Month: April 2025

That was a disappointing showing last night if ever I have seen one. What’s going on here? A strong season followed by a big fat belly flop. It’s not over, but they have managed to take some of the wind out of my sails, I will tell you that much. I had my Austin Matthews t-shirt on, and my Leafs jersey going real crisp, and SPLAT!, A FOUL TURD appeared on my television screen for nearly three hours straight. Shut out by Ottawa! Madness.

But here we are on this cold, partially cloudy Wednesday. It was below zero and breezy this morning. Didn’t make for a very fun school drop off, not out morning walk. Luckily we did not have the tornadoes they were warning of, at least not directly over head, anyway. We had some torrential downpours, and a bit of win, but nothing too crazy. A couple of twigs fell out of the trees, but no major limbs, or trunk splits etc etc… the grass will need to be cut this weekend, that’s for certain. No escaping the green carpet growth now that “It’s gonna be May!”. Sorry, I had to get that out. It’s low hanging fruit, but satisfying nonetheless. Ha.

Had notice of a few more large reports coming my way in May, and for July, both of which will be welcome. There is a random fifth one floating about, but I don’t have the slightest idea of what is going on with it, so I can’t schedule it, or count on it as part of my earnings estimate. Could be time to do the 2025 version before the 2024 one gets sorted out at this rate. I don’t deal with that side of things, as a sub contracted party, I just make it happen when I get it.

Lots to do around here this weekend. I can as aforementioned cut the grass, and I can power wash the back deck, I can do the second layer of hedge trimming & patio clean up of all the previous trimmings. I can gather up all the twigs and take them to the farm. I can pick up all the winter hidden dog poops. It will be a busy Saturday and Sunday. Woah! Don’t tempt me with a good time. I can wash the exterior windows. I can once again attempt to power wash the faux bloody hand prints off of the brick work by the front porch. I can wash the garage door and driveway. I can wash both cars. Swap over the winter tires for their summer counter parts. You name it, the world is my oyster. Provided it is at least 10°C that is. Can’t have the exterior pipes burst if I turn the water on and it’s too damn cold.

Boy oh boy that Leafs game was disappointing though, wasn’t it? Ugh.

It’s not all rainbows and sunshine here, but a minority government led by Carney should help guide us through all of the US created financial turmoil over the next couple of years. I don’t expect he can do much to salvage what the Premiers have dismantled in each province, but Federally, country wide, we should be in capable hands. If the Conservative provincial leaders could get their acts together and stop strip mining our education, health care, and other services that would be of great help too. But I don’t see Ford going against his real estate mogul buddies to help every day Canadians any time soon. I did like to see him stab PP in the back with the $10/day child care dig he made. Clutch. But otherwise I’m no fan of the PC’S.

I am not going to lie 8 felt a little I’ll yesterday at the thought of another harsh Conservative Federal Government, even a minority one. I recall Harper doing immense damage, grinding through a surplus to give us a deficit, and then slashing health care & education spending, nuzzling climate scientists, and generally being a robotic simulation of a human being. But I was in my teens at that time, and not paying anywhere as much attention to politics as I do now. I recall him selling off the Wheat Board to the Saudis, and giving ridiculous terms to China on various trade deals (which we are still stuck with to this day). So his protege Pierre wasn’t on my short list of preferable Federal government leaders.

Singh could have been if he’d campaigned on what he had gotten the Liberal Coalition government to grant us, like the dental care thing, and $10/day child care, but he went all negative, attacking, and not highlighting what he got done for us, or how he did it. I’m not looking to vote against who I hate, but for who has a reasonable plan of action, and can show that they can enact those plans successfully. I’m glad you hate so & so, but what is YOUR plan, how do you go about it, whom do you have on your side to get it done. If he’d have shown me that instead of taking every second to sling mud, and campaign, I’d have voted NDP. But he is no Jack Layton, and the NDP needs to find that Beacon of Light again in somebody else, and fast.

But I digress. It is Tuesday and we have potential tornado warnings in the area for this afternoon around the time of school pick-up, and into the early evenings. Could get wild around here. We have water, food, gas, and the generator all here ready and waiting. It’s that time of year. Power outages, wild temperature swings, high winds, and electrical storms with higher than usual amounts of rain. Chaos!

Besides a birthday party, a play date, moving leaves, and working around a family member with COVID we ended up putting the cursed trampoline together in the late afternoon sunlight. Almost moved on to uncovering the pool, but since our third hand was watering at the farm, and unreachable, we opted to wait on that project for a day, or possibly two.

