TubaOrNotTuba

While waiting for the pest control guy to finish his rounds outside I let my coffee cool down to the right temperature. That’s a word that is filled with lots of interpretation. We start very early trying to control the temperature of food. Checking the temperature of a baby’s bottle against your arm or checking the spoon full of food. Get it wrong and the infant will paint you. One of the frequent questions to ask any visitor is was the coffee hot enough? We have certain assumptions about our food and about our bathwater. Yes there is a perfect temperature for my bath and my shower. And it is my perfect temperature. Yours may vary. I wish I had a better thermometer so I could try to quantify those numbers. This is where we move from subjective to objective. I realize the temperature in my shower cannot go beyond a certain level because I have a thermostat to control that. Also nature. It is hard to boil water beyond a certain level. Steam if you will. But the right serving temperature plays out in so many other areas. I have watched someone gently warm their ice cream in a microwave. I did not understand the why but you probably do. Is your soup too hot? Would you like an ice cube to go with that? Certain questions we learn to ask others. Right now I live in a house where the temperature is constant within a few degrees. If I go outside I consider whether or not I need an extra coat or not. We all have a level of comfort. What about the rest of the world. We try to make sure that the eggs we leave outside for our neighborhood friends are neither too hot nor too cold. We cannot ask for input but we know by their actions. When I make bread, I know almost instinctively how long to leave it on the counter before it can be put away. Again, I wish I had a thermometer to quantify some of these things.

Once you reach a certain age you start trying to break the rules. My most recent moment? Well, that would be when the Courier showed up with the parcel. And wanted me to sign for receipt. And I explained to him that I could no longer see the screen but would it be OK to just place an X. The driver does not care about such things. And so I did. I made a big X in the middle of the screen and that was enough to send the driver on his way. Yes he did ask for my name which means he may have done some fixing after the fact I did not bear witness to it. I wonder how many other places I could just sign an X. Like in the good old days. As for the personal? I haven’t opened it but I think it contains the SIM for the iPad. That’s a guess. I will get confirmation later on this afternoon when someone else who actually can see what’s going on takes over the situation. But I have done my part. I did sign for the package, after a fashion. You know, we do things because we’re told to. I am sure the driver of the delivery van could care less about what my name was or if I spelled my name correctly or if I just placed a mark on the page. That isn’t his responsibility. And if someone back at general headquarters decides to audit the process they will have a check mark for their script. And X if you will. If we were keeping up with technology he would have asked me to confirm by saying so. A Siri or an Alexa moment if you will. We’re not there yet. I look forward to seeing what changes will come in standard technology as time goes on. After all I have a talking clock. And that does not refer to the cuckoo.

From deep in the woods and the tall grass of past years a photo. Posted on social media. A local bird, nameless. And I wonder where is it now? Did it serve as supper for a local coyote. Did it fly South and never find the way back. So many unanswered questions. Our old photos are like that. You can take a photo of a house and probably recognize the address. Not so much a photo taken in the woods. So many anonymous trees. We used to have a famous tree locally. Deep at the back of a pasture something much taller than all the others. One that was visited by people with painstaking maps. Turn right at that corner and then go down to car lengths and then turn left and you get the idea off the beaten track but the wind came and the tree was no more I still haven’t found a replacement although I don’t wander the woods enough to be on the outlook for old timber. As for animals we have a brood of foxes and we can pretty much guess which year but nothing more. We still cannot tell the siblings apart. Perhaps if they had different coloured T-shirts. As for cars in the yard. They too change with time and after a few years it’s hard to be sure when the car arrived. Or when it left. We tend to forget such moments unless there’s something added to the soup. If I look out right now I can tell you that the lobster season has started. A few days late but they will pick it up at the other end of the calendar although that seems to satisfy few. Nothing in the nearby fields yet although I’m sure that once we start to get weather that isn’t hovering around the freezing point that will change. The March of time.

There was a time when having data with you when you traveled meant that you had packed a book or two into your luggage. That was then. Now it is we have greater expectations and better technology. The idea of going with my iPad to the wilds is no longer a question of can I play tic tac toe. We thought about taking the Starlink on vacation but it seems that getting a travel plan from a company that has no visible means of communication with you is not possible. The option is to cancel what we have and buy something new a lot to pay for a short time. So we have turned to other methods. I am able to put a SIM card in my iPad and collect data from that cell phone system. Even there you have to shop. This morning we moved the family cell phone to another company because that company offers better options for tablets. At a better price. Sometime this week we will receive a new card to insert in the unused slot and then with help from customer assistance the iPad will be connected to the outside world. Not the simplest solution but until Starlink evolves for travellers, the only one we can afford. Will it be enough? We will only know after we try it. It could be that next year we will choose another method. For now we’re trying something different. Sadly I cannot go back to those days when having a couple of books in my luggage was sufficient. All the words have disappeared from the pages. I now depend on technology. I’m not going to complain. A lifetime ago I would have been kept in the house out of sight and out of mind. In this century I can go and be in public even if I do not see them. They will see me. A minor victory I guess. I can’t do this sort of thing on my own anymore so I handed the question off to my partner. She spent the time talking to customer assistance and she put together what I hope will be my salvation for data through summer months.

