountains.
Many, many thanks to Sue and Doug for their hospitality, friendship and patience. They pulled out all the stops to show us a year’s weather in one week. And it was great to spend a little time with Ryan and Emily.
Until next time,
****
A Note From Ewan
Hello
all,
I
finished work a short while ago, and there actually isn't time to write this
e-mail. But I feel like I just have to. It's Thursday night, and we're
entertaining ourselves after work by watching the storm. More accurately we're
watching one crazy intersection in Toronto during the storm. Isabella and
Jarvis is a small intersection near our corner of the Rogers building that is
odd at any time. Traffic is often crazy here, with a lot of mistakes,
selfishness and aggression. There is also normally a very mixed crowd of
pedestrians.
Anyone
with their head out of the snow knew a big storm was coming. It rolled in right
on time this afternoon. So people in the office all make the decision to take
off early, leave the car behind, sleep in the city, or just blunder in to the
thick of it. The city doesn't have a wide enough margin to be able to
accommodate a light snow, let alone the traffic resulting from a blizzard. But
people absolutely insist on doing it, at a buck a litre. I shudder to think
that it will be me next winter.
Several
times this winter we've seen a new character in the area. The föðkæñ nut case
walks around outside in shorts, T-shirt and flip flops. Maybe he was around in
the summer and we just didn't notice him. He lives in a building a few doors
down. We're used to guys like the famous crazy Santa and others who flaunt in
the face of the cold, but flip flop man is something else. The best theories
going are that he is on some sort of narcotic, lost a huge bet or awful dare,
is simply unbalanced, or some combination. We often see him run out of his
building to the corner, then put bottles or cans in to the recycling slot of
the corner garbage can. Then he sort of bobs there and decides to go back or
just run in some other direction. Sometimes he gets groceries. The guy shops in
the dead of winter, outside, in open toed flip flops. I wear more than that
inside my apartment!
So the
inevitable traffic problems at the intersection started to draw us to the
window. We teased Marissa because it's ridiculous to go out, yet she did
because her husband demands dinner be made for him. He and the kids are fine at
home in Ajax, but she has to go there to get dinner ready. I told her to be
sure to turn around after dinner and start coming back for the morning shift.
But she may still beat the threat of freezing rain. Her Mom is in the city, all
she has to do is learn how to take the subway over and stay the night there.
I'd rather sleep at my desk than drive to Ajax tonight!
It is
a somewhat tricky intersection, with Isabella changing to one way on the other
side, and northbound Jarvis splitting in to Mount Pleasant. Also, Jarvis south
of this intersection has the only variable direction lane that I've driven on.
There is no centre line, instead the direction of the centre lane is dictated
by electronic signs above. This is in addition to the usual posted restrictions
regarding left hand turns. People ignore those restrictions. People ignore the
fact that the street is one way, sometimes deliberately for short distances.
People
naturally cause grid lock. People sometimes snap in heavy traffic. As the
northbound traffic intensified someone decided to make an additional lane. That
was actually working fairly well, but ended when the police came through later
on. At it's worst people began to get out of their cars to try to get traffic
moving by directing it by hand, even to the point of physically blocking cars
by standing in front of them That actually seemed to improve things also,
because it stopped them from creating grid lock. Sometimes drivers need to be
gently reminded not to block three lanes of traffic for the sake of their
illegal left hand turn in to existing grid lock.
At one
point the only southbound traffic was a guy in a powered wheel chair, who was
out on the one remaining lane. He actually seemed to make way better time than
the northbound cars anyway. But once he made the corner he got stuck in a snow
bank. Shortly after that the mini snow plow came by to clear the side walk.
This blocked him in even further, but the snow plow guy and another pedestrian
helped the man get his wheel chair on to the freshly cleared sidewalk. That's
when we noticed flip flop man show up. He had prepared for the weather. Today
for the first time he wore long pants with the usual T-shirt and flip flops. He
had his hands in his pockets too, so it must be pretty bad out there.
My
coworker Jay has been on the phone off and on, getting progress reports from
his friend who is in the herd going north. It works out to about twenty minutes
to per city block. Pointless. The funny thing was that he almost hit flip flop
man on the way through. What are the chances that it would be him who almost
hit flip flop man? I'm shocked that no one hit either of the guys who were
directing traffic. I guess no one is going fast enough to do much harm anyway.
The
police have blocked off Mount Pleasant, so the action and comedy value of the
area has died down. In the meantime the snow just keeps coming.
We've
had a few heavy snow storms recently, I hope all you Ontarians are driving
safely tonight, or staying put. Monday night I went in to Kitchener to pay
respects to Babcia and to see the others. UU convinced me not to drive, and I
have to say that was a good idea. Of course right at this moment she is three
hours in to her drive from Brampton to her home in the middle of Toronto. She's
half way. I told her to go to my place, or just get a room in Brampton!