Luckily this trampoline is more forgiving than the salvaged one from the cottage which is missing parts, colour coded dots, and any semblance of intuitive design & construction. It’s a real nightmare. Should be crushed into a ball and sold as scrap metal. Useless piece of junk that it is. The one located at my in-laws is better quality, but still a pain in the ass. I’ve spent many an afternoon baking in the sun, hand stitching the safety net back together when the kids poke finger holes through the mesh. One tiny hole becomes a massive rift in just a few short bounces, and full body weight catches under tension. Believe you me.

The water trampoline at the cottage is the second worse one to assemble. The sand pit trampoline, mentioned previously is the bane of our existence. Pure junk that one is. Followed closely by the 19 year old water trampoline. The vinyl spring covers has been so ravaged by UV rays it’s brittle, hard, and shrunk as to be three sizes too small for the diameter of the ring of springs it is supposed to protect the kids from. I too would like to see this trampoline launched into the sun, never to be seen from again. We have the far more favourable water Lilly pads now, easier to store for the winter, lighter to carry, and simpler to affix to the anchors for the summer. No hard swimming real early, or very late in the season to install/remove it either. No mid year, boat launched, expeditions for inflating a Lilly pad are needed. Far superior product!

After a whirl wind weekend of activity we are back to Monday once more, and a whole new work week laid out before us. I hope it is at least a little calmer than last week, which was, as they say in the movies, “a bit much”. I can do a load or two of laundry, run the dishes again, attack the floors too if need be. Just waiting to see if my inbox will flood with work emails before I commit to anything. Best of luck to you all! Ciao Bella!

My eldest daughter has a three hour long outdoor birthday party to attend today at mid day, so I haven’t decided if I am going to stick around there, or go home to putter around cleaning up my garage shop. I suppose it will depend on if any other parents I know stick around to chit-chat or not. I think now that my eldest is ten years old she probably doesn’t need me to stay, but if she wanted me to I would do so. Maybe I’ll take my book and reading glasses just in case. I don’t know. I need to pop out later this morning to buy his present. I feel bad just handing over cash, but that sort of becomes the norm at a certain age. It allows them to buy whatever specific expensive item they were hoping for. I was never mad at receiving cash money for a present.

It looks like we will have much better weather today for an outdoor event. Yesterday was cold, grey, and incredibly windy. Not conducive of a tree top ropes course out in the woods, that’s for sure. The dust swirls at the farm were wreaking havoc with my eyes. Pummeled my cornea with sand and left over bits of salt debris. Uncool dude!

We had our last climbing session yesterday before the next one starts up in two weeks or so. I had some good clean 5.9 climbs, and I had some bad 5.9 climbs. Fell off a whole bunch and couldn’t get more than half way up the two routes that vexed me the most, both yellow. Hmmm… A conspiracy! No, no. Just weak hands and not enough shifting of my weight to suit the climb. I am still very much a novice. No formal training of any sort as of yet. I could do with some right about now. I think that once we get to July that will be it for a few months at least. Might lose all my strength training but I don’t see myself going much during the summer, not when I can go swimming, biking, long boarding around here, for free.

I should go eat breakfast and find a present for my daughter’s friend. Or maybe cash is the better bet, he is turning eleven and likes tech, so he could buy himself some Raspberry Pie Arduinos, or chips, or breadboards, or whatever.

Holy-moly that was an intense week that just passed. Hard to believe it was a short week either, with it being so chock a block full of projects, requests, reports, labels, and in store retail items. Wowsers, I mean. Phew! Made it through. Fantastic! My phone hasn’t rung that much in a decade let alone a single work week. Felt like being with an agency again. Let us pray the following weeks are more tempered, evenly spaced out, and steady but not over powering. But as a freelancer I know that when it rains, it pours! Quiet for weeks and then BAM! All things, everywhere, all at once. It was rather intense.

But, now here we are on Saturday morning and it’s cold, grey, and threatening rain for the day. I have one last climbing session today before the next one starts up in two weeks time. I am going to bring both kids today because it’s a fun way to spend two or three hours together. My wife’s plans were canceled due to illness (not a new one for her, thankfully) but her friend awoke with a newly sore throat, so no brunch plans in Barrie for them. Which means that the dog walk at the farm will fall to her while I have the kids active, and out of the house for three hours mid day. Cool? Cool.

I picked up my (on sale — deeply discounted) tool chest for all of my wood working tools yesterday morning. So later today I need to pull it out of the box, stack them, attach the wheels and handles, and tear down the wooden cart it is replacing, and also tear down the cheapo crap work bench I first started with fifteen years ago. I have a light to move and rehang, plus some other things to work out. I think pulling the old work bench apart will take longer than expected because it took FOREVER to assemble all those nuts & bolts. Could be a three hour job, or longer. I remember hating my life passionately.

