City Server Shuts Down

You can expect to see this headline soon.The city is asking residents  to submit the location of potholes so they can fix them. Hmmm...the roads, just about anywhere. They are just a collection of potholes tied together by a few ripples and cracks. If you think they are bad in a car try them on a bike with a butt that's just getting used to sitting on a saddle again...ouch. Do your part report your favorite here.
I got over 100 km this month in just a week of riding back and forth to work, one longer ride last weekend and finally one with Lisbeth this morning. I headed over to Mission Marsh and for once there were no deer in sight. Having gears and brakes was fun for a change. The old single speed with fenders serves a purpose but can't touch the pride of the fleet.

Canada's National Bird

I always thought it was the Canada Goose too, but maybe we should recruit a few of these from down under. We all tend to avoid the facts that are so easily attainable.  I decided to look at the Canadian Senator's expenses. In less than 5 second a simple google search brought me to an official page that breaks everything down by quarter and for each senator and the claimed expenses. These are of course on top of the base salary of $132,300 and benefits. The news media is constantly chirping lately about how ineffective the Senate is and how much it costs, but when you really go looking it is still shocking. Remember there are 105 Senators. 

Hon. Mike Duffy for the period of 9/1/2012 - 11/30/2012

Staff & Office                  $37068

Hospitality                       $369

Living Expense in Ottawa         $4636

Regular Travel (home to Ottawa) $12876

Other Travel                     $6022

Total for the Quarter           $60971

Hon. Pamela Wallin for the period 9/1/2012 - 11/30/2012

Staff & Office                  $48291

Hospitality                      $1035

Living Expense in Ottawa         $1764

Regular Travel (home to Ottawa)  $7312

Other Travel                    $43645

Total for the Quarter          $102047

Now multiply this by four to arrive at an annual figure (Duffy $243884/Wallin $408188) and then bite your tongue, but don't do this:

First Ride

After a weekend of playoffs and fighting with a stubborn bios password in the computer which was holding up a small upgrade, I finally made it to the basement last night.  The weather is warm enough, the streets are dry enough so I pumped the tires, lubed the chain, set the tension and charged the battery for the lights. Eyowen was ready to roll this morning and so was I. 

I managed to leave early enough to get in a 'long way to work ride' of just under 6km, then home and back at lunch for another 9km. I should get to 20km for the day as long as the snow holds off. My butt is feeling the effects of walking rather than riding but the only thing I miss about walking is the chance to listen to tunes. The SIII has more than 200 complete albums stored on it and room for at least 100 more. 

The fight with the computer was worth it. A solid state drive is amazingly fast. I probably went too big since most of what I work on is stored in the cloud these days but at least I won't have to fight my way through it again. I swear Dell set the bios password when I let them in remotely to fix the registry a year ago or so. I've never set one and all the factory defaults are for the bios to be unlocked. The rep on the phone was upset that I didn't want the $200 warranty and I'm guessing he made sure I'd be calling again if anything went wrong or I tried to update anything. Sorry pal, I found the way around it.  

Ginko R. Kendall, goalie for a day.

Change of Season

Northwood playoffs ended with a pair of shutouts, no controversy, no overtime and much less drama than recent seasons. After the tightest round robin since we moved to the current format the final games were sort of anti-climatic. I've come to expect wild, crazy games with last minute goals and very loud crowds. It was loud but really tame.  The losing teams just could not score, just didn't make the connections that sometimes result in a lucky goal. Ahh.... but it's good to have it all wrapped up for another year.

Sunday saw each line play an hour exhibition game, with wanna-be goalies including one Ginko R. Kendall donning the pads. He actually made it out onto the ice this year and despite a bunch of goals he made some nice saves. Hopefully that cures the goalie bug that he caught a few years ago, it's just not that easy. I loaded the car with 6 sets of sweaters and all the spare goalie gear I could find. On the return to storage I had an extra bucket and 4 more sets of gear, so much that the back of the car was loaded right to the front seats and the rear view mirror gave me a nice view of trappers and blockers. 

A few more things to take care of, banquet and trophies, and then it's on to baseball. Fact is that already started about a week ago.