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

In the past, I blogged about when Jay and I took an Alaskan Cruise.

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Some of my readers may not realize how important the Vancouver-Alaska route is to the cruise industry.



I have mentioned cruises a number of times this week. This is simply in anticipation of a coastal cruise that we'll do in May. We'll head north from San Diego until we arrive at the home port.

Labels: Alaska, cruise, places

After pulling an older 120-gigabyte Maxtor out of my computer case, I couldn't let it go to waste. I found an el-cheapo drive enclosure for sale at my computer store. For $20, I reckoned it'd be useful to have a drive that will plug into the USB port of the nearest computer.

The nGear brand is not especially well-known for quality. The point was driven home. In fact, the first one I picked up on Wednesday simply didn't work. I brought the unit back to my computer store. Fortunately, it's only one block out of the way when I drive home. The technician took a look and agreed that it was defective. He replaced it for me.

This time, as soon as I connected the drive and plugged it in, I had 120G of extra storage space. Think of all the mp3's I will be able to carry around with my laptop now! It's too bad the power supply is nearly as large and heavy as a cement block.

Labels: computers

On Monday, I briefly blogged about a coastal cruise we'll be taking next month. Although this week my doctor chided me about my weight, actually I'm mostly looking forward to the buffets! I remember the fantastic food of Princess Cruises when we did an Alaskan cruise. I am wondering how the food will be on Holland-America.

The initial three nights in San Diego will be interesting too. I haven't been to southern California since I was a kid on a family road trip.



By complete coincidence, I was looking through some folders with my digital photos. These particular ones were taken on National Day in 2002 when friends took the oath of citizenship at Canada Place in downtown Vancouver. We needed to walk by a ship, so I snapped a photo. It appears as if the name on the side is the Veendam. That means it is exactly the same ship we'll be on from May 9th to the 14th.

Labels: cruise, places

I don't know quite why I asked for an eight o'clock doctor's appointment. I knew that'd give me plenty of time to make yesterday's 1:00 pm class, I guess.

I went primarily to find out the cholesterol numbers on a blood test which I had a couple of weeks back. My doctor gives me a photocopy so I can track the various numbers over time.

I thought I'd make a pdf copy so that I'd be able to look back on the March results far in the future. I foresee this blog going on for years and that I'll have access for as long as I keep breathing. Talk about a lack of privacy concerns! I can understand the reservation of letting kids expose all personal details on the web. I mean there ARE pedophiles. Yet, I have no qualms about being stalked or molested. All sorts of information about me sits out there anyway. I don't believe anyone is actually interested enough to pull it all together. If so, please send me the completed copy.

Labels: blogging, opinions

I ran to pick up my new Seagate drive yesterday morning. I came back and found it easy to format by keeping in my current drive C.

Nothing went easily after that though. I did unplug C and managed to get Windows XP running on the 300 gig drive. The problem, which I discovered much later, was that it didn't recognize my network adapter. Then there's a Catch 22. How could I connect to find the correct one from the Internet when my network adapter wasn't working?

Also, the wizard that's supposed to make it easy to copy files and settings, didn't work right. I could 'collect' the data from the 'old' disk on a USB flash drive. Yet, when I booted up with the new drive, the program told me that I hadn't inserted the correct data drive for the necessary files. I consider myself a nerd and yet I couldn't figure it out. How in the devil is an average-Joe supposed to figure out what to do?

There's nothing that said I had to get things completed yesterday. I actually copied all data files to the Seagate. It seems to rip right along. It's inside the box along with the old drive C. I'm running Windows on the old one and data on the new one. when I get the time, I'll completely install the operating system and then throw away the old drive.

All the playing around took the better part of yesterday and I guess I enjoyed every minute of it ... in retrospect.

Labels: Windows

Last week I checked out this book from the library. San Diego is not a place we've been before, so we'll need a little advice.

My current class doesn't finish until May 5th. Then, I've got exactly a week before another begins. A week turns out to the perfect amount of time.

We'll head out on Saturday the 6th by first taking the Quick Shuttle down to Seattle to catch the flight to San Diego. After three nights, we'll board Holland America's Veendam. Subsequently, there's a leisurely, 5-night trip up the coast with a free half day in Seattle and a complete day in Victoria. We're back in Vancouver on Sunday the 14th, just in time for a new class the next day.

The ship was in the Caribbean for the winter. The day it docks at Vancouver, it'll begin a summer of cruising the Inside Passage to Alaska and back.

Labels: Seattle, travel planning

The very spring before heading to Canada, Jay went home for the Sinhalese New Year. This picture was taken in Anaradhapura with his mother, both sisters, and father. His brother wasn't with them. The photo was taken by Jay's brother-in-law.

Shortly after getting back to Dubai, the paperwork for Canada was ready. All this took place ten years ago this month.

Labels: Dubai, government