“We can fake the oath!”
February 5, 2012
“We can fake the _____!” has become the hottest catchphrase in journalism since CP reporter Jennifer Ditchburn broke the story about the faked citizenship ceremony on October 19th, 2011 at Sun TV in Toronto. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney blamed a middle level bureaucrat for the fiasco, so for your amusement I decided to fake an excerpt from the autobiography of the scapegoat, Tracie LeBlanc.
Tracie’s, my handbag salon, used to be a T-shirt shop in the basement of the Eaton Centre. It’s tough starting out in retail, but if the business fails it’s because of what I did or didn’t do, not because The Minister told Raylene to find a scapegoat for last October’s foul-up at Sun TV.
I was working at Citizenship and Immigration on a short-term contract. In the job interview I told them that the character in literature which had the most influence on me was Winston Smith in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four. I loved the way that each day Winston had his hand on the pulse of the nation, and was able to contribute using his intelligence and imagination, even within the confines of a bureaucracy. Both of my interviewers smiled when I mentioned Comrade Ogilvie, the heroic character Winston completely made up to fill a news gap.
Then two weeks later a voice called and asked me to start at 400 University Avenue, where I was escorted to a fourth-floor cubicle not unlike the one Winston occupied in the first chapters of Orwell’s novel.
I was to be an acting senior communications advisor. My job was to sign letters and press releases cranked out by The Minister and many levels of management above me. The letters were already written by the time they got to my inbox, but it was my name, Tracie LeBlanc, that was the signature on the final copy.
Then came the show at the Sun TV studio at 25 Ontario Street. The Minister wanted a Citizenship Week ceremony on a tame network and Sun TV was happy to oblige.
Someone had to call new Canadians and ask them to come to the studio. Margaret asked me to round up ten bodies and get them in front of a camera on Wednesday, October 19th at 2:00 p.m. She sent along a list of 3000 names and phone numbers.
Nobody answered during working hours. The machines contained messages in languages I couldn’t understand. When I stayed late to call, I’d get a couple of words out and then somebody would swear at me for interrupting their supper hour. Whatever happened to phone manners?
But on Saturday morning I did manage to nab one sweet Pakistani woman who was very polite to me. She confided that she was a stay-at-home mother and would only be able to attend the ceremony on a Wednesday if she could bring her son and daughter along. I assured her that would be just fine.
A dozen others agreed to come, but they didn’t sound serious about it. I put them down as possibles, and warned Margaret that we might have a problem with numbers because most new Canadians who would talk to me couldn’t take time off work.
As a backup I slipped over to the Eaton Centre, found a T-shirt store having a going-out-of-business sale, and had the guy print me ten, extra-large T-shirts. He only had white left, so I took them.
As a student I had learned that there are two things that motivate everybody: free food and free clothes. I figured if I couldn’t get enough new Canadians into the studio, I could nab a few people in the office with T-shirts and Subway coupons.
At ten o’clock Wednesday morning I made like a T-shirt cannon, tossing shirts over the cubicles to anyone who looked up. “Does this mean I have to become a Canadian citizen again?” Fred yelled.
“That’s what it says. I’ll likely only need you as a spectator, but I’ll buy lunch, and you might get on camera if nobody shows up.” More arms went up.
As I had feared, only the nice Pakistani lady and her two kids showed up. Seven of my crew extended the line in front of the camera. The other three mugged behind the glass and took pictures for the office bulletin board.
My bosses were effusive in their praise for my “quick thinking.” “Thanks for the feed back and the quick fix to bring CIC staff,” wrote Raylene Baker. Senior management had noticed me!
The whole thing would have been just an amusing incident if not for Jennifer Ditchburn. Using a freedom of information chit she nabbed the emails which had been flowing back and forth from The Minister to our office and to Sun TV. When she put together the account of my T-shirts and the bogus photo-op, it hit the fan.
By then I was well out of it. My contract hadn’t been renewed because of the upcoming federal budget. If I do another contract maybe it will be in the Prime Minister’s Office. Those guys are no more qualified than I am, they make a lot of money, and they get to have the real fun.
Ice!!!
January 27, 2012
Even sanders occasionally need a sander.
Ice is so central to our experience in Eastern Ontario that we don’t think about it much. It’s just there, an underlying challenge and occasionally a threat, until it erupts into a major problem the way it did last week.
The eerie part of the recent ice storm is how similar the weather was to many days before it. Every time the thermometer rises and clouds form, we come under the gun. But most times the shot misses, because weather is not the malevolent force we see on American television. No, Mother Nature in Canada just doesn’t give a damn, so it’s up to us to adapt.