Then I have to break down the wooden cart too, salvage my castor wheels, and take the carcass to the farms burn pile for disposal. And on Tuesday the cardboard will go out for recycling. And I shall have hopefully reclaimed another few square feet of open space next to my work bench which should allow me to build more freely. I cannot move walks so the next best thing is to organize the space, and condense things down to the smallest, yet still easily accessible foot print. I may have finally achieved that feat. We will see. I have a lot more stuff than I realize I do. I learned that the hard way when I tore down that rickety old shelving unit to erect the red steel one. Pretty soon I might even be able to move a 2×4 around the shop freely without having to play interior space Tetris to reorient a bit of wood. Piv-ot! Piv-ot!

I currently have a small cart where my Mitre saw sits, and that will get a slight upgrade. I’m going to transfer the work bench top to the cart so that I have a wider surface for my saw to open into, that will then have nothing around it, on either side, to interfere with cutting planks down to size. Sounds counter intuitive, but I’m going to make it work. My metal vise will get transferred to a wood block so I have clamp it to my bench because I don’t use it all that often. Just to sharpen lawn mower blades, and my loppers, which I do once in the spring, and once in the fall. I don’t fabricate metal things, so it’s in the way the rest of the time. I’ll store it under the Mitre saw cart overhang. Easily accessible, but out of the way. Boom! That’s a win. That’ll be all she wrote as far as the garage goes. I’ve decided that I will simply purchase wood closer to spec rather than buying a bandsaw myself.

I might have to add some support struts to the Mitre saw table top, but I can look into that if it feels tippy or too floppy. For right now I have plans for underneath the overhangs. Nothing crazy, but you never know until you get there if you haven’t done it before. I do have a sneaking suspicion that it will need a frame, struts, or some additional legs out towards the ends of the overhangs. Just a hunch.

I’m not looking forward to unscrewing all of those drawers, drawer slides, legs, and supports for the modular work bench. There are plenty of folks around here whom will pick up scrap metal so the aftermath isn’t a problem. Anywho, best of luck today.

Nothing like file transfer issues to amp up your Friday. Not getting anywhere with the current methods, had to resort to both WeTransfer, and SendThisFile. I’m about ready to give up. I need to eat. I’m annoyed. Good day sir!

Getting kinda crazy around here as of late. Not much time to talk, let alone think or ponder. Good news though, taxes are paid up for another year. Best be back at my business. Game on!

And the stars dimmed briefly in our grief, but fear not sharpened warrior, for we knew of his coming. We had been warned. And of our great bounty we did break off a percentage to be held, quiet and alone, for just such an occasion. Though the Tax-Man did heweth deep, he did not strike bone — this year. We live on. We fight on. The Tax-Man does walk on to thy neighbours pastures. Feeding, ever hungry, year after year. Or so the story goes.

Happy Wednesday. See you all in line at the bank!

And it’s coming from inside the document! Ta-da! But seriously, this was the first time I have been given artwork created in Figma to use in illustrator and the 45 Mb source document is now over 3 GB in size. So I have eliminated all but two elements and gotten it down to just under 900 Mb, but for what it is that’s still way too high. So either the two remaining speech balloons, or the QR codes are jacked right up coming out of Figma. Haven’t had the chance to figure out which is the culprit — yet. But I intend to because these ridiculously high file sizes will greatly impede my ability to upload them once approved for printing. I would say that 200 Mb each would be big as far as I’m concerned, let alone multiple gigs each. Yikes!

But deadlines are looming and I may not have the luxury of pulling each item apart to see which is the memory hole since I didn’t create the elements in question, and I don’t have any experience with Figma beyond a cursory exploration of the website about two weeks ago. It’s supposed to be vector based, so maybe it uses an absolute shit tonne of points which makes the sizes so large for even the simplest of objects. I don’t know. Maybe it’s an artifact of exporting for Adobe Illustrator. I just don’t know at this point.

Otherwise it’s Tuesday and the kids are heading back to school after four full days off. My back is a little lumpy after running the Bobcat & raking leaves for hours on end to help clean up this weekend. We’re almost out of groceries but I’m too busy to go shopping today. Will have to do with no milk, juices and snacks for another day or two.

Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

Which is awesome. All free of course, from here anyway. I hope they enjoy it. Makes me happy to know somebody else other than me has read at least parts of the thing. That’s a big win for today. I’m well chuffed about that.

It is Easter Monday and I am on call waiting to hear about edits, changes or approvals on a handful of projects. Have to go to press for Tuesday so it is a big deal to get them done today. Life of a freelancer yeah? Evenings, weekends, and holidays are all in play. Maybe if you were a bigger name or a major attractor of clients you could maintain a closer to 9 to 5 schedule, but little ole me needs to work when I have it. I’ve had considerable down time this winter/spring. So I’m not missing any vacation days as it were. I do need to do some driving around today before the kids go back to school tomorrow, so that is my sticky wicket for today.

Best eat some breakfast and see what’s what with the extended family. Ciao Bella!