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

The breadth of the Internet continues to rapidly expand as historical text and photos are added to online collections.

Places from my pre-Net past seem to be slowly coming online. This morning, I was thinking about the town of my childhood. It's a place I've not visited since the summer of 2002 when I returned for my 25th high school reunion. Yet, I can still remember marching in the town's bicentennial parade as a Cub Scout. The east coast of North America has twice as much recorded history as life out west.

I was trying to locate specific information dealing with the history of Sunapee, New Hampshire. The town boasts a lake which was a tourist destination from the late 1800's. Well-heeled New Yorkers and Bostonians used to come up by train and then shuttle around the 9-mile lake in steamships. The era extended well into the 1930's until the Great Depression hastened the end of the big hotels.

The accompanying top photo was from a postcard of the Ben Mere. This property is in the premier location perfectly aligned for a view of Sunapee Harbor. Today, as you can see, the land has green grass, a bandstand, and parking lots.

I am trying to find out when the old, Ben Mere was torn down. Additionally, I'd be interested in learning any details about it. This blog gets quite a lot of traffic from Internet searches, so I'm hoping that someone will write to me about this topic. I think it is important to have some of this data online as well as in the Abbott Library!

Labels: Internet, New Hampshire, Sunapee, train

Apparently, I'll have a three-day weekend.

BCIT : : breaking news & alerts : : labour update

The labour dispute isn't with my union but we won't cross the picket lines set up by BCGEU Support Staff. As a contractor employee, I'll have the chance to reschedule classes. Yet, this will certainly throw a monkey wrench into my finely-tuned course schedule!

Labels: BCIT, staff

First, I created and maintained web pages as a type of personal, electronic resume. Then, in September of 2003, this blog was born.

I've come across bloggers who've given up on web pages and now concentrate exclusively on their current endeavor. I rather think all e-info can be 'cross-connected'. I'd not dare to guess how many links extend between my server's main folder and this blog subdirectory.

If you click the screenshot, you'll load a web-page that was created nearly ten years ago. It, however, has gone through updates during intervening years. In fact, the countries of Singapore and Sri Lanka were added/modified in the fall.

. . . of Columbia and Sixth, at 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon, for the fourth sunless day in a row, the rain continued to pour down. It washed over all objects within sight, including this awning.



Last Sunday, our cold snap -- snapped and the deluge began. It was a nice change for the first two days. In fact, I had sort of missed the rain. That was 150mm (nearly 6 inches) ago. That was before flooding, landslides, and highway washouts.

As far as I'm concerned, it can stop anytime. Although there appears to be a lull, it may not be for long. A pineapple express weather system is perfectly aligned to bring us precipitation originating from down Waikiki-way for another week!

Labels: complaints, weather

I didn't beg. I didn't complain. I didn't even see the 2-for-1 coupons in the newspaper. So, it was quite the surprise yesterday when Jay suggested going to the River Rock Casino Resort's Runway 26 Buffet in Richmond. The dessert table is so good it would be worth ponying up at their standard pricing. We ate enough to nearly skip dinner.

Labels: food

Radio Personalities: Mohammed Al-Shamsi and Dennis Hurd.



This file has been kicking around on my eRésumé for years. It highlights the BBS system discussed in yesterday's entry. Our college used to produce and air a weekly program at the studios of Dubai FM. It was hosted by Mike Friganiotis and combined a mix of music with commentary about events at Dubai Men's College. Unlike most of my blog media, this half hour audio program was encoded for RealPlayer. [Editor's note: These files are now in mp3 format but the quality is poor due to their age and conversion.]

Labels: BBS, Dubai, file archives, Mediaplayer

To further the scrapbook analogy in yesterday's entry, I went hunting on an old, backup-data CD. I decided to fix my sights on something written a decade ago. I was working in the United Arab Emirates at that time. I discovered a complete sub-folder of posters and promotional material that I'd created.

The Higher Colleges of Technology System allowed me a tremendous amount of freedom to explore computer communication. I ordered Galacticom's The Major BBS software which later morphed into Worldgroups. Many newcomers will not remember the days of computer Bulletin Board Systems and cranky, 2400 bps modems which could potentially interfere with a computer's serial mouse. By now, working in ANSI and RipScript is certainly a lot art too. All these were well before widespread adoption of the Internet. I spent far too many hours tweaking and supervising . . .
The ELECTRONIC FORUM Online!
I found this notice that I wrote in February 1995. It looks like a list of names of 'long-lost' colleagues. This should allow me to burn up a bit of processing time with Google today.

---

H.C.T. Staff Accounts are automatically deleted after five months of inactivity. Just log on frequently to keep your account up-to-date.