Since 2001 our culture has elevated the firefighter to heroic status, and deservedly so. But how about the snowplow driver who day in and day out goes before us, quietly and invisibly battling the most dangerous thing we face in our lives, the icy road? For the most part we curse the guy for slowing us down, or curse him for not showing up, or for abrading our paint and windshields if we get stuck behind him in traffic. But that driver keeps us alive.
I met one of these invisible men last Friday when we woke to the sound of shouting and the sight of a rotating blue light stopped in the middle of Young’s Hill.
Speaking of ice, the dog fell flat when she stepped out the door. Then she scratched her way back up to safety and slipped past me into the safety of the living room.
You know how after you’ve finally gotten stopped on a difficult ski run a little voice in you asks for a rope or railing to help you down to the foot of the hill? Well that little voice was whimpering pretty loudly as I prepared to face the two-foot drop over twenty feet to the driveway. I picked up the pail of sand I am normally too proud to use. A sprinkle before each step took me to flat land.
But on the driveway the footing didn’t improve. Two days earlier I had spread a trailer-load of salted sand from the quarry because Frank the fuel guy called and told me that if we wanted oil, he needed sand. Oil trucks do not have sophisticated winter tires, and if they start to slide they’re in big trouble. The new layer of ice completely covered that sand, even though I could see every grain through the transparent covering. Yikes!
Normally on icy days I slip and slide over to the Ranger, fire it up and rely upon its traction to move me around. But I wasn’t sure even it would make it back up the lane today. I’d have to walk out first.
So I grabbed a larger pail of sand, wrapped an arm around it, and gritted my way out 500 feet of sloping driveway. I was sure that the centre-bare section half-way down would be good walking once I got to it. Nearly broke my neck. Just because you can see gravel through the ice doesn’t mean you can walk on it.
Quite a while later I fetched up at the scene of the confusion on the hill. A tow truck with a car on its bed was nosed up behind the county snowplow, which seemed to be holding itself in place on the hill by one wheel carefully planted in the right hand ditch. The rig sat about two feet up the slope from the hydro pole which supplies our house.
The driver, Steve Halladay, explained to me that his truck’s sanding wheel spreads grit only on the left side so as to cover both lanes of the road. But the truck’s drive wheels are on the passenger side, so in some situations the snowplow’s as badly off as any other vehicle.
His overloaded rig had run out of traction on the steep part of the hill and subsided into the ditch. Steve said he could easily back out, but he was concerned that the plow would hit the hydro pole if he didn’t have a better grip on the ice.
We heard a roar. A small township truck with a sander on the back came screaming up Young’s Hill Road from Forfar – in reverse. I couldn’t believe how fast a GM pickup with a determined operator can go backwards. The unseen driver pulled up tight to the car hauler, then backed into our driveway to make a path to allow the wrecker to turn around.
After a conference with Steve, the rescuer decided to sand his way up over the hill, spreading enough grit to get the plow out of trouble and enable the wrecker to free two cars in the ditch on the Hwy. 15 side. He backed up the steep slope, passing close enough to the larger truck to make Steve hold his breath, then blasted on over the hill and out of sight.
Steve backed out onto the gritty surface, put the sanding disk in gear, and continued his morning’s work.
A few hours later a small dump of soggy snow stuck to the ice and the crisis was over.
Notes from the workshop
January 22, 2012
All fall I’ve scrambled to get things done before the snow came. This has left a workshop crammed with firewood and the tools shoved aside to provide space for ice-covered vehicles. Bags of hardware for various small tasks cluttered every horizontal surface in the shop.
But I hadn’t done enough. The storm last week left snow banks all the way out the lane. Friday I realized that if the wind drifted the driveway full, the tractor couldn’t push it clear with the loader. I’d have to use the snowblower, currently forgotten below the barn in an unplowed area.
The tractor wasn’t about to make it back up the slope to the driveway with the snowblower hanging from the loader, so after a few tries I unchained the implement and tried to hitch it up in the snow where it landed.
Larger and smaller tractors are easy to connect to three-point-hitch implements, but the 35 hp TAFE lacks the extendable hitches of more sophisticated machines, yet is too heavy to push around. Hitch-ups are a big pain, and this one was worse than most. I must learn not to forget the snowblower at the bottom of a hill.
The problem with a fall spent cutting and splitting firewood for winter was that the lack of indoor projects had left the shop stove without any kindling wood. Out of necessity I turned to a jug of used crankcase oil to start my fires. Did you know that synthetic oil will barely burn?
