Vancouver has what I refer to as parking gestapo. They must be paid on commission and love special events and holidays or what appear to be holidays. They have no mercy and prey on visitors to the city who have not witnessed their efficiency in handing out tickets. Parking and stopping has me baffled. Are you parked when you are still in your car? Can you get a ticket if you are stopped in a no parking zone and are still in the vehicle? Are you parked when you place your vehicle in park? Are you stopped in a no stopping zone if your vehicle is still in drive and you are stopped. I apparently committed this violation and was dissed by the parking officer for stopping in a no stopping zone. I stopped the car in front of me was stopped. I suppose I could have hit the car and pushed it out of the way. Then again, what happens as you proceed down the street and traffic is stop and go. Are you then committing a violation? Apparently you are if you let someone out of the vehicle when traffic forces you to stop.
The parking gestapo have the ultimate weapon, the ticket, which if not paid will eventually bite you in the ass when it comes time to renew your ownership. You can always go to court and plead your case but that involves your time and gets the parking gestapo off the street into some place warm, and they probably get court costs for attending.
And buses, with the aggressive drivers honking away and yelling at you if you do not yield immediately when they throw on their turn signal to switch into your lane. I can understand yielding if you are behind the bus looking at the stupid little yield sign right at your eye level, but I do not see why I have to throw the brakes on if I am at the bus's mid point and he/she starts infringing on my lane.
Vancouver pedestrians seem to have a hate on for drivers. There has to be a little give and take between drivers and pedestrians and if everyone respects 'walk'/ 'don't walk' signs all is good. Just don't try to turn into the lane to my parking garage when the subway train has just let out a hundred pedestrians who are scurrying home to their favorite libation.
And parking garages ... I park on P5 and round and round I go. To make matters worse, parking garages in Vancouver spray the concrete floors with a substance that makes your tires squeal like banshees if you go into a turn at over 5 kph. I have learned to keep the windows closed and the tunes up :-) At lest the pedestrians can hear me coming.
Going around and around reminds me of the Triumph TR4A that I owned while I was attending Carleton University. The starter went on the vehicle (flashy red sports car) and of course, being a poor student, I did not have the funds to replace it. I always had to make sure I parked on a hill so I could push start the car, by pushing it, jumping in it, and then popping the clutch. Carleton had a 10 floor parking garage and each day I would arrive and travel to the tenth floor to park. Upon finishing my classes, I had ample time to bump start my car by pushing it down the spiral ramp that I conveniently parked beside upon my arrival. Round and round I went for 4 months until I saved the funds up for a rebuilt starter.
I have seen sun over the last 3 days and the weekend promises more sun and a high of 10 degrees. It should be a great weekend and I wish the same for you, wherever you are. I just may go for a drive in the country, where there are no pedestrians and no parking gestapo to contend with ... just the open road and great vistas ... wish I had my motorcycle with me :-)
Take care, TTYL,
Jim
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Beautiful Sunny Day
Well someone upstairs was listening and I am enjoying a beautiful sunny day in Vancouver. I must get out and go for a long walk while it is daylight and the sun is shining. The temperature is a balmy (well for Canada in wintertime :-) 5 degrees.
I am writing this connected up to my Samsung Note 2, using it as a WiFi hotspot. I have LTE through Rogers and when I ran SpeedTest from my laptop, I got download speeds of 10 MBS and upload of 1.5 MBS which is faster that I get with my Telus high speed in my apartment.
However, I get much faster speeds on my Note 2 and Rogers dumbs it down so you don't use it at home with your whole family connected to it. All in all, it is a great solution and I could lose my Telus connection, but it is included in my rent so I will keep it. I have a 3 Gig data plan and I don't seem to go over it, as yet :-)
If you have not had a chance to play with a Samsung Note 2 you are really missing out on something. With a quad processor, 1200 by 800 screen, 5.5" display and an LTE data plan, it really is the internet anywhere. All of a sudden all those mapping apps and the internet becomes way more than usable, almost indispensable.
The only downside to my Note 2 is that it runs 4.1 version of the OS and does not support flash. For those of you who thinks flash is going away anytime soon, try browsing the internet without Flash and see all those sites that display nothing but an error message stating you do not have flash loaded. THANK YOU Steve Jobs for scuttling the only ubiquitous run time that ran everywhere. I wonder what adobe wanted so badly from Apple that they agree to abandon Flash on Mobile devices. My Note 2 is way more powerful than computers I was using 7-8 years ago that ran Flash with no problem.
Jobs just saw Adobe as too big a competitor to Apple and it's propitiatory App Store. BTW, having a hundred thousand apps in an App Store is a waste of time when 90% of them are useless or simply, the same app written 100 times. How many angry bird games do you really need and don't you have something better to do with your time?
Well enough educating of the masses ... I have done my bit for today ... TTYL,
Jim
I am writing this connected up to my Samsung Note 2, using it as a WiFi hotspot. I have LTE through Rogers and when I ran SpeedTest from my laptop, I got download speeds of 10 MBS and upload of 1.5 MBS which is faster that I get with my Telus high speed in my apartment.
However, I get much faster speeds on my Note 2 and Rogers dumbs it down so you don't use it at home with your whole family connected to it. All in all, it is a great solution and I could lose my Telus connection, but it is included in my rent so I will keep it. I have a 3 Gig data plan and I don't seem to go over it, as yet :-)
If you have not had a chance to play with a Samsung Note 2 you are really missing out on something. With a quad processor, 1200 by 800 screen, 5.5" display and an LTE data plan, it really is the internet anywhere. All of a sudden all those mapping apps and the internet becomes way more than usable, almost indispensable.
