Congratulations Graduates!

Our Family at our Home away from Home: Denise Brody, Tsae Ling Tenney (Computers), Sara Parry, Norine Cooper, and our Guardian and Protector...Sir Martin Grove!

Sara Parry, Teacher of Communications and Presentation Skills, and Counsellor, with Martin Grove...'takin' care of business'!

Martin Grove, Teacher of Humanities, English and Mathemagics* (term coined by him)

Gomati the Yoga Teacher

Denise Brody, Psychology Teacher and Counsellor. Denise is always laughing and has a bubbly personality, so this is a perfect picture of her.

The Staff and Counsellors : Denise Brody, Norine Cooper, Sara Parry, Martin Grove, Leanndra (from the Convenience Store in Residence), and Gomati

Dear Reader,

Today was a day of celebration and excitement. The 2nd Semesters of the RTE program at Seneca College had their graduation. I was lucky I got to film and take pictures at the event as well as send good wishes on to those graduating. It was really nice to be able to see the staff together enjoying one another’s company, as well as the company of students both new and old. Being able to capture the joy and happiness within the group was really fun and exciting at the same time. The teacher’s were all good sports and had their “mug shots” taken. All the 2nd Semesters got up and said their thanks to the program co-ordinators, their colleagues, and the newbies that will be taking their position as the NEW 2nd Semesters. Family and friends were welcome and joined in the festivities. One of the 2nd Semester students did his co-op placement creating a yearbook for the class to have as a keepsake. The book was astounding, it had a ditty written by each student, school information, work information and information incase you need assistance of any kind. The book was fabulous and captured each student as an individual and as part of the group. Although the group was small, it made for a closer friendship and bond between each of the people. My group as next year’s 2nd Semesters have a lot to live up to with regards to the year book, and the graduation celebration itself. Congratulations to all the graduating students and may you find happiness on whatever path you choose!

Some More Creative Writing...

Dear reader,

I wrote this little ditty while I was sitting outside today. I hope you enjoy it.

I sit outside in the breezeway entrance to the school.
People constantly passing by.
I enjoy the wind’s soft whisper in my ear.
The shade is like my safe haven.
I ponder about many things:
the meaning of life, where I will be in ten years, and so much more.
People come and go like seasons, always different than the last.
Do I sit here in wait of company to talk to, or just enjoy the splendid weather?
I sit quietly by myself at peace with what is around me.
Calm.

My New Cows

Scarlett

(Left to right) Molly & Nubbin

Molly

Dear reader, I thought that I had mentioned my new cows around the time I had gotten them but I was looking back through past posts and noticed that I had not mentioned them.

We received the cows on June 3, 2007. We got 3 pregnant mummies. I chose to name them Molly (she is lighter around the eyes and mouth), Nubbin (she has a little nub of horn left hence the name), and Scarlett (she’s the darkest red out of all the cows). We still have Bigguh of course, even though Shorty passed away (May 24, 2007). We have the cows divided like this: Nubbin and Molly are together because they were already pasture mates and they were the closest to giving birth. Scarlett is with Bigguh and they get along so well. It’s sort of funny because Scarlett is so much smaller then Bigguh, it’s like she could be her calf. Scarlett tends to act like Bigguh’s calf which is cute. I talked about the cows in my post from yesterday, so I thought I would give you more info on them. The 3 new cows are Limosine crosses. They all show their personalities each day and it makes me love them even more!

Updates, Get Your Updates!!!!

Dear reader, so I haven’t written something really personal in a while so I figured I should bring you up to speed on a few things, etc.

THE COWS
I am waiting (patiently, or at least trying) for Molly to give birth. She is as big as a house, there’s a possibility that it may be twins! Two babies, that’s great! I can’t wait to see them. It was predicted when we got her that she would be calving within the week that they arrived but she’s two weeks over due and she doesn’t look like she will be having a baby/babies over the weekend. She doesn’t run very much and when she walks she waddles. She has about a foot sticking out from where her belly would regularly be, on either side! Nubbin will be next to give birth and then Scarlett and Bigguh. We aren’t watching Nubbin closely yet though because she’s not ready for sure.

MY NEW PASSION
I really enjoy taking pictures. I have been practicing when there is riding lessons going on. I am getting a lot better. I find the action shots hard to take, for example when the horses are jumping that’s difficult but I am getting better at it all the time. Even the horses are getting used to me being in weird areas around the ring so that I can get what I think would be the perfect shot. The first lesson, I took approximately 45 pictures and I nearly doubled that the next lesson I decided to take pictures at. I am also taking pictures around the farm of things that look nice, sometimes the sky, the cats, the sunset, anything really that I consider pleasing to the eyes. I have posted a few of my pictures (a lot really) on Facebook, if you are interested in seeing them you can look me up there.