Bemused by the fireproof oil, I posted a question on TractorByNet.com. Responses agreed that synthetic oils have a very high fuming point, so they are slow to ignite. One guy said owners of used-oil furnaces don’t like synthetic.
Locked in the wood-stove loop, I wasn’t getting anything done in the shop. It came down to Martin to clear the helmets, mitts and hardware off the bench with another of his madcap projects. He emailed me a diagram for an oyster shucking board midweek, then came along with Roz and Charlie on Saturday to build it while they finished the paint in the new garage.
Imagine a sturdy cutting board with a strong ledge on the bottom to butt against a counter top, and another shaped lip against which to jam an oyster. The area below the oyster is hollowed out to provide a convenient place to plunk the victim. While the board would face rough use from abrasive oyster shells, it should look good, as most of its time in Kingston it would be a kitchen decoration.
We settled on a thick cherry board with walnut cross-pieces and pinned mortises. Martin had a great time with the mortiser built long ago by the Cawley brothers in Westport, then found how versatile a band saw can be for cutting large tenons. By the time he had finished the second lip to hold the oysters (he discovered curved, angle cuts on the band saw) the completed board looked nothing like the sketch, but we both figured it would work.
It turned out Martin had a reason to build the board at this time. This week he defended his Ph.D. thesis in biology at Queen’s and is now Dr. Martin Mallet. In celebration his father sent him a case of fresh oysters from the family seafood operation in New Brunswick. Unfortunately the package disappeared from the front step of their home on Sydenham Street soon after the courier dropped it off. ARGH!
Anyway, the workshop had been jolted back into operation and I’d noticed my mother using an unsightly metal stand to hold her telephone. I found a nicely figured walnut board and a likely piece of plank to build her a phone table. The woodworking tools slid back into place. The only problem was the woodpile encroaching on the tenon cutter, so I hauled enough blocks out of the way to allow it to function.
Motors sang and sawdust filled the air. It was fun building the little table. Mortises and tenons cut beautifully in black walnut. It truly is the king of furniture woods.
Everything went fine until the sanding stage. Turns out I am running out of pads for the random orbital sander. It’s hard to go from 50 grit to 220, even with black walnut.
With the outside work as complete as it’s going to get until the snow goes, it’s time to stock up on sandpaper and make sawdust in the shop for the rest of the winter. It isn’t good to run out of scrap for kindling wood.
Lessons from another Friday 13th
January 13, 2012
If you have read many of these posts you will be aware of my deep antipathy toward Friday 13th. It’s not that I am normally superstitious, but too many bizarre and horrible things have happened to me on the date. So I go into each of these days with considerable apprehension and a marked reluctance to take chances, not that it does any good.
It all started on Friday, April 13, 1971 when I wrote two final examinations at Queen’s. My Shakespeare prof had warned us: “Be sure that you have read all of the plays.” She wasn’t kidding; she had set a compulsory 45 mark question on three plays I hadn’t read.
The craziest episode had to be the time a neighbour’s 1986 Ford Bronco slipped out of park, rolled down Church Street in Smiths Falls, through the George Street intersection, and sideswiped my unsuspecting 4Runner before wrapping itself around a pole. This all happened during my morning shower on another Friday 13th. What’s even stranger, the insurance underwriter classified the accident as an animal collision as there was a Bronco involved.
So today when it dropped six inches of slush on top of an inch of new ice, I figured it was just business as usual for a Friday 13th. My tractor normally does a good job on snow with its loader. I set the bucket to automatic leveler and run down the lane at a good pace, cross the road and stop over the opposing ditch, where I dump the snow and back down the hill to turn around and return for another run.
But the paved road on Young’s Hill was far too slippery for such antics today. I ran out of momentum or stopped early out of caution most runs, leaving mountains of slush blocking the lane. The one time I went over to the opposing ditch I had no traction to back out, so was forced to lever the tractor backwards with the loader while three trucks waited impatiently for me to get out of the way. This was obviously not the way to clean the driveway on a Friday the 13th, so I spent the afternoon developing new tactics to do a ten-minute job. My timid efforts with the tractor eventually relocated the slush mountains without catastrophe. Fine.
Then came the little snow blower for detail work around the garages and sidewalks. It wouldn’t start. I dumped the gas and poured in new, but it still wouldn’t go. But that was a result of forgotten fuel stabilizer, not the act of a perverse fate.
