Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
September 2nd, 2010 | 
Author: Ever summer, the Canadian Navy sends a vessel on a tour of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Wherever it stops, it’s open for visitors and makes for a great PR/recruiting exercise. The HMCS Fredericton was in Kingston yesterday:
Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Fredericton was commissioned on September 10, 1994 and is one of twelve Halifax Class frigates built in Canada. Boasting a complex Command and Control System, combined with an impressive array of modern weaponry and sensors, this ship is considered to be one of the most advanced general-purpose frigates in the world. A state of the art, multi-role frigate under the operational command of the Commander of Maritime Forces Atlantic, she is 4750 tonnes and can travel at 29+ knots.
The Ship’s company is comprised of 22 officers, 55 Chiefs and Petty Officers, and 150 non commissioned members, organized into six departments by trades. Crew members are cross-trained to undertake a wide variety of tasks from seamanship to fire fighting. The Ship’s six departments include: Combat, Deck, Combat System Engineering, Marine Systems, Supply and Air.
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“The world’s a dangerous place”
When was the last time you heard that? Would you be surprised to hear that it’s not really that dangerous? Yep.
B and I refuse to traumatize the boys, so they’re used to a degree of freedom that many of their friends aren’t: Phil’s been going to the park by himself since he was 6 or 7 and he not only takes Cameron periodically, he also babysits quite often as well.
The truth is that society has us conditioned to worry about all the wrong things. Kids are abducted by strangers less now than at any time in the last 40 years, but I know a lot of parents who won’t let their kids out of sight for fear of kidnapping. Kidnappings by someone known to the family is at an all-time high, though. Yet, we don’t worry about that.
I’m rambling, but NPR posted a quick piece about danger yesterday. It turns out that none of the top 5 parental fears are grounded in reality: Read the rest of this entry »
In the 80′s and 90′s, I had visions of making a living in the journalism world. I wasn’t really interested in leaving Kingston, so that never happened, but I still go everywhere with my camera and take pictures everywhere. I’ve had a few photos published and it’s nice to know that I still have a bit of a feel for it.
Two were used this summer. both from protests over the federal government’s decision to close the prison farm system.
The first was posted on the website of The Dominion, an independent, monthly news magazine:
No, nothing really dangerous. Honest. Jim’s post today reminded me of a couple of stories about fire and I had to come back to post. 
- Bridget no longer lights the gas grill at our house. She hasn’t since before Phil was born in 1997. I do most of the cooking, so she was being helpful and decided to go light the ‘Q’ for me. I was cooking burgers or something. Anyway, like about 99% of them on the planet, the push-button igniter on our grill was an iffy affair. Sometimes it would work like a champ: turn on the propane, listen for the hiss, push the button and poof! Fire. Other times it would click and click and refuse to do any good. So, I’m in the kitchen, getting stuff together and I hear the first click. Then another. Then, a third. This is usually the point where I turn off the gas and go find some matches. B pushed the thing once more: I heard the ‘click’, quickly followed by a “WHOOSH” noise, quickly followed by her exclamation: “WHOA!”. I ran outside to check on her. Women without an eyebrow look even funnier than guys for some reason. Honestly, I’m surprised I wasn’t beaten to death. I could barely breathe, let alone ask if she was all right. I laughed so hard that I was thought I was going to pass out. I was laughing that hard.
For some reason, grilling has been adopted by culinarily-challenged men everywhere as their domain. For some reason, guys who can’t boil water think that it’s their place in the world to grill dinner. In our house, that division of labour works just fine. 
