* * * Travel Through Time - Click here  * * *
  - If you came here looking for something specific, please scroll down, use your browser search (Ctrl+F), or look here - 
  - Is text on this page too large or small?  Press "Ctrl" and "+" or "Ctrl" and "-" at the same time to change it.-

Do you have an ad blocker turned on? Selected ads at right offer products and services related to topics on this page.
 

Monday, December 1st, 2008
Decembers past: 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
Honey Bee World Forum

I spent the day in Tijuana getting some dental work done, and have to go back tomorrow to get a crown finished.  One crown, five fillings and a cleaning $500US.  No waiting, and a first-class job.

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
Decembers past: 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
Honey Bee World Forum

Another day in San Ysidro and Tijuana.  I got the last two fillings done and the crown installed.  The crown is perfect and much better than the one it replaces.  The phone number of my dentist is in the picture at right.  She (Ana) has to be one of the most carful and gentle dentists I have had the pleasure of sitting for.  It turns out that yesterday was actually here day off, but no problem.  She was happy to come in since I have to return to Canada. There are several other dentists in the office, and I can't vouch for them, but everyone is friendly and they speak good English.  Although I am sure that Spanish unilingual dentists are OK, I prefer one that understands English, since if there is a problem, I need to be able to tell them.

This experience was better than the one in Los Algodones. Los Algonones was OK, but the crossing there is slower, and the competition is fiercer.  We got good prices, and the work was done with care, but the tooth still bothers me and recent x-rays show that maybe the root canal did not get all the nerve, in spite of considerable effort.  I also had canker sores after that work and this time, no such problem.  I'm not impressed with some dentists in Canada either, so wherever you go, you take your chances.  When you find a good dentist, stick with him/her.

When I lost the cap I was in Muskoka, I dropped by a dentist in Bracebridge for a quick estimate.  She sat me down, took a look and quoted me $1,200 for just the one tooth, told me she could not do it for a week, then charged me $71.00!.  In Tijuana, I had that one done, and all the rest for $500US, plus no appointment was necessary.  If you decide to go, though, I would advise phoning ahead, since I may just have caught them at a good time.  That said, business looks slow.  The drug wars and the recession have affected the border crossings.  Instead of having to wait an hour in line to get back the line-up at US customs was maybe 10 minutes both days, compared to 45 minutes and up a year ago.  I notice also that the stained glass shops that Aaron and I visited are now closed.  In Mexico, don't forget to negotiate the price.  What I had done would have been $650+ if I had not asked.  I could have done better, possibly, but who wants to grind the price too much with someone who you have to depend on?

I returned to Laguna Beach for the night.

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
Decembers past: 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
Honey Bee World Forum

A beautiful day here in Laguna. Tomorrow, I am headed home to Alberta and the snow.

Thursday, December 4th, 2008
Decembers past: 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
Honey Bee World Forum

Today, I flew home from LAX.  Sarah drove me up in the van, and we stopped at Target along the way to buy some Christmas gifts for the kids., and a monitor for Jon.  Mike picked me up, I bought groceries in Airdrie, and was home by 9.

I filled up in Airdrie and paid 75c/litre, with a 10c/litre coupon making it 65c.  That is like $1.91/gallon in US dollars and measure.  When I left Laguna, the price there was $1.87

The wind was bitter as I stood filling the tank in the dark.  What a change from Laguna Beach!

   *    *    *    *    *    *    *   

I've decided that BEE-L has not raised the bar nearly high enough to suit me and will quit contributing until I see the abuse ended.  There are polite, but direct and assertive ways to say things and there are deliberately rude ways.  The BEE-L owner does not seem to know the difference.  As I explained to him, if someone serves you the best meal in the world, but you are aware that the meal is poisoned, you must reject it.  He just does not get it, and the tone of the list and the set of people willing to post on the list is affected by what they see there.  By permitting poisonous posts, he immediately gives notice to discreet people to stay away.  they may read, but they won't post, and the lists descends further.

I can create any number of lists like BEE-L, and have been approaching some of the better posters on DEE-L (or is it HOBBEE-L about developing some additional, specialized lists for specific topics.  Protein feeds would be one.  Commercial beekeeping another.

Friday, December 5th, 2008
High 2°C  Low -4°C
Normals: Max: -2°C Min: -13°C

Decembers past: 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
Honey Bee World Forum

We have no snow.  Looks like temps around freezing for the next few days.  I'm here catching up.

BTW, I rediscovered virtual machines while I was in Laguna.  Jon works in VMs all the time.  I've been aware of them, but never gotten around to using them.  He gave me a copy of Virtual PC with an O/S installed and I played with it.  Impressive.  (Vista Home is not in the list of supported systems, but Virtual PC 2007 works fine on my copy). 

So then I created a new VirtualPC machine and tried installing Ubuntu into it.  No luck.  I then googled the problem and people said that VirtualBox is much better for that, and I downloaded it (free) and then set up a machine with Unbuntu 8.04 and then another with 8.10, and then another with Knoppix.5.3.  All worked right out of the gate and found the network without fiddling.  So, now I can run Windows Vista (Host O/S) and several flavours of Linux on the same machine, all at once and Alt+Tab between them!  Kewl!

Here are some discussions about installing Ubuntu in VirtualPC: 1. 2. 3.  4. For VirtualBox, I did not need to do any research -- or even read the manual!