Feeling bored? Seeking a reason to bang your head against the wall? I have a solution. Try to compare data plans from the major telephone suppliers. I think they have pages of fine print. And worse no rationale. We took on a simple question. Go to a nearby province and try to decide what sort of data plan would make sense for a tablet. A simple question but the answers are very complex. First of all the alphabet soup. I understand wanting to let the customer know the various levels of service you offer. But please, not on the first page. Try to draw them in a little closer before throwing all the nails into the path. And then take your maps. And shove them. Most cell providers actually share their towers. I think they are required to by law. For one company to tell you that their service is far superior to everyone else is nothing more dental I. I know a venial sin but align nonetheless. Do not expect clarity in this world. Next try to discover how many hidden charges are out there. For a company that wants to sell me data do I have to bring my own SIM or will you sell me a SIM or will you read me a simbas tapan the quality of my blood. Not clear. And when that SIM is empty. What happens then? They don’t want to talk about that part. Be very careful of terms like auto renew because you can find yourself belonging to them for a very long time. Right now we’re seeking a marriage of convenience. 30 days and gone. Do we have an answer to that question? Not at all in fact we will probably have to go to one of the local cell phone stores and try to convince the person behind the desk that we really do not want to buy a new phone. I think that’s where they make their real profit. We shall see. Still have a few days. And from what I’ve seen we will probably take something very expensive and lacking features. Telling ourselves that the next time around we will be more cagey. I realize I am an easy prey for those who hunt down innocent customers. I also realize that maintaining such a large infrastructure over half a continent cost money. I support your rationale. I just wish you had something a little more to my liking.

 This province gave up UN railways along time ago or the railways gave up on us. In any case the nation in sharp contrast relies more on the rail system than any other point is history. A lot of things move by rail. Tied to what is called a jit economy. Just in time. And if the trains stopped running a lot of other things, stop as a consequence. We have been put on notice that the real system is about to go on strike. I saw in one report the term unprecedented, unprecedented perturbation. We shall see. One of my sons works in logistics and he is on notice. For the next little while his job just got more interesting. How do you get that load of material from there to here. I know he thinks about this kind of stuff because he’s already pointed it out as recently as this morning. For those of the world who no longer think trains are important, they are. We did get rid of our rails to ferries reliance although even there unions tend to follow the leader. We could see the ferries tide up the wharf because the trains have stopped. Also, once the strike starts the government will be on high alert. How many days before they pass a law. The government can seem inconsequential to many but when it comes time to keep the trains moving they’re on top of the situation. And that is probably a good thing. We all want to go into stores that still have stuff on the shelves and in our economy it only takes a matter of a week before most of those shells are empty. Ask yourself. What do you do if you have no food at home? I know that I would not want to go back to foraging in the fields. OK truth told, I never did that, but I know about it. I’ve read a lot. And I want the reliance that food will be down at the store at the corner. If the trains stop that is not a guarantee. So I like others will be keeping an eye on this one. Who wants to go into the summer with nothing at home.

In the current news cycle we are noticing an uptick in student protest. Not all students. The major noise is coming from some very important university campuses. In both the US and Canada. Schools that are big enough that when you see their T-shirts or sweatshirts you recognize the name. And what I have noticed as those students face down the police is that they seem to have lost touch with the reality of being a student. Or perhaps these particular students never had it. There was a time when a student at the end of the semester was worried about two things. Exams and summer employment. But for a small small number of people there are those who decided to go camping in the middle of a lovely university campus in the hopes that someone will listen to what they have to say. I wonder, if they looked around to see if they have any audience. There are many ways to protest. Sitting in a tent on campus pretending that you have all the rights in the world is probably not a very good one. The average person on the street does not care and as for your fellow students they have more important priorities. Pack up and go along with your life. Even if your school decided to withdraw finance support for a particular project nobody else will notice. The numbers are too small. You can tell the rest of the world is all symbolic and believe me I concur. What you’re doing is nothing more than a symbol. A cheap political stunt. You’re going camping at the end of the month of April will not change the rest of the world. Will it bring fame to your campus? Will it bring fame to you? I doubt that you can put your protest experience on a resume when it comes to getting a job later on. And if you have enough money, that does not matter then you are a part of the problem and not the solution. Pack up your books and pack up your tent and go on with your life. I agree protest is a wonderful right but you are not protesting you are just waving in the wind.