Snail

There are a few of us who went to Bluevale Collegiate for high-school (Waterloo). This was a school that had no windows in the classrooms at all. The hallways went around the outside of the school and the classrooms were in the middle well lit by flourescent lighting.

I think this was some great plan to keep us students from being distracted by the "real world" outside. I think we all had some form of SAD or maybe high school just sucks no matter how you slice it.

I would actually suggest removing the battery when the unit is plugged in. Charge the battery to capacity before taking it mobile.

That is definately the way to get the best battery life but if you accidentally knock out the power cord you're dead in the water.

One more comment. Beware of laptop batteries. They work great for a year (maybe 2 if luck) but eventually you will find you have 10 minutes of battery life. Replacement batteries are very expensive ($200-$300). All vendors use the same Li-ion technology and they all have the same issues after a while.

I support these beasts for a living. I would steer away from the Toshiba's (don't last long), Sony (to expensive)and Dell (too cheap/bad vendor support).

The Compaq/HP and IBM seem to be the most reliable. I would get (another) IBM ThinkPad if I were getting one for myself since I've never seen one die unless abused (coffee, chicken soup, sat upon, etc). Occasionaly the hard-drives go bad but that can happen with any vendor. There is a wide selection of IBM TPs in your price range here: http://www-131.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10000124&catalogId=-124&langId=124&categoryId=2035724

Dr. Didn't you just move to Ottawa? I thought the tradition was to throw out all the crap before moving . Mind you I've got a basement full of stuff that has probably been moved 3 times and never touched.

So I just finished mowing my first lawn in over twenty years, and while it was fun and everything (took well over an hour, and my arms are still shaking), I've never been quite sold on the stuff (especially having to be conscious of BS local bylaws around proper lawn maintenance). I'm wondering what options there are to grass. Clover seems to be a popular one; any others?

Dave, do you remember across the street from the Kitchener Public Library, there was this biiggg house that had its from lawn totally grown over with Bluebells. Looked really nice, seemed like they flowered first thing in the spring and kept flowering for quite a while....then the "lawn" would just be a leafy green mosaic until the snow fell.

I have no idea if that can stand up to foot-traffic but it sure looked good.

and on top of that i have a macintosh apple tree that has dropped about 2000 lbs of unconsumable apples onto my lawn. (anyone know what to do with apples that have what looks to be a worm hole in them?) and once they hit the ground they have a nice big bruise on them that's about half the size of the apple.

You can take these apples to a cider press(er) and have them juiced up for you. My dad has been doing this for years and its the best cider I've ever tasted. I believe the people who press it take a percentage of the juice and give you these rest nicely packaged in 1.3 litre milk type bags.

Thanks for all these brilliant ideas. I like the idea of variety - bit of this, bit of that; we will have to figure out what works well with what (i.e. not to watch some Darwinian spectacle unfold between all the different species), and be circumspect, given that I haven't seen a single dandelion in the neighbourhood, but I look forward to breaking the consistency of the military-issue lawns around here.

SSJ, I'm working on finding a rusty old '72 Impala to dump out front if anyone complains about what we do .

Btw, does anyone (Snail?) know about mini-strawberries? I like the idea of a lawn you can also eat.

We've got mini-(wild)-strawberries at the Cabin and at my Dad's farm. I'm sure I can dig some up at some point and bring them over. I have no idea how long they take to grow or if they will spread over the whole lawn. You might have to eat the berries and then sh!t the seeds out all over the lawn to be really effective. This would also distract the neighbours from caring about the 72 impala!

I switched to these compact FL last summer. Almost every bulb in our house is now this type. The amount of energy saved is not noticable on the hydro bill. I'll have to agree that it insignificant to the average consumer to change but....if we all change the savings to the city/province/energy grid would definately be noticable.

Since I've switched I've only lost one bulb (it came with a 5 yr warranty but darned if I can find the receipt a year later) and with normal bulbs it seemed that there was always one blown somewhere.

I'm definately in for the FL bulbs. May not save me any money but makes me feel like I'm doing something to help and since I rent it one of the only options I have to decrease energy usage (I can't go re-insulating my attic, I don't have one)

Now if you really want to save energy don't use air-conditioning. Our highest electricity usage is always in the summer not the winter.