So I backed my truck out through a snowbank and drove down to Forfar to get the mail. The faint rattle in the front suspension had suddenly become a lot more noticeable. Perhaps I should have a look. I dropped a piece of plywood on the ground and crawled under. I started at the gas tank and worked forward. Everything seemed solid. The shocks and ball joints were fine. Then something moved when I reached past the shocks and wiggled.
The brake caliper I replaced three weeks ago had come loose and was hanging by one bolt! Yikes! Perhaps those bolts don’t need to be protected with anti-seize compound like wheel nuts and spark plugs. Maybe it’s Lock-Tite that goes on them. Maybe I didn’t tighten them enough. Anyway, this bizarre and dangerous fail met all of the criteria of a Friday 13th disaster, so I was able to relax for the rest of the day. My truck certainly wasn’t going anywhere without a new bolt.
Out of Friday’s confusion I have learned three lessons:
1. Modern gasoline with its high methanol content deteriorates quickly if left sitting in an engine. When I took the snowblower’s carburetor apart, internal parts were crusted with a green, crystalline material unlike anything I had seen before. It’s not like the ring of varnish which used to form around abandoned gas cans. Without stabilizer I can’t see a small gas engine surviving long in storage if there’s any fuel left in it.
2. It takes more than a hoist and set of air wrenches to make a mechanic. Those caliper bolts needed to be torqued to 90 foot-pounds. We have to get Internet service in the garage.
3. My tractor’s two previous owners traded it in at the same dealership on the same 4WD model. After last Friday that doesn’t seem like a bad idea.
Also check out:
https://rodcroskery.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/the-mysterious-case-of-the-runaway-bronco/
What women want
January 8, 2012
Our English springer spaniel Moody Blue died three years ago after a long decline. Bet insisted each time I asked that she just wasn’t ready for another dog.
And then last week Roz sent Bet a card in which she mentioned the fun Charlie had had over New Year’s weekend in Lakefield playing with their host’s spaniel, Loki. Apparently the enjoyment was mutual. Bet read this comment aloud to me: “Did you put her up to this?”
You’ll never know what Bet wants by asking her. Sensing the moment, I dropped an email to Blue’s breeder, Karmadi English Springer Spaniels in Maberly. Owner Diane Herns wrote back that she had one remaining female puppy because of an unexpected allergy in her intended family. Barby would be ready to go this weekend.
Looking for another Moody Blue, I asked if she had an older dog.
She told me that Time, a fine yearling, is part her breeding stock, but could go out to a home between whelping sessions. She suggested we come to have a look.
Bet’s response to this reflected her passionate ambivalence: “I can’t come right now because I have to feed these people,” referring to the crew of Martin, Roz and Charlie painting the interior of the new garage. In a call to Diane we settled upon Sunday morning for a visit.
“You know that if I look into the face of a spaniel puppy, I’ll be hooked. I have no resistance whatever. I just melt.”
Then I came down with the flu. This was the first such session since my retirement six years ago, and it came as quite a shock to the system. Kept awake by the disruption through the rest of the night, Bet scrolled on her iPad through dozens of photos of Diane’s dogs, increasingly wondering if she was up to the six months of interrupted sleeps it would take to house-train a puppy.
By Sunday morning I had recovered enough to make the drive up to Hwy 7. When we arrived Barby was part of a joyful tangle of 10-week-old spaniels in a playpen. She was warm, cuddly, and clean. Her antics with a plastic bone kept us in stitches while Diane finished grooming Time. Then we met the yearling. Time is a fine specimen of an English springer, particularly happy when in the company of a big bunch of puppies. But it became immediately obvious to us that she had bonded strongly with Diane. Time, to my mind, was a one-woman dog.
At length Diane mentioned that she also had Cagney, a retired show dog (like Blue), whose main drawback was her age, 8 ½ years. She further mentioned that Cagney doesn’t like other dogs, and could use a home for her declining years well away from other animals. While Bet cuddled with the puppy I asked to meet the old dog.
Cagney turned out to be a beautiful, dignified specimen in the peak of condition who looked as though she would love to have a new home away from the kennel. Same as Blue. We took her for a walk.
She definitely knows which buttons to push on a human, does our Cagney. In the agility test she hopped neatly into the Lexus and perched on the back seat, awaiting instructions. While well trained, she showed herself quite human in her delight with the smells and unexpected freedom of a winter walk outside. She’s no robot.
What chance did a puppy have against a classy, experienced lady like this?
Once home, following the house tour and the food dish location, she proved quite amusing. Cagney’s a talker when she feels like it. Her woofs of delight and happy exploration of her new house added great cheer to the household.
