Thursday, July 19, 2007

"You are the leader pot smokers emulate"

Every now and then I stumble on one of those silly quizzes, and sometimes I take the bait. I liked the results of this one so much that I had to post it here! ;)



(with four blog posts today can you tell that I took a rest day from unpacking?)

even more moving photos!

When relocating it's not a common thing to have to take the "garage" with you. In my case, I had built a covered shed for the trike at the old place, and it of course had to come with me. It was fairly simply put together, so easy to take apart. When rebuilding I'll need to beef it up a fair bit, because at the new place I'm told the spot for it can receive a healthy build-up of ice in the winter from water dripping off the flat roof. But this rebuild will have the added benefit of diminishing my woodpile, which for the most part still resides at my old place with the owner's consent.

So here's how you move a wide load with the trike - just put the stuff across the box and hope it all weighs enough to keep it in place. With slow cycling it did. ;)


(note red safety flag)

The roof panels, acquired from a friend that was demolishing an outbuilding. They fit almost perfectly into the box, and I mean like with a 1/2" all around to spare! The only thing that prevented them from lying flat was the battery box for the electric assist (which is soon to be relocated under the trike in a semi-permanent installation). Most of the move was actually done without using the assist at all (battery pack not even in place), but I was getting tired at this point and needed the extra help.

My regular 2-wheel bikes were easy to fit, but not so the big beasts. In the above and below photos you can see the Rainbow Chopper, the CCM tandem. and the Infinity recumbent.


Gratuitous cat photo. In the new place, and Jett is mauling his catnip Teddybear, recovered from under a shelving unit while packing.

more move photos

Since the owners of my previous abode were not returning until mid-month I had time to move, which was good since I had to figure out how to fit everything in the new place! So instead of having the usual "do it all in one day" I did it in stages. For the big stuff Richard arrived with the organ trailer, and Greg came with his old Cannondale trailer. Between my trike and these machines we were able to move a fair bit in just two trips! What helped was there we were only going four and half blocks away...


(The cooler is full of small bits of drum hardware)


Since after unloading we had both machines empty, Richard said he wanted to find out how well my trike could be carried on his trailer. Given the layouts of each, it was a surprisingly good fit! Width-wise the trike just fit inside the railings, the rear wheels tucked in behind the rear trailer wheels, and the front wheel just nudged the front rail. Funnily enough, Juergen-- who did the welding for my trike--also helped Richard weld this trailer together, though they were done about a year apart.

post-move

It is truly amazing the amount of stuff one can accumulate over time. Now, it's understandable that I would have drum and music gear that can take up a lot of space, along with the various bikes. But when you keep hanging on to things like very obsolete computers then it's time for a sanity check!

The very first computer I bought back in 1990 was (don't laugh) an Atari. A 1040ST to be exact, with a whopping 1 meg of RAM. The reason I bought it was because not only was it cheaper than a Mac, it came with built-in MIDI ports for doing music work, something no other manufacturer offered. It's been said that musicians kept Atari alive long after the gamers had moved on to other platforms (my machine my have been one of the few that never had a game played on it), and I was one of them. ;) It cost me $1000 for the machine, and another $500(!!) for the MIDI software (Notator, which morphed into Logic, one of the current industry standards). I even used this beast to get on the Net back in '95, via National Capital FreeNet using the Lynx text browser!


And of course the ultra-ergonomic mouse...

(not that the PowerMac's original one was much better.)

When I bought my first Mac back in '99 I transferred most of the MIDI files over, though it was a bit of a pain because I was going to new software and it didn't recognize Notator's loop function. And since I didn't move all of the files (and because I had the shelf space) my Atari set-up stayed around. And it had grown over the years, due to people giving me the darn things, so I had two monitors and two hard drives, including the largest hard drive Atari ever made, the mighty Megafile 60 (a whopping 60 megs).

(and due to its fan noise it sounded like a small vacuum cleaner when you fired it up)

But then the move into smaller living quarters comes up and it was time for a purge. Funnily enough, someone bought all my Atari gear for $50, but my upgraded PowerMac 7500, which served me well with almost no grief from 1999 until June 2006, had to be given away.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

raccoons!

In my previous place the cats had their own door for coming and going. Until earlier this year that is, when after the fourth visit from a raccoon I closed that door off and the cats had to put up with me letting them in and out the front door.

Now we're in the new place, which is one of three apartments in an old house. My kitchen and bathroom windows look out onto the flat roof of the unit below, and there's a fire escape to the side which the cats use to reach the ground. I leave the window open for them to do this, and last night I heard a noise and went into the kitchen and there's a raccoon about to come in! He sees me and runs back onto the roof, but then turns around, lies down and looks at me!


Cheeky little bugger...

He didn't come up the fire escape, but from the roof of the house to the left in the photo (you can see the flat roof and deck just past the sloped part). I fabricated a wooden barricade that should keep him away, and that will also keep Jett from exploring over there, which he has done a few times now (I don't mind him wandering around, but I'd rather he visit the neighbours on their porch and not through an open upstairs window).

UPDATE: it's a few hours later, I'm busy unpacking things and figuring that there's now no worry about leaving the kitchen screen window open so the cats can come and go, and a bat flies into the apartment! He fluttered about for a minute or so then flew out the open balcony door. After closing that I went into the kitchen to close the window and Kitty was there with eyes wiiiide open after seeing the flying mouse...

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Busy like beaver...

I've been rather overwhelmed with moving house! 95% of the move was done by pedal power, though due to rainy weather last Wednesday I had to call on my brother Mike and his Volvo and trailer to move the mattress and frame.

Since I'm still up to my elbows in stuff right now I'll just post a photo of the trike, laden with as many drums as I could fit and some of their shelving strapped on top!