Toronto has one too. It's http://www.torontogasprices.com

T.O. seems to a very wide range in prices depending on the day of the week and the location. I've just given up buying unless it's less than a dollar.

Happy Birthday Timouse.

That's hilarious. I kinda wish he'd won. If you take the same argument "dangers inherent in the consumption of beer are well known to the general public" and change beer to heroin/pot/lsd/ectasy/crack etc... then there should be no reason why any of these intoxicants should be illegal. Sounds to me like the court is basically saying that people have the ability/information to decide what is right for them and the advertisers can spin it any way they want and we (the consumers) will remain steadfast in our beliefs. Sounds good to me. The reason I don't do heroin and crack is not because it illegal its because I have the ability/information to decide what is right for me.

Calamity, I'm downloading this one for you right now. Currently whipping along at 180KB/s so it should be done in 30 minutes. Give me a shout later and you can come and get it. Actually I'll trade it for the rear-derailer from Dr. Evil's old bike.

I've noticed that Toronto bike paths are posted at max 20KM/h. I've also noticed that my 8 year old daughter easily cracks that limit. LM did you get a $153 fine for speeding on the bike path or some other bike infraction?

I cycle every day and I'm not really a fan of mixed use bike paths, pedestrians are a real hazard and those roller bladers are a pain to pass. They're O.K. for weekend cruising with the family but when you really want to move the roads are better and probably safer.

I have mixed feeling about bike lanes, they have to be continuous (no disappearing at intersections and no mysterious multi-block long gaps like the Queens Quay path) and they have to be empty (no cars parking just for a minute while they driver runs into a store). If I'm riding in a bike lane and I keep having to weave onto the road to avoid parked cars I'd rather be on the road, I feel safer. The other problem with bike lanes is they give car drivers the impression that the rest of the road is for them (it's not it for me and my bike, I can be an obnoxious cyclist when I want)

Speaking of being an obnoxious cyclist, I got pulled over last week for giving a cop the finger after she honked at me for passing her on the right while she was making a right turn with no turn signal on (she claimed otherwise). Managed to talk my way out of that one.

Rant, rant rant!!! The only thing better than ranting about cycling in this city is actually cyling in this city.

They say (you know, them) that in hunter-gatherer days, the average working day was about 4 hours long. I'm still waiting for this computer age to bring in the 3-day working week like they promised us all through public school.

I've been reading much human evolution the last couple of years. Basically every technical breakthrough we've had from farming to computers has actually increased the workload for the average human being. When the europeans first came to North America they found these native tribes living in the deserts who were described as the worst kind of humans ever "discovered". Little better than dogs. Just lazed about all day long. But these people knew every plant in their environment and exactly when it was going to produce for them. They were able to sit around all day because they knew what to do and when to do it. Unlike our society where we have a goof like G-dubbwa who tells the American population that the best thing they can do is go shopping. In other words it doesn't matter what you produce or consume just keep it going.

Drives me crazy. Probably why we're all so uptight. Just running around in circles all day making money but not necessarily accomplishing anything in the greater scheme of things.

I've got somewhere in the neighbourhood of 200GB of mp3/ogg/shn/flac. 15270 tunes and counting. 120GB of the mp3's were done by a friend of mine who encoded his entire cd collection (he has a HUGE collection) and they are mostly done at 320Kbps, so they take a lot more space than the "standard" 120Kpbs (which sound like crap to me). I just brought over a drive and we copied them all!

The rest of them I ripped myself from my own CD collection, Dr Evil's CD collection and a bunch from the library. I've been turned off downloading anything but live shows since there are so many bad (short or glitchy) tunes out there through the P2P channels.

The best thing is that I've got so much stuff I've never heard I can hit random play and go on forever being constantly surprised.

It's been a while since I've played with this one. It's a lot of fun. Been playing more with drum machines lately as I've been practicing bass. More inspiring than a metronome but I end up spending more time programming the drums than actually practicing

The cops have been doing this stop sign thing right behind the building I work in for the last couple of weeks (right behind old city hall in T.O.). Because of the way the intersection is layed out the stop line is way to far back from the intersection to see anything so people roll past it then check if the intersection is clear and then usually roll through without actually coming to a full stop (even the cops do this, I've been watching them). They've been pulling people over as fast as they can all day long.