SCHOOL
School is almost done. I have been guaranteed a pass with one credit already completed (Computers). I am trying to find a volunteer placement somewhere within the school news paper or something so that I can enhance my newfound writing skills. If I don’t get that I will ask Erin if I can do my placement at the cleaners because it’s close to home. Dad thinks that I should try and find a placement at one of the local papers but I said that I have to like working where I am and I doubt that I would like working for one of the local papers. The benefit for working with the school is I may be able to write about the program I am involved in and how it is changing and progressing. The second semesters have their graduation next week on Friday. I will take my camera because I really want to capture their happiness and excitement and also get pictures for my own memories of them. They are a really nice bunch of people and I wish them all the best.

GOLF
For Father’s Day I treated dad to a round of golf and then made him a really nice dinner. I tried to tell him that he didn’t need to do chores around the house but he insisted and I wasn’t going to argue with him. The golf was nice but it was probably the worst round of golf for a long time. I realize my season was cut short last year and that we haven’t been to the driving range much this year, so I am not going to be amazing on the first try. We are going again this weekend, which will be nice, and we are making a tentative date for Tuesday after I am done school. I miss my hobby but I am lucky that I am able to do it a little bit rather than none.

Several Parties Killed the Electric Car....

I have watched a few movies since the last blog post I have written. The topic of this post is based from the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? I found the documentary very informative and there was a lot about the debate that I did not know. Through this blog post I want to inform my readers as to why the Electric Car was not made a success. Some of you may find the information shocking, others may not be shocked at all. First of all I want to tell you about hybrid vehicles, give you a little background information to lay the scene for the story.

What is a hybrid vehicle?
-a “plug-in hybrid” means the vehicle can be charged from a standard electric socket

Types (A list of Current Available Hybrids on the market)
-Toyota PRIUS
-Toyota Highlander
-Toyota Camry
-Mercury Mariner
-Lexus RX 400 (luxury)
-Ford Escape

Timeline of the life of the HYBRID vehicles.

1899 – first produced hybrid vehicle made by Lohner-Porsche
1969 – Popular Science (magazine) features an article on a GM XP -883 which was a plug-in hybrid, you could plug this into a standard 110 Volt AC outlet to re-charge

2003 – Renault began selling the Elect’Road, a plug-in model of the popular Kangoo
-had 150 km range
-fuel tank capacity was 10 litres
-was discontinued after selling 500 for approximately 25, 000 euros each
Sept. 2004 – California Cars Initiative converted a 2004 Toyota PRIUS into a prototype-> PRIUS+
-added lead acid batteries
-doubled gas mileage
-could make trips of 15 km (10 miles) on solely electric power
July 16, 2006 – Toyota announces they are to develop a vehicle that runs on batteries before switching to gas engine for longer drives
-next major update = lithium batteries
-PRIUS gets up to 40 km/litre
Nov. 29, 2006 – GM plans to introduce a plug-in version of Saturn’s Greenline Vue SUV in 2009
-has an all electric range of 10 miles (15 kms)
Jan. 2007 – GM reveals the Chevrolet Volt
-plug-in capable, battery dominant series hybrid architecture called E-Flex
-future E-Flex vehicles may us gas diesel, or Hydrogen to supplement the battery
-can achieve fuel economy of 50 mpg
Feb. 28, 2007 – US Department of Energy draft a plan to increase the development and deployment of plug-in vehicle technologies
-areas of concern are lithium-ion batteries, power electronics, and electric motors
May 22, 2007 – 5 research projects receive US $19 mill. to further the development of plug-ins technologies such as electric motor power inverters

Potential Advantages
-improved fuel efficiency
-reduced greenhouse gas emissions
-reduced operating costs
-Vehicle-to-grid electricity features

Potential DisAdvantages
-additional weight
-cost of larger battery pack
-possible increase in local net sulfur dioxide and mercury emissions in certain areas
-battery disposal

As you can see this is a minimal amount of data regarding the hybrid breed of cars. Most of the information was gathered from Wikipedia, a semi reputable site. The types I had to do a little bit of searching on, but I went to various car sites etc. to find them. Now I want to talk about the information that was provided in the Who Killed the Electric Car? documentary.

-GM created the EV1, which was a solely electric vehicle
-the EV1 was available for lease in Southern California
-California Air Resources Board passed the ZEV mandate in 1990
-the purpose of the mandate was to help with control of air pollution, assist with environmentalism, avoid Middle East politics, and lower global warming
-President Bush’s members such as Dick Cheney, Condolezza Rice, and Andrew Card are all former executives and board members of various oil and auto companies
-GM tried to show there was no demand for vehicles such as the EV1
-GM collected all available EV1 cars and had them crushed and shredded for particular reasons only few know, many assume but don’t know for sure
-some EV1’s still exist in universities and museums but are disabled
-EV drivers gathered together to form a coalition against the destruction of their beloved EV’s
-EV drivers offered GM $1.9 mill. US for cars that were awaiting their doom
-GM never responded to their offer
-the movie brought up the fact that the oil companies were afraid that if EV’s became popular they would lose potentially trillions of dollars in profits
-GM said it was consumers who caused the demise of the EV’s because they were disappointed with the max range of 80-100 miles per charge and that the cost of the vehicles was quite high
-the film has interview with celebrities who owned and operated EV’s
-Stan and Iris Ovshinsky created a better battery for the car but GM bought their patent and then Texaco bought the patent from GM
-Joseph J. Romm (author of the Hype About Hydrogen) stated 4 reasons why Hydrogen vehicles would not be effective
1. cost – too expensive, $1 mill. per car
2. emission of CO2 gases still effects the greenhouse
3. internal combustion engines continue to improve in efficiency
4. have to spend money to create stations that are capable of storing Hydrogen fuel
-the most promising technologies currently are hybrid cars.