Lighting a ceremonial campfire at Cub or Scout camp is always a production. There are hundreds of sites on the web dedicated to theatrically lighting a campfire. At our Fall camp a couple of years ago, I volunteered to produce a flaming arrow to light the fire. Naturally, I had visions of an arrow flying out of the gloom into the heart of the fire and it working right away. It may sound nuts, but I almost immediately started experimenting with rocket motors. It was a natural for me: I had model rockets as a kid and couldn’t think of a better way to get the arrow into the fire from a distance. Even better that the kids wouldn’t see me setting it off. The problem was that all of the rocket motors that I could find had an “ejection charge”. The motor is designed to burn the thrust charge, pause for a second or two, then eject the parachute for safe recovery of the rocket. Pete and I did an experiment at the cottage and while it worked beautifully, the ejection charge proceeded to shoot the arrow back out of the fire. I’ll see if I can find the video. I wound up running a fishing line on an angle from the flagpole into the fire and lighting some gauze wrapped around the end of the arrow. It would have worked very well but for two things: the second that I let go of the arrow, it bounced and the forward hook let it loose from the line. Picture a flaming arrow pointing at the ground, slowly sliding down the line to the fire. I jumped forward and hooked it back on the line and gave it a shove to the fire … just as the campfire chief (the leader running the ceremonial fire) walked in front of the line. He came within inches of getting it right in the behind. It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done and we have a story to tell other pack leaders at meetings. - At Spring camp, another leader (his camp name is Kaa. I’m Mang, the bat) was campfire chief, but I was helping
him work out the ignition system. We’re in what can only be described as a spiral of doom wrt camp fires. We keep coming up with insane ways to outdo each other. He had decided to use pyrodex in his ritual. Yeah, I know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. 
Anyway, the trick was igniting the stuff. If he’d bothered to mention it, I still had some rocket motor igniters at home. Instead, he was thinking of using batteries and steel wool to light the stuff. It’s actually a pretty straightforward survival technique: touch the contacts of a 9-volt battery against the steel wool and the stuff actually burns. That’s easy. But, it requires a very precise touch to place the wires in just the right place in the wool to get this to work from a distance. We found that out during one of the tests: Kaa was holding the wires in place against the steel wool holding a quantity of pyrodex while I touched the other end of the wires to the battery terminal. It didn’t work. Before I could take the wires off the battery terminals, he tried to get a closer look at what was going on and wiggled the wires on the wool at the same time. The cloud of smoke and flame was a sight to behold. I lost sight of Kaa as it engulfed his head. I was sure that we’d killed him, but he quickly sat down and started coughing. When I got a good look at him, I found out just how badly it could have gone: he’d lost half of his left eyebrow, a good chunk of the left side of his moustache and any chest hair that was peeking out of his shirt. The scary part was his head: he must have turned it just as the powder flared, because the toasty bits involved the left side of his head all the way to behind his ear. He claimed to be fine and survived. The real shame came later that evening when we tried to light the fire. It didn’t work and he had to do it manually.
Chil (another leader) and I have a different plan for the fire at Fall camp. I’ll let you know how it goes. The good news is that my insurance is paid up.
Greg and I just got back from Leominster, MA. We were attending the second annual Northeastern Treatment Free Beekeeping Conference. Tired doesn’t really begin to cover it: 640km down, 3½ full days of speakers and talking bees, then 815km back (side-trip to see Gary & Maude).
To say that I’m glad to be on vacation for the next two weeks wouldn’t begin to cover it. My family, getting away from the rat race of town and a few projects are really looking good right now.
I’m off to the 8:30 boat to paradise.
I’ll try to post a few pictures from the projects. Take care and have fun.
I’ve never been able to wade my way through any of Jane Austen’s stuff. The whole upper-crusty, heaving bosom and propriety genre just bores me to tears.
So I was really quite interested in Pride And Prejudice And Zombies was released. What a great way to liven up some interminably dull prose! No such luck. Same old dreck, with the odd bit of brain-munching. I couldn’t even get through the comic book. Bleah. I kept hoping for the “unmentionables” to overrun the house and kill everyone, but it didn’t happen. At least not as far as I read.
Today, I was working my way through some back posts on the blogs that I read (terribly behind, sorry) and this was posted to BoingBoing on Saturday. Jane Austen Fight Club:
