blogx
musings of mark since 2001

   My brother, David Carter is coming up for sure on Saturday! Just seen him a couple times in the spring when he was playing in Vancouver at the Jazz Festival, and another time when they were the opening act at the Commodore Ballroom. He’s making the drive Saturday morning, (better in the daylight eh), and should be here for the 11:35 am ferry if all goes well.
   It’s going to be great getting caught up again, turns out that I see more of David than anyone else in the family really. This will be the third time this year, beating John’s old record of twice in one year by a long shot. There’s still Xmas to go yet, and we’ve done that together before so maybe again this year. It’s kinda nice, the two dysfunctional ones just hangin’ out for a couple of days together. Kinda reminds me of the Bowen Island 3^rd Annual Dysfunctional Singles Thanksgiving Dinner, that was a lot of fun too.

   Cold clear morning and old man winter is here fer sure. Awesome sunrises out of the deal though, going back to regular time from Daylight Savings Time is nice for that. The longer evenings in the summertime are nice enough all right, but I’m a morning person and would rather have the light then thank you.
   Deer are still coming around past the bedroom window early to see if the garden gate is left open. They have pretty good memories of the last feast they had. Once it gets dark, they get even more fearless of the humans on the island, as if they sense that we can’t see or smell them as well as they can us. Out at Collin’s Farm House, they just don’t care if they are spotted; I suspect that they have been hand fed at one time or another out there and that may explain why there are so many more that hang out there than here. The steeper terrain here on the south east shore, along with being closer to the ocean may limit them a bit, but not much. They use the boardwalk stairs as much as anyone, and the hay like grass under trees in places are one of their favourite sleeping areas. Food sources seems likely to be the largest draw regardless of the living conditions otherwise.

   Finally got something going well with the video recording for the Healthy Brain Program and it’s all coming via the GPL license as well from Sourceforge.net. I have been looking for some way to convert the proprietary ATI codec .avi files, and convert them into something smaller and more useful. The evolt.org list turned out to have the answer finally. Someone was looking to convert some other type of file, but I checked out all the helpful links that were tossed out and one of them led to Virtual Dub, a superior open source video dubbing tool. Using the Intel Indeo codec for compression, ATI .avi files are almost a tenth of their original size. Yippie! And they play on any Real and Windows media players to boot.

   Watching the Discovery Channel doing a segment on birds, the smuggled kind, and they were in South America. But what caught my eye was that the young girls down there were wearing the same style of blue jeans that were the rage up here at the moment.
   Remembering back to Debbie’s shopping, she always said that buying clothes in Vancouver was better than Seattle. The styles were always ahead of what was available down there and Vancouver had everything imaginable. So is South America ahead of us too? Or is this the place where fashion starts now on the west coast. Not sure when the show was taped, it was a new one though.

   Thank goodness it’s Friday and not Monday after the streets of the lower mainland toss me a curve ball today. Started pretty good, six stops in West Van so didn’t make it across the bridge before it turned to one lane. No problem, just got two stops on Hastings two blocks apart, and I find parking a little less than half a block away from the first. It’s a bit of a wait to get up the elavator, and the crosswalks aren’t timing for me, but still no problem. Get out, buzz back to the van and it’s off to Richard’s and Hastings next, easy.
   Not so fast there mister, a humungous fat guy with a Hyabb crane flatbed truck has stopped in the taking up a little more than his own lane, and he already has a large meter diameter pipe sitting on the ground and is thinking about getting it up to a second floor somewhere. The motorcycle and bicycle cops are there then, and they are discussing how many tickets they are going to give this guy, and where is the flag person needed for that etc, etc. It went downhill from there. Finally getting through that gauntlet, then down to Cordova after the drop and of all things, the slowest train in the world decides it’s time to move a bunch of cars. Near the front of the line, no time to turn on to Powell and go over the bridge to get to Victoria and Triumph so it’s now getting to be a bit behind schedule. The pickup at Triumph was a clueless wonder place, bad enough to have to phone my customer and tell him that his supplier was screwing up and couldn’t even find his order. His stuff was found on the shelf the guy had looked at twice, more delays, until by the time I made it out of BDC it was going on to 2:35 pm. And I still have to go to White Rock and then over to Port Kells, (Langley). That’s a real long way, with stops near Queensborough on the way back and Burnaby as well. Made it to one stop on Westminster Hwy, then everything was closed after that. Had two more in that area right around the corner, everything closed. It was after five then, so phoning ahead it turns out four stops not made all together. Bummer.
   Can’t wait to have a better day Monday, without a trip to White Rock, Tswassen, or Langley.

>>  After going over my route from Friday, I think I may have been able to do it all in one day even with the delays. The key was at the airport. Instead of going to Whiterock after the airport, I could have turned around and gone back over the Aurther Lange Bridge and effectively do the rest of the route backwards. That would have me with the Whiterock delivery at the last stop, and then I would have been going against the flow of traffic at least until I hit the Lion’s Gate Bridge and downtown. Always so intent on hitting that Ironworkers Memorial Bridge on the way home, once in a blue moon it may be better to go the other way.