Though bred and trained for the bench for her whole life, on the first walk in a field Cagney had a whale of a time bounding around her new territory. She flounced around, exuberance in every leap. Breeding kicked in each time she reached the end of shotgun range, and she would quarter to left or right and loop back to us.
Of course no clump of hay or brush could go unexamined.
But she reminded us most of Blue whenever a camera came out. True to her show dog heritage she played naturally to the photographer, and concluded her first photo shoot with little yelps of pleasure. What a ham. When posed between us on the Ranger she suddenly decided it was time for affection, and planted a big kiss on my face as Charlie moved in for a closeup.
Bet read this draft over, handed me back the computer and said, “While sitting there this afternoon reading with Cagney at my feet, I thought: ‘The house feels more like a home now.’”
I guess both ladies got what they wanted.
THE MORNING AFTER (UPDATE):
Morning is much livelier here now. As I stumbled down in the dark for coffee, a white shadow awaited me on the mat at the foot of the stairs. She bounded around, emitting little yelps and barks, but quietly. No time for a leash. She looked out the lane at what must have been a coyote, then headed out into the field to do her business. Happy loops, enjoying her freedom, but not for long, because hunger beckoned.
Back from her run her thoughts were only on breakfast, which she encouraged with a series of relatively quiet howls. Hoovered the kibble. Affection time. Upstairs to greet Bet, still faking sleep. Back down to me. Then she fell asleep beside me on the floor when I opened my computer.
A dog owner’s life.
How to build your own garage door
January 2, 2012
Note:
There’ve been several hits on this blog on the subject listed above, so I decided to put up a page dealing with the process. A copy of the text lies below, but it will fall off the edge of the posts after a month or so. A permanent copy is up as a page to be found in the list down the right hand side of the page. One of these days I have find a way to organize the posts. This one is number 367, and I confess I often use Google to find things on the site.
Rod
I bought the first door, a 10′ wide by 7′ high, “stain grade, mahogany” raised-panel model. It was in storage in a builder’s locker after a mixup in plans for a new house.
The “mahogany” was the meranti panels, 1″ material. The remainder of the door turned out to be western hemlock. To discover this I called the builder, Stewart Garage Doors, then an obscure factory in Toronto where I spoke to the subcontractor: “We use hemlock because it’s strong, holds fasteners, and it resists rot well.”
The hardware had come with the door, and it was complete, except for the weather stripping, which was advertised but not available at the time of the sale. That was a $150. mistake.
I spent two weeks of evenings staining the door with an off-white latex stain, the current state-of-the-art product from a home centre. It was expensive, but good enough that I used it for the siding on the garage and the next garage door, as well.
Fitted with a cheap Sears opener, this door has served very well in the workshop. To my relief, splashes from the eaves haven’t seemed to bother the door thus far. The stain seems to be worth the money.
For my son’s taller garage I resolved to build a copy of the door (only 9′ high), so I ordered 1 3/4″ stile-and-rail cutters for my shaper which would provide the appropriate pattern for rails and stiles. I already had a good cove cutter for the raised panels. Ordering from Freud was a comedy of errors. After three tries from different vendors, each of which mysteriously disappeared from everyone’s records, a Freud employee rather arrogantly suggested that online vendors aren’t very smart. For example, a part named EU-264 must be typed “EU-264″ and not “EU 264″. I privately thought that perhaps it was the Freud programmer who wasn’t the sharpest chisel in the drawer, but at length I received my cutters.
https://picasaweb.google.com/106258965296428632652/BuildingGarageII#5663056998575824386
A pile of 1″ walnut had sat outside too long, so I planed it up and trimmed the good parts out of the rather scrubby boards to make twenty four, 26 X 14″ panels. To save time at the gluing stage I tongue-and-grooved the parts, then just clamped them together with a bit of Gorilla Glue. Before cutting the panels to final dimensions I ran them through my double drum sander to produce a consistent texture for staining. Then came the coves. The heavy cut required three passes per surface, but I ended up with 7/8″ boards with deep coves cut entirely on the front side (leaving the back surface flush) with just under 1/4″ to fit the stiles and rails. This was the hardest my old Poitras/General 3/4″ shaper with its small power feeder had worked in a long time. I gave it a new set of bearings soon after.
Earlier in the year I had bought locally 220 bd ft. of eastern hemlock 2 X 6″ planks about 11′ long to air dry for the rails and stiles. After planing the stock I found six months in the sun hadn’t dried it well enough, so I put it into the greenhouse for a month to reduce the moisture content.