In the
city, winter isn't that bad at all, it's just driving through it that's tough.
*
In the
spirit of Doug's more technical contributions to the Squamidian I decided to
tell you about an interesting tidbit from my own job. This is relevant to all
of us, in a sense.
Recently
Rogers Wireless and Bell Mobility were in competition for a very lucrative
HydroOne contract. Ultimately Bell got the contract, which was a natural
disappointment for some at Rogers. The profit margin was so low that it didn't
really matter. But shortly after that I realized that things could have been
done a lot better, and maybe Rogers blew it in part because we were trying to
milk the cow too much.
Hydro
Ontario (or whatever it's called now) is under pressure to enforce time of day
and other usage rules. That is to say, millions are spent and the electrical
infrastructure is threatened in part because many people and industries use the
most power all at the same times each day. Peak time. The rest of the time the
demand is no where near as high, but the networks have to be designed to exceed
the peak demand. So they try to get people and businesses to spread it out.
Running your dishwasher at 3 am is an example of offsetting power consumption.
Another trick is when the power companies send signals via the power grid to
trigger electrical water heaters and air conditioners to stop. Sometimes they
do that to mitigate peak time demand, and most of the time no one even notices.
But of
course not much changes, and a big part of that is billing. If electricity
costs more at some times during the day, while at others it's cheaper then
there might be a more noticeable shift. The technology to do that starts to pay
off. Of course this all relies on measuring power consumption many times during
the day if not constantly, rather than once every month or two. This same
dilemma exists all over the industrialized world, and it isn't new.
So a
common solution that is gaining popularity is the smart meter. There are
devices that can be installed on an existing power meter to convert it to a
smart meter also. This means that the power meter knows when the power is used,
in addition to how much and other technical details. It even knows if it's been
damaged or tampered with. In some cases it's possible for people using the
power to get consumption information from the meter using a display in the
building or their own computer. The next step is how to get all this
digital information to the billing and analysis systems at the power company.
The
traditional way is for someone to drive around and record the meter readings.
That technique won't keep up with the new system. So there are several other
ways to do it, most of them wireless. In some cases the same guy drives around,
while automatically receiving and recording wireless data transmissions from
the meters. But there are always problems, and once you pay for all the smart
meters and wireless transmitters, it's tough to justify the extra step.
So
Ontario Hydro uses an existing wireless network in most cases. They may decide
to use their own wi-fi network, but I believe it only exists in down town
Toronto. So they crunched the numbers and decided to attach a wireless data
modem to each smart meter. That's a long term cash cow to coax the drool from
the mouths of many salespeople at Bell and Rogers, as well as Telus and various
middlemen. One significant problem is the sheer volume of traffic that this
represents. Even with extremely efficient use of the network and no unexpected
problems Rogers would need to spend a lot of money on significant network
upgrades in order to accommodate it. We have our own peak time traffic to consider.
Our
trial resulted in service interruptions in the test area due to congestion.
People were unable to surf the internet or read their e-mail from their cell
phones and Blackberries because the network was busy talking to their power
meters. In some cases voice service was affected. How much can a power meter
really have to say? Such a dull conversation. In my opinion, the people
supporting Ontario Hydro failed to use their imaginations, or maybe the timing
was wrong for the design of their data collection system. In my opinion, Rogers
and maybe Bell were a little blinded by the thought of all the money from such
a huge contract.
So
along came Manitoba Hydro. Rogers has contracts across the country, but this
one seems very interesting to me. There is an American company that has
interesting proprietary solutions to these sorts of issues. They equip their
smart meters with radio frequency Local Area Network transceivers, which can
potentially solve most of the problems. These meters talk to each other and
form little groups, with their own hierarchy and encrypted language. They use
frequencies not unlike a cordless phone, with security. They don't need to
transmit or receive data over long distances, just to each other in their own
neighbourhood group. One or two of them among as many as a thousand is equipped
with a wireless data modem. All the meters in the area send their data to it,
where it is concentrated and backhauled via the Rogers network to HydroOne.
Rogers delivers from the modem, to the radio tower and all the way to Hydro
Ontario's computers via a secure tunnel. We can not read the actual
information, sort of like the post office is supposed to be.
One
thousand power meters concentrated on to one wireless modem seems like a great
many to me, and I believe that in the field they will join fewer than that to a
single concentrator. But even so it means that Manitoba Hydro needs to buy and
operate one modem from Rogers for every five hundred or a thousand that Ontario
Hydro would use. This means that Rogers is much less thrilled, but it is still
a very lucrative contract. One further complication is the fact that the
company in the US that is supporting Manitoba Hydro was also invloved with the
Ontario Hydro smartmeter project. In my opinion if Rogers had put this idea
forward to Ontario Hydro they likely would have went for it, and although there
would have been no huge profit there also wouldn't have been any need for a
huge expensive network upgrade either. Instead Rogers lost the contract, which
had bottomed out anyway. Maybe things will change in Ontario going forward,
particularly with Manitoba and an increasing number of other places getting
smart. In the end it's our money being burned, regardless of who gets the
contract. Sooner or later smart meters will be installed on almost every
building. Okay maybe not at Fern Glenn, or out at Sus and Peter's place! But
more than 90% anyway.
The
last point is the fate of the people who come around to read the meters. Some
of them will move to other jobs. Some of them will still be needed. Some of
them will be replaced by people who drive around to maintain the wireless
devices. Some of them may have to be retrained to deliver pizzas if they can't
adapt. With the price of gas I also wonder how long we'll be able to afford
lovely pizza pies delivered straight to our doors. I hope that some things
never change.
Talk to you soon,
Ewan
****
Hello
everyone!
Well I
guess the Three Musketeers are home from the west! From what Doug said they had
a pretty good time but I’ll leave that up whichever one of the three of them
wishes to write about it in the Squamidian. It’ll be fun to hear if they saw
any Sasquatch or other interesting sights during their stay in the mountains.
Probably the only real hairy thing they came in contact with while out there
was Doug! LOL! I’m sure he’s still got his usual crop of distinguished looking
facial forest!
*
As has
everyone else in our area, I’ve been busy shoveling and blowing snow for the
past few days. It’s great that March has come in like a Lion so we can look
forward to it going out like a lamb. There’s nothing more depressing than
having March be nice and mild only to have it storm like hell on the 31st
so we have to shovel for the first few days of spring. I’m not really sure, is
the end of March the first of spring? Oh well, no big deal, I just think of it
as the start of the milder weather and an end to most of the cold stuff. At any
rate, it’s something to look forward too after the winter. We’ve had at least a
foot of snow a couple of times this past week or so in our drive. They say it
was only a few inches but I guess it may be the way the wind blows in our
neighbourhood that causes it to pile up so high. I’ve even blown about half of
our front lawn down to about 2” so there wouldn’t be such a big melt when the
warm weather does get here. I thought this was a tricky move but by the next
morning, it was filled back in. With the cost of gasoline these days, it’s a
good thing my new blower gets a hundred miles to the gallon! LOL! I was up
early this morning at around 5am. Had to get up for an early WC break so I got
on the computer to check my e-mail that I hadn’t checked before hitting the hay
last night. There was nothing but junk mail so it didn’t take very long. While
I was sitting in the office, I heard a plow go buy. I hadn’t looked out since
earlier last evening so I was unaware that we had had a pretty good ice storm.
As I looked out the upper window the plow was just passing beside our house. I
was amazed at the huge pile of ice that was lifting in front of the plow. It
was actually lifting a sheet about 5’ in front of the blade then it would
crumble as the truck pushed it along. I’ve never seen such a sight! I guess it
was pretty thick on the road and held together quite well for a few seconds. I
haven’t been out yet this morning but I did look out front to see that the plow
had left me a 3’ pile of shattered ice at the end of the drive. I hope the
blower will munch that up enough to toss it across the street. I guess I’ll
soon find out. I have to go out shopping for a couple of items in a few minutes
so I’ll give the ice removal a try before I leave. Of course there’s always the
fun of leaving it there and climbing over it in 4 wheel drive in the Jeep! The
problem with that is that it gets compacted tightly and is even harder to
remove. Guess I’ll take the easy way out and blow it away. It’s snowing out
there right now but just lightly. I’m hoping the “Spring Thaw” will start this
weekend as they’ve forecast a mild Saturday and Sunday. I haven’t seen any
motorcycles passing by lately so at least I don’t have to hurry to get mine out
of the shed. There’ll be plenty of time for biking this year I’m sure. Until the weather is warm enough for that, I’ll
be happy just to be getting outside as things warm up. There’s plenty of work
around the house this spring before we’ll be able to hit the road on the bikes.
This year is the year of rebuilding the pond and water falls out back. Last
year we were losing water level and it was from the water falls area, not from
the pond itself. So, I guess that means I’ll have to dismantle the falls and
check the rubber sheet underneath for tears and holes. That ought to be fun! I
bought a new pump system in the fall and am looking forward to installing that
as well while I have the falls apart. Oh well, that’s a story for another
Ontarion.
I’ll just
call it a day for this one.
Thanks
for tuning in and I look forward to talking to you all again next time in The
Ontarion Report!
Bye for now… Greg.
PS:
Something To Think About>
No two
snow flakes are ever the same shape.
****
The Family and the Squamidian sites:
http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/ and http://www.thedougsite.ca
Have a good one..
the
doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.