Back from the Bruce

The extended weekend up at Carolyn's cottage on the peninsula was awesome. Mostly quiet. Mostly nice weather. Mostly good food.

3 hours of rain in 4 and a half days is nothing to complain about, even when you burn your knuckles on the barbecue trying to keep the food from getting soaked with rain spilling off the roof.

In an effort to save money, I tried to keep the road tripping to a minimum, but we did manage to make it up to Tobermory to walk around for a bit and see the million dollar sailboats interspersed with more modest fishing boats and glass bottom boat tour boats. Carolyn told me she'd gone on one of the glass bottom tours once only to find that the 'glass bottom' was a couple feet square window, which you had to fight for space around with the rest of the passengers. Certainly not the image the mind conjures for the description.

We also made it out to the Georgian Bay side to hike a little ways along the Bruce Trail out to the cliffs near Devil's Monument. With Carolyn's vertigo at cliff tops, and with trails running within a couple feet of the edge, we decided not to push very far along the trail.


After turning around and heading back to the van, we decided to try the drive north along the shore to the lighthouse at Cabot's Head. Most of the drive was a one lane gravel road right along the rocky beach with little room to pull aside for traffic coming the other way. Hopefully the scratches along the side of the van aren't anything more than some roughing of the clear coat; I still have to wash off the dust accumulated from that part of the trip. When we got to Cabot's Head though, there was a sign that requested a mandatory donation. The last time I checked, I thought that was called a fee, not a donation. We decided to turn around and were happy with the scenic drive, mostly on principle, but also on lack of change.

The rest of the time up there was spent sitting around in the sun watching the swarms of grasshoppers and frogs hop across the clearing, drinking, and burning through the lumber pile.

I won't use the end of this post to talk about how the only meal really gone wrong was the blueberry pancakes attempted by Carolyn. That would be mean.

Library Porn

Context:

If someone wants to look at internet pornography at a public library, they should have that right, says the executive director of the Ontario Public Library Association.

"Is that appropriate? No," said Shelagh Paterson. "But people should be able to access whatever they are looking for in the library."

The association does not set rules for public libraries in the province, but encourages them not to restrict access to information -- including on the internet.

"It's certainly an issue of concern for libraries," she said yesterday from Toronto.

She was responding to the concerns of Rob Nichol, a parent and owner of a cyber safety business who saw someone looking at porn near children at the Queen's Square library branch in Cambridge this week.

So first off, who goes to a library to look at porn? But whether you're a pervert or not, you should still have that right. Parents, and other squeamish types: if you're offended by porn, mind your own business and that of your children and don't gawk at people's monitors in the library. Its certainly not safe practice, but some people are in situations where they have to do things like bank online or similar sensitive matter wherever they can get a connection. If I were one of these people, I wouldn't want people staring at my screen, and its pretty reasonable to expect that kind of privacy. The same kind of thing should go for any browsing.

If you're gonna look around and snoop into other peoples business, then you deserve whatever eye-full of cheerleader girl-on-girl action you get. The library has done what should be expected of them in filtering the content in the children's area of the library. Outside of that, teach your child about respect of privacy, or keep them in the children's area. In my experience, the public access computers tend to be somewhat separated from the main book racks, so if you're that concerned, just keep your child away from the unfiltered computers.

All that said, again, who, aside from doing legitmate research (??), goes to the library to surf porn?

NFL 2008/2009 Regular Season Schedule

The season is coming up and after not being able to find a convenient schedule already in a spreadsheet online (without succumbing to joining the Micro$oft community), I decided to spend some time and set up a sheet complete with pivot tables very similar to a schedule I was able to find a few years back.

I figure I might as well make it accessible to anyone that needs it for setting up pools, etc., so here it is: NFL 08/09 Regular Season Schedule [xlsx]

Oh, Hey There

I guess I've been lost in the tubes. I'd like to say my absence was due to shocking amounts of productivity, but that would be a lie. You have to be careful about when you choose to tell your lies after all. Between the endless rain and the lack of income of any kind, its been difficult to really plan to do anything exciting.

But, somewhat out of the blue, Carolyn's parents have given her permission to use their cottage towards the end of August, so we'll be heading up to the Bruce Peninsula for a few days. I say it comes as a surprise because, despite her being closer to 30 than 20, they still end to be very conservative and protective in their treatment of her. There is of course some level of control you have to be willing to accept living at home, but then there is above and beyond the call of duty.

In any event, we have use of the cottage for a few days, provided we take care of mowing part of the lawn/weeds, and staining or sealing some deck boards of some kind. I can only hope that the wet weather patterns in these parts don't follow us up there so we can actually make use of the few days vacation time.