I quickly discovered that the best hemlock is good wood. The rest is useless for garage door building as it tends to split and shake unexpectedly. It will twist, too, though this might have been because of a lack of seasoning. Another time I would order double the amount the plan calls for. The wood is cheap and available; it just needs sorting.
Planed to 1 3/4″, the hemlock ripped and machined very well. For example I was able to cut the end-grain pattern for the stiles freehand, using only the fence as a guide. This is not a trick for the uninitiated, but the cutters were sharp and hemlock machines very well across the end grain. Knots tend to be hard, but workable.
I remembered to cut a 5/16″ rabbet into each of the rails to allow for overlap with the door sections above and below. Be careful at this stage: top and bottom sections are not the same.
With limited space in my shop I found the easiest way to assemble the six, 10 foot door sections was to clamp one rail in my bench vice and then assemble the section above that rail, gluing as I went. (I have built a lot of doors over the last few years, so this went quite easily.)
I noticed that the professionally-built door is only 1 3/8″ thick, but has tenons and rabbets which extend an extra 1/4″ beyond the face of the rails and stiles. My amateur cutters left me with no extra tenon, so I hedged my bets with one #10, 6″ Robertson screw carefully driven through the rail into the end of each stile.
Some shakes or splits in the frames threatened to degrade the quality of the project, so I bought a litre kit of WEST System epoxy (a holdover from my old boat days) and had at anything which needed patching. This worked well. A bit of sawdust mixed in provided a good filler for the odd imperfection in the panels, as well. The beauty of WEST System is the wax in the epoxy which makes the surface touchable before it is completely set.
Some of the coves were fuzzy on the walnut so from Princess Auto I bought a refurbished Dremel sonic vibrator multitool (?) to sand the corners and the coves. It turned out to be a fine little machine, much more effective than I had expected. My PC 6″ random orbital sander finished up the sanding.
Staining went as expected, though I had some trouble with rails warping. Clamping the six panels to scaffolding used as shelves helped a bit, but I couldn’t get the hinges on quickly enough to ensure continued straightness.
I approached a commercial door vendor for a materials kit for the installation. He took an interest in the project and for a bit over $600 provided me with a heavy duty hardware set.
What turned out to be a critical question didn’t get adequate attention from me. “How much does the door weigh?” He wouldn’t order the springs without that weight. I provided an estimate by weighing the panels on my bathroom scale and adding the weights up. 246 pounds turned out to be too much spring for this door. So we backed it off two quarter-turns so that it would stay down. Now it won’t stay up. Looks as though we’ll have to screw some brake rotors to the door and then reset the spring to its proper tension to enable the mechanism to work properly.
Pay attention to the door’s weight when talking to the hardware guy.
More later, after we get the spring situation worked out and the shaft-type garage door opener installed.
UPDATE December 30, 2012:
This week I’ve been using the garage to make repairs to my snow removal tractor and blower. This has involved many trips in and out with the returning vehicle covered with snow which melts in the heat. The surprise has been how much a difference in humidity in the garage affects the weight of the large door. At its current spring settings, after a night of heat and water on the floor the door is almost too heavy to lift above the 9′ height of the 2X6 I’m using as a prop.. If it is allowed to dry out with the same heat, it’s not bad at all to lift above the 9′ height.
No doubt this will have to be a factor when determining proper spring settings, whenever we get around to installing the electric opener.
UPDATE 3 January, 2013:
We finally got started on the garage door opener project after a week of arduous pushes to raise the door against an imbalanced spring as the wood absorbed more and more humidity from the slush on the floor inside. Charlie counted the coils on the springs and discovered the left was at 189 coils and the right at 188. So I turned them both to 189 and tried it. A bit more lift was needed. Another 1/4 turn on each did the trick. No additional weights were needed and we were back to factory specifications for the springs.
If reduced humidity makes the door want to float away on the springs, we plan to fasten counter-weights to it to level it out, but at the moment it is well-balanced.
The garage door opener also turned out to be our New Year’s Day project this year. It fell to Charlie and Roz to sort out the various wiring and electronic tricks involved in making the thing function. So I tried to stay out of the way while they ran the wires, set the spring tolerances, and taught the remotes how to interact with the power unit. The final touch was to teach the Lexus to announce its presence to the door.
The shaft-drive power unit is very quiet and systematic. The smooth start and finish surprised me at first, but this unit is a far cry from the simple Sears in my workshop. The only trouble now is that the Sears remote somehow has learned both codes, and opens both doors at the same time. The Lexus, on the other hand, hasn’t yet deigned to notice the new Chamberline. Instructions call for the home owner to press the program button on the opener, then dash to the car and hold down on a couple of buttons until it learns the code. But the power unit is 12′ up a wall, with the only access by a ladder leaning against the garage door, and I’m not as quick as I used to be.
