Dog Gone Motorcycle!

Click pic to enlarge

On our way to Sarnia today on Highway 402 a motorcycle passed us. The passenger was enjoying the ride on a beautiful warm day as we followed it for over half an hour.
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Scaaaaarry Stuff!!!

What will the US voters do? Does it worry you as much as me? The world waits. We'll find out Tuesday.
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Nature's Way of Pruning - Brutal!

In the light of day, Wendy goes out to shake the heavy snow from the branches.

Click on a picture to enlarge.

A drive around the neighborhood shows a lot of vegetation down.

All in all we fared pretty well through the first storm of the season. Of course the damage to the trees was mostly because the leaves had not yet fell off. Each tree had tons of snow weighting it down.

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At 4am a tree branch weighs down the main power line to our house.

Click to expand the pictures.

Time exposure photos of a snowstorm in the night.

Snow in October is not completely unusual, but this year the leaves have stayed on the trees much longer than normal. Add a heavy snowfall and the huge weight on the branches can wreak havoc, Now, throw in some wind and lightning and you can guarantee that you’ll see lots of trees down. The problem is that they pull the electric power, telephone and cable lines down with them. Our house has two phone lines and as I type this at 5am one of the lines is dead. We have turned up the furnace a bit to have some reserve heat if it stops. Several branches have already fallen on our electric lines that go from the house to the pole on the street but my son Tim and I have managed to lift them down to relieve the strain on the wires. We have lots of reserve firewood and the gas stove will still cook a roast, so I guess we’re OK.
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We're Changing Internet Provider and Email Address

The Internet - Wikipedia

After many years as a “Loyal Rogers Cable Customer”; having taken on the chin, their on-going price increases, service decreases, and more recently, the crowning touch; a 60 gig/month download cap. This 60 gig cap is Rogers way of protecting their jealously guarded movie empire. In the future, as TV and Cable and Internet technologies merge, more and more movies are going to be available on line. Since a full length DVD movie will use most if not all of the 60 gigs, Rogers needs to charge for it or lose one of its largest revenue sources – movies. Go over the cap and pay $2/gig up to an extra $25/month. A sneaky way to put the price up.

Rogers would like you to think that they and Bell have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want. We are switching to a DSL line. DSL Internet comes in on the phone lines similar to Bell, but is provided by a smaller, more competitive provider. Since de-regulation, years ago, Bell can do nothing to stop this new competition. Check out the one we’ll be using. It’s a smaller DSL service provider in Chatham, Ontario. (DSL Basic Internet Unlimited $24.95) There are hundreds like this in every country.

Rogers also admits to “traffic shaping” which throttles back the speed on things it decides it doesn’t want you to do (like movies) and drives up costs for some features. In fairness to Rogers, when use is continuous, as for file sharing or Internet radio or streaming video like YouTube, a few users who use the connection at high rates for hours at a time may seriously impair the service of others. Rogers’ problem is that the concept is more relevant in cable internet where both the core network and the access network are shared, than in DSL where the core network is shared but the access network is not.

This new DSL service will hopefully allow us better service, unlimited downloading and the restoration of the newsgroups (which Rogers unceremoniously discontinued a year or two ago). The new service should provide equivalent speed and will cost about half what we pay to Rogers. (not even counting the 60+ gig cap $25 extra) Plus you can buy the modem (I found mine on-line for $49.99) instead of being forced to pay Rogers $3 a month forever. Better service at less than half the price – what are you waiting for?

All this means our email address must change. Since there is a 30 day notice period to Rogers, the old email will overlap with the new one for the next month, terminating November 23. The blog will remain at www.timandwen.blogspot.com

To limit SPAM, I don't want to publish it on the Web but our new email address will be sent to everyone in my address book in the next few days.
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Pete and Donna Visit for a Reenactment at Fanshawe

We arrived around noon, so Wendy and I stopped by the café for the brunch. A rustic, all you can eat meal included robust stews, soups and deserts. All for $10. ea.The weather again cooperated as we drove out to Fanshawe Park and the Pioneer Village Our good cruising friends Pete and Donna from Orillia were back again this year for a reenactment. It’s a three day affair (Fri., Sat., and Sun.) Check out the blog entry for last year!

This old nineteenth century village is really worth the visit. There is lots to see even when the reenactment is not there. As we were wandering around the village, a “skirmish” ensued and we saw Pete dressed as a US militia man shooting back at some of our Canadian guys. Later, back at the US encampment, Donna showed us around. It was good to see them again.

We lucked out this year with Pete and Donna's visit to the condo in August and we will be meeting them again next month as we depart on a 14 day cruise out of Fort Lauderdale on the Maasdam November 7th.

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