A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

This blog has been a tad historical lately, hasn't it? Wait, here's more! I was trying to organize my CD/DVD archive discs and I came across a directory of files written in 1986. These were typed on my very first IBM compatible in Taif, Saudi Arabia. Originally saved on a 360K floppy disk, these keystrokes were made 18 years ago in WordStar. My current copy of Office 2003 opened them with ease. Here's a letter I sent to my father:

---

Siyanco SOCP 06
Box R-168
APO, New York 09017

December 18th 6:30am

Dear Dad,

I'm sure that this letter won't get to you before Christmas.
The APO mail DOES slow during this time of year. It may take
several weeks to get there. But that's nothing. I just got a
wedding invitation from a girl in Sunapee. She sent it "interna-
tional mail" and included only 22 cents postage. It took three
months and one day to arrive!

This is the 'thirteenth' computer letter that I've sent
to you. Although you won't be able to tell, I'm writing this on a
new version of word-processing program. This WordStar improved
version cost me $1.33 as a copying fee. It retails for $170 in
the States!

I haven't done many interesting things lately. You know how
life is: Get up, go to work, and sleep. Oh yeah, I forgot the
eating part. Even though I haven't been pigging-out, I must buy
size 34' pants, AGAIN! That's O.K., I look better with a little
meat on me. (How trim are you?) Next week, on Christmas day,
there's an Interdenominational Christmas Service at the McDonnell-
Douglas Company (the aircraft people). In the afternoon I have
volunteered to bring a few company employees to Jeddah to catch
their flight for vacation time. Why, not? It's better than
sitting around here all afternoon.

A whole lot of people left from here yesterday. There are
many people who like to be home during the Christmas season. I
would too, but I am looking forward to vacation in the spring.
Maybe prepare for a teaching job in the Seattle area? See, you
will be able to take a trip out the the PAC NORTHWEST to see me.
It really is a nice place.

My car is sitting outside with a little problem. Last week
my battery was dead. At first I thought I had left on the
parking lights or something stupid like that. But upon closer
inspection, I discovered that the adjustment for the brake light
switch was off. Essentially the circuit was open all the time.
Hence, no juice. My Delco Freedom Battery is now all charged up
and ready to reinstall. Isn't it fun owning old junks? Oh, I
forgot, you don't anymore. Still, I wish they made new cars like
that old, blue Dodge Dart that we had for a while. (Back
before they'd screwed up the old slant 6's.) Why do people think
that cars are something more than t r a n s p o r t a t i o n ?

Enough editorial content, I have got to get ready for
breakfast. Just wanted to say "hi". Get ready for 1987. (It
sounds like something out of a Science Fiction book.) I love
you. Your son,

---

Labels: file archives, Saudi Arabia

Yesterday's picture showed Columbia Street over five decades ago. Yet, of course the history of my city is older than that. Here's a postcard copy of Columbia Street some ninety-five years ago!


Original photo found at New Westminster Public Library Photo Database.

One reason we like living in New Westminster is that it's smaller than other communities around Vancouver. The small size provides the city with a genuine sense of community. This is further heightened by the fact it has an important history. I created a page that explains a bit about this back when I used to have a webcam on my balcony. You can read the overview found there.

Labels: New Westminster

The central focus of my city used to be Columbia Street. Here's a winter picture of downtown New Westminster, BC taken in 1948. Snow is rare enough to have merited a photograph.


Original photo found at New Westminster Public Library Photo Database.

My focus of the city is still on Columbia street as I live downtown. It'd be very nice to see some of the proposed, future improvements come to pass. I would especially like to see the re-introduction of a median strip.

Labels: New Westminster

I've abandoned little pieces of Microsoft during the past year. First, I dallied around with Firefox as an alternate browser to Internet Explorer and have to admit I like its clean and solid feeling.

More importantly, I ditched Hotmail when Google Mail first arrived on the block. Then, my default browser page changed to Google News Canada. After that, I installed the Google Bar for quick searches and access to the Blogger button. Of course in order to index my burgeoning collection of digital photos, their Picasa software found space on my hard drive too. Recently, I was amazed by the power of Google Desktop. How wonderful it seemed to have near instantaneous access to the wealth of the data within my own files!

Today however, Microsoft is starting to win me back. Their BETA search is catching on or maybe I'm just pleased as it's now indexing this blog. The addition of a new tool will probably make me reconsider some of my defections. If you embrace it, it will change the way you think of your computer! I'm very happy that I downloaded the following:

Labels: Google, software

We figured it was an epic that demanded being seen in large format. As it's been out a while and there's always a slew of new releases during the Christmas break, it will probably soon slip away from screens at even the 21-cinema complexes. Therefore, we went to see Alexander yesterday afternoon. The film's ambitions might not have actually matched the results; however, it's worth seeing.

Speaking of worth: Alexander ran 173 minutes. If I get out my calculator . . . I can see that it cost just 6.33 cents per minute to view this movie. That's a good deal! Remember though, this was determined by same guy who decides which wine to buy by dividing alcohol-content by price.

Labels: Christmas, movies

When one copies sound or video in analog format, the process takes exactly as long as the event did. As you may know however, when throwing around digital files, the copying process can take a small fraction of the actual, linear time.

'Trying to cope in analog' is similar to how I've felt when entering my missing eJournal entries. The actual events took place during September and October, but I've spent near an equal amount of time getting it blogged. Never again, shall I leave on a 2-month vacation without a notebook computer! From the next trip forth, I will keep the journal entries and edit the journal photos while the events are occurring!

Regardless, I'm finally pleased to announce that true to my blogline, every day of 2004 is now contained here. Each week of our trip is complete:

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

If you're a frequent visitor to my eJournal and images, you may have seen some of the entries and photos from our trip to Sri Lanka. It is now completely online and available, so the numbers above link to the weeks away. In order to read sequentially, you must start reading from the bottom of the pages.

Labels: analog, blogging