I’m sure we’ll figure something out.
FURTHER, SLIGHTLY EMBARRASSED UPDATE:
Turns out the Lexus had the Chamberline all figured out. It’s the humans that were the problem. I asked my assistant to press buttons 1 and 3 to cancel the codes prior to learning the new one. The door calmly rose. “Bet, would you press 1 and 3 again?” Down went the door. The adjoining workshop showed no activity from its door, so I’m prepared to go with that. To open the wood shop, press 1. To open the auto shop, press 1 and 3.
Time for my afternoon nap.
A book about the fish we eat
January 1, 2012
For Christmas Roz gave me Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, by Paul Greenberg, Penguin, 2010.
Greenberg’s childhood fish stories quickly hooked me. From there I willingly followed him through first-person accounts of the development of salmon farming, sea bass culture, the decline of the cod fishery and its substitutes, and the doomed open water fishery centered around the bluefin tuna.
Salmon became subjects for aquaculture because of their large eggs and easy fertilization. None of the forty subspecies of Atlantic salmon were particularly appropriate for domestication because they ate too much, swam too fast, and grew too slowly. It came down to Trygve Gjedrem, a Norwegian sheep breeder, to cross salmon adapted to long migrations up rivers (high fat content) with those from the far north for their rapid growth as juveniles.
The problem Gjedrem faced was to selectively breed a salmon which could be grown on less than the 6 pounds of fish it takes to finish a pound of wild salmon. Within twenty generations the Norwegians had that ratio down to three-to-one.
No wild salmon live south of the equator, but the fjords of Chile have proven productive for aquaculture. Chile has quickly become the world’s second largest salmon producer.
Domesticated salmon now contribute over three billion pounds per year to our tables, three times wild salmon production.
Greenberg prefers a white-fleshed fillet like that of the largemouth bass or its marine equivalent, the striped bass. These lazy fish have much less of the strongly flavoured red muscle tissue associated with adrenaline-fueled rushes after prey, and so their flesh tends to be light and flaky.
By the 1970s striped bass and European sea bass had been overfished to the point that the only way to meet the demand for the delicacy was through aquaculture.
The author explains how the European sea bass has had an interesting part in late 20th century politics. Their victory over Egypt in the Seven Days War in 1967 gave Israel access to the Sinai Peninsula, and with it Lake Bardawil, a shallow lagoon which was an ideal spawning area for European sea bass.
Millions went into research on the domestication of the sea bass, a fish Greenberg insists was a poor choice for the role. With the European Economic Union, many Euros went to Greece to take advantage of the country’s calm, crenellated shorelines, ideal sites for aquaculture. The sea bass must be a desirable fish: Israel wouldn’t give back the land they took from Egypt to farm it, and Greece ran headlong into debt to try to meet the market demand.
Greenberg suggests that there’s an Australian sea bass, the barramundi, which is admirably suited to aquaculture. It can reach adulthood in fresh water ponds, and on a partially vegetarian diet in the bargain.
But while salmon and sea bass attracted buyers for special holiday meals, the day-to-day food fish for much of the world has always been cod, the ugly bottom feeder with the white, flaky flesh. Cod’s very abundance has been a big part of its appeal. But then cod stocks plummeted in the face of industrial fishing, and American and Canadian governments listened to scientists and closed the fishery.
Cod is a terrible fish to domesticate. Apparently it gnaws its way out of nets with annoying regularity, hates to spawn, and is a huge feeder.
The book is at its best when Greenberg describes the lesser fish which are gradually gaining acceptance to fill the fish-sticks role. Alaskan pollack is a good fish, though the huge fleet owners have manipulated politicians and quotas and strained the resource.
Supermarkets demand a constant, predictable, enormous quantity of fillets. Fast food outlets are even more persistent. For example MacDonald’s makes its fish sandwiches from hoki, a cod-like fish found in abundance off the coast of New Zealand, though they are now under pressure to reduce their reliance on the tasty fish as stocks drop.
With a change of diet a Vietnamese catfish, the Pangasius (known locally as the tra), has been upgraded to American chef’s delight. Greenberg stresses that this air-breathing filter feeder is a good candidate for aquaculture, especially when scientists have improved its taste by eliminating the algae which causes fresh-water fish to take on a muddy taste.
The ubiquitous African tilapia has made great strides as a cod substitute. This filter feeder requires no additional feed in many aquacultures and reproduces with abandon. (Not to worry, Canadians: it dies if the water temperature gets much below 50 degrees F.)