I was thinking I'd install Adeona -- a free Lojack-type software -- but when I went to the site, I see they are having problems.  I d/led anyhow.

I tried installing Debian and the process hung several times so I gave up.  I have limited bandwidth available to me and the repeated downloading of files was going to get expensive.

Saturday, December 6th, 2008
High 1°C  Low -7°C
Normals: Max: -2°C Min: -13°C
Sunrise 0824  Sunset 1624
Decembers past: 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
Honey Bee World Forum

Yesterday was dull and cloudy all day.  I looked out and it appears that the tape is peeling on the quonset, so I'll have to get after that whenever we have a nice day.  Does not look as if this it.  I also have to pull the wraps down onto the hives and put reducers on.  We have a skiff of snow and it is overcast again, today.

I spent the day playing with various Linux distros.  I managed to get the ubuntu versions running full screen, and added both Gnome and KDE versions of Fedora.  Way cool!  They are all amazing, and running in windows on my Vista machine.  They have full network capability and I can Alt+Tab to them.  One problem: I have less than 2 GB left on drive C and on drive D.  I had to move some things onto a pen drive.  I have never known Windows to run with no headroom, but Vista is doing it, and doing it well.  Anyhow, I have to get more storage and soon.  I went looking and there are 500 GB USB hard drives out there and 32 GB USB thumb drives, all for well under $200.  Monday I have to go shopping.  I'm overflowing!

We were to go to the Mill for supper, and got ready to go.  The fog was bad enough that we could not see the neighbour's place, but we got into the car and started off.  On the way out the drive we decided that it was too foggy and gave up.  They said the weather at the Mill, 20 miles away was clear.

Sunday, December 7th, 2008
High -5°C  Low -11°C
Normals: Max: -2°C Min: -13°C
Sunrise 0826  Sunset 1624
Decembers past: 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
Honey Bee World Forum

Looking out the window at 4 AM, the weather has cleared.

We went to Meijers' for Joe's 50th.  We had a good visit.  The food was great.  We did not stay late, though, since the roads around home were pretty bad when we left. They were better when we returned, but who would have known?

Monday, December 8th, 2008
High -5°C  Low -14°C
Normals: Max: -2°C Min: -13°C
Sunrise 0827  Sunset 1624
Decembers past: 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
Honey Bee World Forum

Where did the day go? 

Well, I was planning to do lots of things, but the County guy came to change the water meter and then we got a load of coal.

Plus, I upgraded the Ubuntu 8.04 installation and blew away my settings in the process.  I recovered, of course, but time was wasted.

It's now 4:35, and I have done nothing.  Well, maybe not nothing.  The HoneyBeeWorld list has grown to 15, by invitation, and we had some discussion.  I like to think of HoneyBeeWorld as BEE-L for grownups.  We'll see.  Archives are here

   *    *    *    *    *    *    *   

I'm listening to Winamp.  Wild West Radio is amazing.  I must really be getting old.  I used to think I had some original ideas, and maybe I did, but I cannot believe that the are so many creative and original artists.  This station runs them non-stop. Non-stop!  No duds!

I'm currently running 5 computers and as many operating systems on this one laptop.  Go here to try using virtual machines on your PC.

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
High -2°C  Low -5°C
Normals: Max: -2°C Min: -13°C
Sunrise 0828  Sunset 1624
Decembers past: 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
Honey Bee World Forum

I notice that, as we approach the beginning of winter, that the day length is only shortening here by one minute a day.

We have another foggy, dull day.  I am planning to go to Calgary one of these days, but have been waiting for the roads to be better and for the drivers to get used to the snow.

The HoneyBeeWorld list is getting lots of traffic, and good discussion.  Join up by clicking here.  BEE-L seems to have cleaned up, too, lately and now we are seeing posters who have been in the shadows during the DEE-L era.  I still do not trust the moderation not to permit trolls and abuse, though.  It will take months of peace and light before many of us trust BEE-L again.

   *    *    *    *    *    *    *   

Well, I'm not as clever as I thought.  I had run both partitions full within 2 GB and then compressed the data partition and some sections of the O/S partition (The user data folders).  One of the items I compressed was a 26 GB VirtualPC file containing a SharePoint server, Windows 2000, etc., and I got around 25 GB free.  All was well until I stated the M$ VirtualPC and the Vista decided to expand the file somewhat.  At that point I noticed a few things seizing up and shut down, but not before I managed to corrupt some headers.  I went to the properties for each disk and scheduled a thorough Checkdisk run. The run took forever, and I noticed that there was a lot of rebuilding going on.  So far the machine is back up and seems OK.  Lesson leaned, though -- again.  Never run a disk too close to full, and also be aware that compressing disks can lead to corruption.

Worst case, I do have complete and up to the minute backups at Mozy.com, maintained  constantly by software running in the background, BUT, my plan is to never need them.  This was getting too close.

While Checkdisk was grinding away, I installed VirtualBox on my other laptop and D/Led Damn Small Linux.  I'm amazed at how good it looks.  It is under 50 megs total and designed to run off bootable pen drives, and on old machines.

   *    *    *    *    *    *    *   

BEE-L is having another good day, with reasonably substantial conversation and no abuse apparent.  I have no idea what is arriving at the moderator's inbox, though.  Whatever the incoming may be, the output looks good.  Good enough to tempt me to post there again, but I know better.  I set myself a rule that I would not post until one month after I notice a troll or abusive post, so we have almost a month to go.