The only downside to my Note 2 is that it runs 4.1 version of the OS and does not support flash. For those of you who thinks flash is going away anytime soon, try browsing the internet without Flash and see all those sites that display nothing but an error message stating you do not have flash loaded. THANK YOU Steve Jobs for scuttling the only ubiquitous run time that ran everywhere. I wonder what adobe wanted so badly from Apple that they agree to abandon Flash on Mobile devices. My Note 2 is way more powerful than computers I was using 7-8 years ago that ran Flash with no problem.
Jobs just saw Adobe as too big a competitor to Apple and it's propitiatory App Store. BTW, having a hundred thousand apps in an App Store is a waste of time when 90% of them are useless or simply, the same app written 100 times. How many angry bird games do you really need and don't you have something better to do with your time?
Well enough educating of the masses ... I have done my bit for today ... TTYL,
Jim
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Gray (Grey) Day
No matter how you spell it, we do get a lot of gray days here in not-so-sunny Vancouver. I think I am suffering from SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Or perhaps I am just missing sunny Thailand and all of my friends there. I think I have seen the sun 3 times since I arrived back in Canada on Dec. 3rd. Ottawa is experiencing a hard winter with lots of snow so perhaps it is a trade off I will have to live with.
My son Jordan called me yesterday and chatted for a while. He has decided to finish off his year teaching contract in Sweden and return home to Canada and take a year off from teaching to reevaluate what he wants to do with his life. That is probably a good thing as he jumped right from high school to 4 years of university and then a year at the faculty of education and then jumped right into a job teaching overseas in Sweden. I agree he needs a break and I hope he enjoys it. maybe we will find time to circumnavigate Canada and the States on coastal highway #1 as we always planned to do. At the very least we should head off to Key West in the Florida Keys.
Dreaming aside, I do a little programming, head to the gym everyday, read a little, and think about what I want to do with the rest of my life. Every now again I get the itch to coach some basketball so that may be in my future at some point. I also need do do some serious beach time on my next trip to Thailand. I have too much money tied up in apartments and when those leases are up it will be time to explore a little more of the world. Who knows, I may end up couch surfing.
I also get the urge every now and again to take some university courses. It would be interesting to take a computer programming course or two just to see what they are teaching these days.
My daughter Jaime is still undecided about next year. She is currently teaching in Malaysia and next year would be her third in Malaysia which is one more year than I was willing to take on. I still think she would love to head off to Australia or New Zealand.
My divorce is still held up by Shelley finding reason after reason to not sign the papers even though it is an even 50/50 split. She seems to like spending money on lawyers and is on her second lawyer.
My male friends seem to be falling apart. Steve had his wheels aligned via a hip replacement. John is also due for the same in Thailand. Brent needed a shunt to open up an artery. Larry seems to be doing okay now that he finally has his big screen television. I think I manage to avoid those kind of things by visiting the gym as much as possible. My dad used to kid me that I would wear my body out but that does not seem to be the case.
Linda, a friend in Bangkok is thinking about joining the yacht club and is an avid sailor. I am hoping I can join her and finally learn to see. Must be the pirate in me or my grandfather's genes who used to be the captain of a sailing vessel. I think I could do a fairly good Johnny Depp imitation with the beads in the hair and beard.
Well yo ho, ho and a bottle of rum ... TTYL,
Jim
My son Jordan called me yesterday and chatted for a while. He has decided to finish off his year teaching contract in Sweden and return home to Canada and take a year off from teaching to reevaluate what he wants to do with his life. That is probably a good thing as he jumped right from high school to 4 years of university and then a year at the faculty of education and then jumped right into a job teaching overseas in Sweden. I agree he needs a break and I hope he enjoys it. maybe we will find time to circumnavigate Canada and the States on coastal highway #1 as we always planned to do. At the very least we should head off to Key West in the Florida Keys.
Dreaming aside, I do a little programming, head to the gym everyday, read a little, and think about what I want to do with the rest of my life. Every now again I get the itch to coach some basketball so that may be in my future at some point. I also need do do some serious beach time on my next trip to Thailand. I have too much money tied up in apartments and when those leases are up it will be time to explore a little more of the world. Who knows, I may end up couch surfing.
I also get the urge every now and again to take some university courses. It would be interesting to take a computer programming course or two just to see what they are teaching these days.
My daughter Jaime is still undecided about next year. She is currently teaching in Malaysia and next year would be her third in Malaysia which is one more year than I was willing to take on. I still think she would love to head off to Australia or New Zealand.
My divorce is still held up by Shelley finding reason after reason to not sign the papers even though it is an even 50/50 split. She seems to like spending money on lawyers and is on her second lawyer.
My male friends seem to be falling apart. Steve had his wheels aligned via a hip replacement. John is also due for the same in Thailand. Brent needed a shunt to open up an artery. Larry seems to be doing okay now that he finally has his big screen television. I think I manage to avoid those kind of things by visiting the gym as much as possible. My dad used to kid me that I would wear my body out but that does not seem to be the case.
Linda, a friend in Bangkok is thinking about joining the yacht club and is an avid sailor. I am hoping I can join her and finally learn to see. Must be the pirate in me or my grandfather's genes who used to be the captain of a sailing vessel. I think I could do a fairly good Johnny Depp imitation with the beads in the hair and beard.
Well yo ho, ho and a bottle of rum ... TTYL,
Jim
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)