In the 1960s the world decided that whales are wildlife, not food. Of course the green revolution with its oil-producing seeds for margarine rendered whaling uneconomic, but for the most part mankind turned away from the killing of whales when they could no longer ignore their sentience.
But the bluefin tuna is a warm-blooded animal, as well. This sushi favourite commands enormous prices and the 700-pound monsters have been hunted to depletion. Even more insidious, Greenberg suggests, is the netting of juveniles in the Mediterranean to raise to maturity in pens for the market.
Off the coast of Hawaii, on the other hand, Greenberg tells of a dive on deep-water pens where, “Without any selective breeding whatsoever, the amount of fish required to produce a pound of kahala ranges from 1.6:1 to 2:1, ten times better than the feed conversion ratio for bluefin tuna (233).” And they spawn constantly. Renamed Kona Kampachi for the sushi market, the kahala is gaining acceptance with chefs and consumers. Greenberg suggests it’s time to end the bluefin fishery.
For its insight and information Four Fish belongs on the bookshelf of every serious cook or fisherman. It’s also a fine read.
Stay off the ice. It’s not time yet.
January 1, 2012
See the more detailed report to the right, but the soft weather on this section of the Rideau has produced no gain in ice depth in a week. It’s still about 4″ deep, but with weak spots highly probable.
Happy New Year.
Check the new ice report: See right ——>
December 24, 2011
Executive summary:
There’s a bit over 3″ of ice now on Newboro Lake.
A Christmas Poem (sorta)
December 19, 2011
‘Tis the week before Christmas and throughout the land
We’re shopping and driving and making big plans
For family reunions and holiday cheer
With hopes for some snowflakes and weather that’s clear.
–
The Snowbirds are circling; their flocks swiftly grow.
They line up at Customs: the post-Christmas show.
They drive south in convoy, the like you won’t see,
To trailers in Florida, cheap houses and free,
“An endless vacation with friends from round here.
Our dollar is rich. We have months without fear
Of Florida hospitals, for OHIP will pay
‘Til April’s return to our gardens and play.”
–
With all the elections the signs are worn out.
The pundits keep writing; the Tories must tout
Their latest achievements with PMO rule,
For democracy’s finished. The MPs look bored.
They’re ignorant and arrogant and mostly ignored.
–
While Senators are playing their way through the East,
Concussions are hurting the visual feast
Of hockey like ballet. The best of the best
Are sitting on sidelines from murderous hits.
Enforcers are dying: brain lesions and drugs.
Each saw a career if he acts like a thug.
The great game’s in danger: inertia’s the threat.
They can’t make it safer: the violence gets
The fans in the boxes, the sponsors in line,
And another career ends – a trifling fine.
–
The point’s not to solve things in rhymes such as this,
But rather to show how, though much is amiss,
There’s many amongst us who put up quite a show.
They love what life brings them: a positive glow
Surrounds what they do, and they greet life with a smile.
–
We saw a young artisan who showed us this view.
She makes stained glass windows so brave and so new.
While the young woman shapes these bright fragments of light
Her cats loll on counters and grin at the sight
Of fresh hands to pat them. Her shop is a place
Of warmth and contentment, and artistic grace.
–
Perhaps the solution to winter’s sad drift
Lies in the activity and even the thrift
It takes for a project to come to fruition:
Commitment and effort, and even emotion.
–
So let’s not get upset with Ottawa’s drift.
We’ll deal with it later, and try not to shift
Our attitudes right to match Harper’s great plan
To scare us with justice and burn down the land
With oil sands and pipelines and shipments out West
Past Prince Rupert Sound in oil tankers, no less.
–
Instead let’s be thankful, and busy and glad.
This time in this great land there’s joy to be had.
The lakes have just frozen. The air’s crisp and clear.
Put on your long undies and pull Winter near.
It can’t take your bear hug, but soon melts away.
–
The nights will grow shorter, and each passing day:
With friends you grow stronger. The prospect of play
On frozen expanses of ice and of snow
Inspires us to action. The maples soon grow,
But first there’s the syrup, that warm, glowing taste!
The smell captures our memories and so we make haste
To get out the buckets, the pan and the gear.
It’s our way of knowing that spring is soon near.
–
So send me no invites to Florida down there.
Don’t bug me with politics. I just cannot care.
Keep Cherry off Hockey: that’s just fine with me,
But don’t miss the dog sleds — and ice fishing’s free.
Best wishes to all,
Rod and Bet Croskery
the Walnut Diary 