My suggestion is fight the ticket(s). I've been to traffic court a few times and almost all tickets get reduced to less than half the original fine and if the cop doesn't show they get thrown out completely. Apparently the judge can't do anything about points.

I've currently got an outstanding $190 ticket for riding my bicycle through a red light (it was a T intersection and I stopped and looked first)!? I'm fighting it on the grounds that the ticket claims I was operating a motorized vehicle and no-where does it say I was riding a bicycle. I was way to polite with this cop considering the fine he was giving me and it didn't help at all.

• Seven Bridges Road - Eagles
  

Now there's one that takes me right back to high school. I actually performed this one with 3 girls for a variety show (Many Moods of Music for you Bluevalians out there).

I've had my songs on random play since this morning. Managed to start the day with this

• The Hollies - He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother (This one won't leave my head alone)
  
• Marvin Gave - Without You My World Is Lonely
  
• Bob Dylan - With God On Our Side
  
• Ramones - Indian Giver
  
• Bob Marley & The Wailers - Forever Loving Jah
  
• Frank Zappa - The Gumbo Variation
  
• Cypress Hill - When The Ship Goes Down
  
• Sex Pistols - No Lip (Didn't even know I had this)
  
• Grateful Dead - Samson To Lay Me Down Pt 1
  
• Bjork - It's Oh So Quiet
  

Random is cool

As far as no music at Awenda. They actually have 6 campgrounds in the same park. 3 of the 6 are designated as "radio-free". It would appear that the other 3 allow music. They also have a group camping area that allows 20-40 people on the same site and has it's own washroom, water etc(I didn't see that area last year but it could be an option)

Bill Frisell - Closer

Elton John - Funeral & Love Lies Bleeding

David Wolfenburger - From A Field

Public Enemy - Lost At Birth

The Rheostatics - Candian Dream

Bow Wow Wow - Where's My Snake

Grateful Dead - In The Midnight Hour

Mano Negra - Sidi H' Bibi

Frank Zappa - The Black Page #2

The Cars - Don't Cha Stop

Deb, we are going to kidnap you and the family and take you to Awenda. Just NE of Barrie. We went last summer and it's just about one of the nicest campgrounds I've been to in years. Check out the site here and also here.

We got there last year on a long weekend without booking in advance got the last spot beside the bathroom which turned out to be 200 meters away with full on showers and flush toilets. We drove all around the place one afternoon and all the sites are big and seperated by a beautiful hardwood forest, you'd be hard pressed to find a site that you won't like. We went on a short hike to see 10000 years old sand-dunes. 5 beaches on the land. Just amazing!

Looks like I missed this entire thread due to the fact I got my new bass last week and spent all my free time make my fingers blister and entirely too busy at work to login. I'm definately into playing bass (hopefully not stepping on TheGoodRev's toes). I'd love to go see Levon, though I'm not sure if I'll find the time this summer (there is some sort of webcast though).

Anyone got a short list of tunes we can start learning.

I'm currently lovin' It Makes No Difference, Get up Jake, I Shall Be Released (technically not The Bands tune), King Harvest (if it can actually be covered, it's a tricky one), Chest Fever (paging killer keyboardist) Ferdinand The Imposter and you gotta love the way they do Mystery Train.

Ok, you got me too on the "conjunction, function" theme. Pushed out that dancing cheese wheel guy that Family Guy managed to resurect tonight... also from those mid-seventies saturday mornings. I'm not so sure that was Sesame St. though I think they just used that during commercial breaks to "educate" us.

OK so now for the good news. L&M phoned tonight. They have the bass in It was ordered yesterday An extra 1000 points to L&M. I think before I go and pick it up I'll take a side trip to Steve's and demand my money back. TomFoolery and you others have made good points and I really don't want to let Steve's have any of my money. I'll take Amanda with me she's much better a causing a disruption then I am.

Tim's idea with all the songs on there banned list could come in handy too. We could all get really drunk play them obnoxiously out of tune.