Oh lord, you who are so incredibly big, so hugely gargantuan,
please give me an excuse to acquire one of these awesome machines
so I can create small and insignificant objects.
I promise to model only good and beautiful things
and to run Windows only for the necessary CAD software.

Thank you for your consideration.

Posted Thu Nov 2 21:31:00 2006 Tags:

Our little brat Eric has turned 2 today.

He concluded a day filled with excitement with the following observations:

I want a real dog. I want another allowance. I want a real duck. I want a big pig. I want a toy horse. I want a farm.
I am going to sleep. Good night. Juimiin, come here. Eric is sleeping. (“What’s Juimiin doing?”) Juimiin is happy. (… then something about babies who cannot speak, and on and on and on …)

Addendum the next day, after a brief jaunt in our airplane to the warplane museum in Hamilton:

What aaaaa day! I like x-ray romeo papa.
Posted Sat Nov 11 20:56:00 2006 Tags:

A wonderful little example of supercooling occurred in front of my very eyes last night.

Supercooling is a state of matter where a fluid is cooled below its freezing point, but for whatever reason, fails to actually solidify. Pilots encounter this phenomenon as “icing” in the air, and ground dwellers as freezing rain or “ice storms”. Yesterday it happened in my hand on a much larger scale.

The ingredients: a 500mL bottle of spring water and its thirty friends, a manly deep freezer, some electricity, and a few weeks’ time.

The outcome: almost every bottle of water is translucent and frozen solid with ice. Two bottles, from somewhere in the middle of the pile of frozen bottles, look and feel completely liquid, right up to bubbles of air moving around freely.

Yet, shake one around just a little more vigorously. Suddenly, within the span of one second, a translucent mass of ice forms from top to bottom. It turns to a hard slush, as subsequent drink confirms. Disbelieving that supercooling on this scale is likely, shake the second bottle the same way, in front of four adult observers. The same thing happens. Wonderful stuff.

Posted Thu Nov 23 10:04:00 2006 Tags:

After a busy Saturday, it was time to head to bed, but not before a bedtime story.

Only this time, it was I who wanted to head to bed early, and Eric whom I asked to read one to me. Yeah, the little guy can read. At 2. Geez, I only learned around 4. Anyway, I suggested this wonderful little book, and he just went straight through, cover to cover. Then, he started with another book, but I had to leave only my lovely wife to listen, so I could prepare this insignificant dispatch. I think we’ll use this little trick over and over again.

Addendum from the next night. The boy sang a lullaby to himself. A long verse in its entirety.

Posted Sat Nov 25 19:34:00 2006 Tags:

How can it be that after they are repeatedly caught in outright lies, companies like Associated Press and their retailers are still taken seriously? War is sober business, and facts fed to the population to motivate waging it need to be accurate. If the press does not take an obligation to the truth seriously, it shouldn’t take privileges of press freedom seriously either.

Posted Wed Nov 29 10:17:00 2006 Tags:

A few days back, we had occasion to visit the airplane’s old home base, CYTZ. The summer construction has nearly completed, and the new ferry and buildings are looking sharp!

All the concrete & steel structure was not the only thing sharp looking. So were all the Porter Airlines staff, and most of the passengers. For that matter, Robert Deluce (the airline’s handsome head honcho), whom we ran into during our visit, walked around with a Cheshire Cat smile/strut. And no wonder: after years of political obstruction, the airline is up and running.

With our having left town, my already small contribution to the airport’s upkeep has gone away. I wish them good luck.

There are some before and after pictures in the archives.

Posted Wed Nov 29 11:55:00 2006 Tags: