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

I think this is the nineteenth year of our annual summer celebration in New Westminster, BC. Things kicked off last night with opening ceremonies at the New Westminster Quay. Several stages were set up and each end of the boardwalk area had different musical performers. More people than I can ever remember seeing at the quay were walking around. The events continue today and tomorrow.



Small fireworks occurred last night. There's an encore presentation tonight. The barge with all the gunpowder is pulled out onto the Fraser River. Whereas, we usually just watch from the balcony. Last night, we spent an hour down at the quay. The show looked more impressive from beneath the explosions.

Labels: Fraser River, New Westminster, Quay

It seems a smidgen lame to complain about other drivers on the road. Like, for gads sake, Dennis, get a life and blog about something of greater import. Things are going well for me. Yet, I am a little tired after a 20-hour teaching week and I want to complain about something. It was either about the bad habits of other drivers or the economic and environmental stupidity of Vancouverites buying bottled water. I will go with the former today.

All people who drive more slowly than me are old farts and everyone going faster is an idiot. Maybe others also feel the same way. Unfortunately, I rather fear most other drivers are morons who aren't even aware there is anybody else on the road.

I have been recently cognizant of my driving habits due to the high price of gasoline. I'm no hyper-mileager; however, I generally think and plan while behind the wheel. There are some pretty serious inclines between BCIT and home. I shake my head as I see most cars fly up the hills with their right feet buried in their carburetors. It's doubly silly as, although they blast past, we again sit side-by-side at the traffic light further up the road. They ended up sucking up far too much precious fuel for absolutely no measurable advantage.

On my first car, a Ford Pinto, I put in an extra gauge that measured the manifold vacuum pressure. I don't know why other than perhaps it was fun to watch. By driving as if the accelerator were a fragile egg, I could keep the gauge firmly in the green, fuel-saving area. Getting a run for hills became second nature. It was perhaps physics class where I figured out having to use the brakes meant one was wasting momentum that one had already paid for in spent fuel. Looking a bit beyond the hood is a good practice. There's no reason not to coast up to a traffic light that's going to be red.

Driving to save gas means driving safely as one is more aware of the highway conditions. It's a shame that more people don't bring along their brains when they drive somewhere.

Labels: cars, opinions

Of all the places to live in the Lower Mainland, I am happy to be a resident of New Westminster. Oh, there are a million places around Metro-Vancouver where it'd be nice to hang one's hat. Yet, New Westminster is a nice fit for us.



We could probably afford a shoebox-sized room in Yaletown, or an aging apartment in the West End. I get a sense though that both are full of people who are a little myopic. New Westminster seems a little less segregated and privileged; it's connection to reality a bit more intense.

My feelings are not simply for certain physical real estate. The attachment is probably much more emotional in nature. For example, it is not really due to the fact we sit near the geographic center of the region and are easily connected by transit. My love of this city really doesn't have to do with its amenities nor the proximity to any particular facilities.

New Westminster just feels real with a palpable history. It's a good place to call home. It is smaller in size and population when compared to most cities surrounding it. That makes it easy to feel a part of. We're definitely residents of New West. To prove the point, it sure seems to us as though last weekend's Show & Shine antique car show and this weekend's Fraserfest are really ours.

Labels: feelings, New Westminster

A whole lot of entries here are falling into the category of I-can-remember-such-and-such. Maybe I'm thinking about how things have changed as I have a birthday coming up next week.

Today, I was considering how easy it is to make attractive and effective documents. Earlier, I was putting together questions for my course's midterm exam. I don't spend a lot of time in a word processor nowadays. I find this interesting as it was probably the primary way I spent my time when computers first came out in the 1980's. I suppose we were just happy to be able to fix corrections before they hit the paper in those days. It was the final goodbye to correction fluid and ribbons. The paper which slowly emerged from a noisy dot-matrix printer, although nothing to brag about by today's standards, still looked better than something typed on most manual typewriters.

