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musings of mark since 2001

Not quite another week in as a caretaker, glad when this one is over. Maybe because I’ve moved over 40 times so far that the procedure seems fairly basic to me, but others seem to get quite manic about the whole affair. Odd week for web site xhtml/css too, had a couple days into a medium size site to convert and about 2/3 of the way complete when an email arrives saying everything was on hold. Some sort of mix-up between the one hiring me and their client, yesterday after looking at my initial CSS and markup framework they were tickled pink and looking forward to it being done. Oh well, glad I got a deposit for it in advance so all is not lost but too bad the majority of the work is done.

Waiting patiently for summer to arrive, it’s been a typical June with lots of rainy times and grey days, don’t know if that guarantees a long hot season or not…Warmer than at Dad’s mountain fishing lake though, June 25th was a Monday and he managed to get some pictures of about 8 inches of fresh fallen wet heavy snow.

Still amazed at how dense they have people packed here in the city, and someone was telling me yesterday that the planners are expecting another 100,000 to show up in the next decade. No matter what time it is, there’s always someone else awake outside and we’re just counting people not the plentiful skunks and racoons. Off to the store for maybe some pizza, that sounds good and this time of day there are scores of other people too, mostly walking home from work along the tree lined sidewalks.

Saw the first, and only, bee so far this season yesterday. This morning a skunk was wandering up the alley and stopping by all the garbage cans along the way. The raccoon in the tree across the way stood by warily, and the crows made sure every other animal in the neighbourhood knew about the skunk following him around with their incessant cawing.

Having a tough time doing a supposedly small CSS project; without a Windows machine(s, now two of them to deal with!) to test on as I go along it’s very difficult to get things looking the same as they do on my ies4linux versions of Internet Exploder compared to IE and Windows itself. Apparently what I’m seeing on my test Internet Exploders is not the same anymore as what shows up with IE, actually on a Windows XP or Vista box. A disadvantage of moving here that wasn’t anticipated to be a big deal, but it is turning into something major as the days go by and still don’t have the web site working.

UPDATE:It’s the fonts man - my Fedora distro spits out nicely aliased fonts in a smaller space than all versions of Windows. Which means having a Win boxen is imperative to pixel perfect CSS make-overs and found a place on Davie St. that has a handful of IBM brand PC’s with P4’s and WinXP. The licencing sticker is on them too and will be able to update to SP2.

Haven’t blogged anything in a while, been a busy week or two around here with a city ordained sewer separation project happening. The contractor for it is someone that’s been working on the building a long time and really is supposed to be retired, but he’s doing this “one last job” for the owners.

For my part that means getting a little dirty and some pin money for the effort, even tied in a couple hours worth of re-bar today for the cement that is most likely going in tomorrow morning. Before the weekend it was inside the hole digging out the edges for a new storm water sump, a nice big one that won’t need to be cleaned but every ten years or so. The existing concrete pad needs to be cleaned well for pouring new cement down the gash that was made for the new pipe to the alley, I’ll get that started early so the edges will be ready when they show up.

Dad sounded pretty good over the telephone for Father’s Day, a little older maybe from the stress of a roof that needed to be replaced on the mobile home and Margaret is not getting younger either. Glad they have the escape pod to the lake with the birds and little critters running around.

Chris Tenove and the Fiesty One Online reviews the book by child soldier Ishmael Beah and compares that child to Omar Khadr who has been held in Guantanamo for the last five years. It’s a striking contrast between one child who killed uncounted people that were black and from another land and the one who killed a single American soldier that was invading his homeland.

It’s June, and about 17 years later from the day the Tank Man made his stand.