Remembering

On November 11th I went to the Last Post military cemetery in Pointe Claire.

I have written about this place once or twice before. Here time stands still. Twenty thousand servicewomen and servicemen have been laid to rest in the cemetery. My grandfather Georges Terroux, who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War I, is one of them.

It was a privilege to be here on Remembrance Day. The cemetery was well attended.

Been fiddlin'

Today I managed to implement about ninety percent of the changes to this journal that have been rattling around in my brain for many, many, months.

I have to say that translating the thoughts in my head into reasonably well-behaved pixels on the screen has been as painful as I thought it would be.

Authoring any digital media, whether it's software programming, graphic content like photos, or the look and feel of a blog, is fairly obsessive work. Trial and error, error and trial, trial and error. That, and the occasional epiphany when, on the very cusp of total frustration, something finally works. There are far too many moving parts between what this blog looked like for the past five years, and where it is now. I won't bore you with the details.

Runnin' errands

I haven't posted much lately. We bloggers come, and we go.

Some of the going is voluntary, some is imposed.

I have come to the end of some roads. Other roads beckon.

If I was a commuter, now I run errands. Like a run to Costco last week, to buy new cordless phones.

2015 Blogger to Blogger Tour - Epilogue, and lessons learned

It's been a long time between posts. The main reason is that the past two months have been, by some measures, the best and busiest of our lives. There was the annual conference of the national organization I chair that was, for the first time ever, held in Montreal. As soon as that ended we celebrated the marriage of our eldest son. Sonja and Roland came to visit, then Susan and I went on an amazing trip that took us to Edmonton, Jasper Park, Vancouver, and Maui. Phew.

Along the way, I worked on this post, mostly during our flights. I hope you will find it was worth the long wait. 

I'm getting slightly more experienced with touring. That means I still have a lot to learn.

Toying with Templates; Flirting with Failure

I've dropped hints about wanting to make changes to the way this ongoing story is presented.

The choices are unfortunately unlimited.

It's like shopping for a BMW vehicle with an unlimited budget. Sedan? SUV? Limousine? No problem. Suede headliner? 100,000 LED mood-lit interior? Built-in cigar humidor in the console? No problem. No kidding. I was chatting with Billy at Canbec BMW just the other day. Got millions to piss away to annoy your siblings and leave your heirs breathless and nervous? No better place to start than by ordering a custom seven series sedan with oodles and oodles of options and doo-dads.

Project report - Installing heated grips on a Honda Shadow VT750 ACE

The Honda Shadow is a shared bike. One day I'll get around to explaining in detail how Sonja and I came to co-own the Honda Shadow, which we now call Thunderbird.

Thunderbird is new to us, it's a gently used 2003 motorcycle. True to its roots, Thunderbird was fitted with a bunch of aftermarket accessories installed with thoughts of cruising down the boulevard with the sun glinting off as much chrome as possible, to the tune of very loud aftermarket Cobra exhaust pipes.

2015 Blogger to Blogger Tour: Safe travels

Sonja and Roland returned this past Thursday from their Ontario trip with Sonja under the weather.  Apparently traveling makes Sonja sick. Her love of travel is so deep, that she considers a predictable head cold to be a small price to pay for adventure.

On Friday I resumed my tour guide duties and took the traveling dynamic duo to see the remaining must-see sights of Montreal.

We had seen the southern and eastern sides of the city from the three drive-to lookouts on Mount Royal.