It wasn't long after learning key sequences for Wordstar, that we began to expect more. WordPerfect shipped with a ton of proprietary .WGM graphics to spruce up one's letters and memos. Nothing that ran under DOS was really WYSWYG at the time though.

Now, the average user can spit out something that looks quite impressive. Rather than relying on clip art, it's simple to paste directly from an Internet image search. I was thinking of this as I came across some old midterm tests where objects for writing a technical description were sketched and physically glued to the sheets before photocopying. Now I can instantly find a picture of almost anything. Say, I want to include a table lamp on a worksheet. I have nearly an unlimited selection at my fingertips.

Just in case any of my present students stop by here, I'll warn that a lamp is not an object on tomorrow's midterm examination!

Labels: computers, software

Have I run out of things to say today? That's not it, exactly.

Jay took a medical day due to having a dental appointment. As it turned out zip.ca had sent a Blu-ray disc. When that type of disc arrives early in week, it must sit on the coffee table until the weekend when we have time to view it. This afternoon provided an early chance to watch Spider-Man 3. I think we're a whole summer behind in blockbusters!

Oh, as well as preparing for tomorrow's class, I also went down to the pool area as I do everyday.



This is 1:13 minute clip.

Labels: zip.ca

I have worked at the British Columbia Institute of Technology for nearly eleven years. People often describe BCIT in many ways. They might call the schedules demanding. Up-to-date might describe the content of the technical programs. Well-respected might relate to the general opinions about its training for the workplace.

There's one adjective, however, which I seldom hear when others talk about the Burnaby campus. The missing word is beautiful.



Our buildings are a ramshackle collection of very practical spaces. My office, for example, is in a World-War-II era shed which doesn't differ much from a Quonset hut. There's not a great deal of charming landscaping nor public art. The Burnaby campus is fairly practical, if not to a noticable degree ... fairly ugly.

Yet, as I was walking back to one of the expansive parking lots today after class, I saw many scenes which were pleasing. When the weather is so great, and my mood so ready to 'stop and smell the roses', one can surely find a few relaxing views. Trees are capable of covering up all manner of abomination, aren't they?

Labels: BCIT, feelings, weather

I don't know whether I want to focus on the fact we bought trip tickets for the fall, or the method of purchase. Shall I briefly mention both?

e-Tickets in Hand
It turns out that Italy is a go. We've shortened the planned stay to just three weeks. We'll leave in the middle of September and return during the first week of October.

Method of Purchase
Rome is one European city to which no charters fly from Vancouver. Whereas summer flights to London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and even Paris are cheap, we had to search through regularly-scheduled flights to Italy.

We called around to different travel agents and found nothing less than $1600 per ticket! If one has the time, it's easy to keep trying on Expedia. Over the course of many days, one just keeps plugging in different dates and times. Travel agents in this day and age may be able to only offer deals known to them. Unfortunately, for many itineraries, they are as nearly in the dark as a potential customer.

I found that it is generally four or five hundred dollars cheaper to leave from Seattle. By trying different days of the week, I hit upon a special deal. When clicking to price, a special notice popped up and advised, "We found a better price for your selected flights!" As it turns out, for a bit over $820 each, we can fly round-trip from Seattle to Rome. That's almost half the price quoted from YVR. Of course, there's the additional hassle of getting down there in time for the flight. Even after adding in hotels near Seatac for both the departing and arriving flight and the airport shuttle bus, we still come out saving hundreds of dollars. It showed a strange routing:

Going:
Seattle to New York on American Airlines
New York to Rome on Delta Airlines

Returning:
Rome to Los Angeles on Alitalia
Los Angeles to Seattle on Alaska Airlines

So, last night, when all travel agents around here were shut, I entered credit card and passport numbers, and voila! We are now confirmed to FCO and back. Don't tell me the Internet hasn't affected how we conduct business nowadays!

Labels: flying, Italy 2008, travel planning