Abdulla Almarzoqi, Aladin Zayegh, Andre Corbeil, Andrew G Nagorski, Angela Rickett, Anne L. Andres, Athol Dixon, Aziz El-Mutwalli, Barbara Kelly, Basel Badran, Behjat Al-Yousuf, Bobby Mehta, Brenda Bates, Brian Edwards, Bridget Hayes, Carl Haigh, Cecile Blackett, Chadli Belabi, Chandra Sekhar, Charles Richardson, Cheryl Fernandes, Chris Laithwaite, Chris Maloney, Columba Mealy, Coreen Dolan, Dave Tinker, Debbie Bartlett, Dennis Campbell, Dennis Hurd, Dine Lahcen, Ed Gunal, Ed McLean, Farhan Mahmood, Fraser Robinson, Gamini Weerasekera, Gary Theal, Heather McLean, Helen Davies, Hildy Benham, Homa Bina, Hoor Azami, Humayun Qadri, Hung Tan, Iain Kelly, Iftikhar Hussain, Imad Ramadan, J. Gibson, Jamal Shehab, Jamila Qawi, Jill Marriott, Joe Lindsay, John Innanen, John Moran, Jonas Amoapim, Jonathan Wilde, Joseph Yang, Julie Powell, Kamal Karim, Karen Lanphear, Ken Nichol, Khalil Khouri, Kirk Dowswell, Krishna Udupi Diggavi, Larry Garrett, Lorin Ritchie, Lorraine Zaccheus, Mahesh Nileshwar, Marcia Hijaab, Margaret Power, Marilyn Murphy, Mark Derro, Martin Greenwood, Maureen Godfrey, Maureen Szulczewski, Melanie Cranko, Michael Cross, Michelle Hinckfuss, Mike Friganiotis, Mike McPherson, Mike Thompson, Moayyad Mohammad, Mohammed Darr, Nabil A. Mahmoud, Nabil Marshi, Nagwa Abou-El-Naga, Naima Shaikh, Naser Hachem Nasri, Nigel Corroon, Nigel Ingram, Omar Ahmed Bafaqih, P.M.Rajasekaran, Patricia Bosma, Paul Coulson, Paul Mace, Peter Morley, Philip Thornhill, Prakash Basrur, Richard Day, Richard Naccarato, Richard Roshay, Rob McTavish, Robert Fournier, Robyn McDowell, Roger Noujaim, Ronnie AlMeida, Saleem Raza, Sally Edwards, Samuel Shanks, Sanjeev Ananth, Shabbir Ali, Shankar Subramanian, Shoukath Ali, Sian Walters, Souad Al Chalabi, Stella Caudill. Steve Shorb, Steve Woodward, Suad Mannaa, Sue Crosby, Suhail Manzoor, Sundari Balasubramanian, Susanne McMahon, Suzie Nicholson, Talal Sadi, Terence Cooke, Valerie Clarey, Vanitha Swaminathan, Venkat Prithviraj, Ziad Yasmine.

Labels: BBS, Dubai, file archives, lists, software, staff

People create their blogs for a multitude of reasons.

Unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, too many end up merely offering comments on current, world events. I think blogging about politics is a silly waste of time. If a potential reader disagrees, they'll not even spend five seconds. If they agree .. well, that'd end as just preaching to the choir.

Quite frankly this exercise is strictly for me. It is thrilling to see over 25 visitors come in through Internet searches every day, but that whole aspect is of secondary importance to me. I am witnessing this blog evolve into a gigantic, personal scrapbook. I've not the fortitude to start from any sort of structured beginning. So, a daily whim plus a good, blog-search function will eventually allow me to provide a personal map for years of memoirs.

For example, I really didn't think I had any pictures of the apartment we moved to upon arriving in Canada. For the first two years, we rented on the 9th floor at 828 Agnes Street. Quite accidentally, I was looking on a CD named, Permanent Backup Data and found this view of the living room. It was most likely taken in 1997.

Labels: blogging, New Westminster

Reading blogs can make one so . . . worldly and wise.

I'd pretty much forgotten about the generally unsuccessful stewardship over my sea-monkeys. What a brilliant marketing scheme! Those little shrimp have been wiggling around in tanks for 45 years. Now, of course, they've got their own online storefront.

Labels: monkeys

There have been 505 days of my eJournal and images entries since this blog first hit the Net.

Today, snow and freezing rain are falling. It's been been unusually cold here during the past ten days or so. It should be averaging about 8 degrees Celsius (46F) but hasn't been. Here's a graph of temperatures for the past week in New Westminster.

This data is updated whenever this page is
loaded. During the week of January 9-16, it
showed an average daily tempterature of
-1.6C which is approximately 29 degrees
Fahrenheit. Burrr! That feels cold!

Labels: New Westminster, weather