In conclusion, who are we as individuals to point the finger at for the non-progression of such an environmentally friendly vehicle? In my opinion it is to each person’s own decision, but the statistics have shown the following:
1. Consumers
2. Oil Companies
3. Car Companies
4. Government
5. California Air Resources Board
6. Hydrogen Fuel production
Given, that all the data that has been provided in this post is American, I do believe that since the Canadian government has close ties, the situation is somewhat similar. In the end it all comes down to GREED. Who wants to drive a car that looks weird or different? What companies are going to want to lose out on bucket loads of money, just to help the environment? With a government that is so closely linked to such companies, does the environment really stand a chance? With the Hydrogen Fuel production being a project ongoing for 20 years and still no completion, what are the other alternatives or is this project just a waste of time and money? These questions all come to my mind when I look at the above list of the guilty parties who have not assisted in the production of a vehicle that is efficient in more than one way. It’s unfortunate that greed runs the world, because greed will get us only so far, and when there’s no planet left, what are we to do then?

Tribute to Herbie

So folks I have had another death in my animal family. My dear Herbie, my first betta fish passed away June 9, 2007. Herbie was a really interesting fish. He was at the point where he would almost do a mini jump out of the water to get his food. He was really skiddish and didn't like foreign things in his home, but overall he was a wonderful fish. I painted a rock for him so that he can have a place within our little animal cemetery at the back of the property. I put all things that were important to him on the stone, his name, a heart because i loved him, the sun because he loved the warmth, and a wave because he loved water of course. I hope that Herbie is swimming around in his big fish tank in the sky or wherever it is. He will be missed dearly but I will carry on and Barclay will also carry on with good memories of him close to our hearts. You will be greatly missed Herbie.

On a secondary note, my dad has now changed his stance and he thinks that we will be having calves on Fathers Day. The girls are pretty big and their titties are full of milk ready to feed hungry little ones. It will be Molly and Nubbin that are expected to calf. I will be sure to get lots of baby pictures and keep you updated. Scarlett and Bigguh are due around August 1st so we have a while to wait. I am ready to be in parent mode though and am very excited as it will be my first time seeing a birth.

Updates, Get Your Updates!!!!

Sorry for the blurriness but i tried my best, you can still sort of read it.

It's a bit messy but you get the idea of what i got.

Dear Reader, I am writing to update you on a few things.

1. My mum and I had a girls day out, it was really nice since we are starting to get along much better nowadays. I decided that I was going to get a tattoo today because my friend Jamie “Grazzhopper” Lindsay, just bought the tattoo shop so it was my way of saying congrats to him. I got a little star that’s blue border with a hollow inside. I took a picture of it myself but it doesn’t look the greatest, but I will get my mum to take a better shot tomorrow. I have also included Jamie’s business card in case anyone in the area wants to get a tat by him. We then finished the aft. off with a nice lunch at 66 on Brock, my fav. place to eat. It was a great aft. Thanx Mum!

2. I finished my career assessment testing on Thursday of this week. It wasn’t as weird as the last bunch of questions, no sexual questions at all this time. Phewwwwwww. This time it was all timed though, and there were at least 7 different tests I had to do. The only test that I didn’t complete within the time limit was the math questions but that’s ok I hate math anyway. Now I will get to see what my true potential jobs might be instead of the testing we did in class that told me I was to be a gunsmith, magician or furniture upholsterer.

3. Watched Apocalypto, a film directed by Mel Gibson. Now I don’t really like Mel Gibson himself and I don’t like that he chooses movies to direct that are based on history because the story is already written basically, it’s how he chooses to interpret it, BUT PASSION OF THE CHRIST was amazing and I really liked it (and I’m not even religious) I was looking forward to see how this movie would do. This movie is gory, probably one of the goriest that I have seen in a while but that’s not what gets the watcher. It’s the fact that the movie has an amazing story. It’s about a warrior that ends up being captured by ‘bad guys’ and sent to sacrifice but when he is about to be sacrificed a solar eclipse happens and saves him from his doom. He then has to play a HUNT type of game where he is the hunted, that lasts for quite a good portion of the movie but it is really interesting and suspenseful. As usual I am not going to tell you the ending because then you wouldn’t watch it. Take note there are no famous stars in it and that’s a major plus. This is probably one of my favourite movies of the year so far and I highly recommend it.

4. Watched Letters From Iwo Jima, a film by Clint Eastwood, who also directed Flags of Our Fathers. I really liked this film because it made me realize what the Japanese had to go through in a losing battle situation. The movie stars Ken Watanabe, who has such movies as Last Samurai and Memoirs of a Geisha in his repertoire as well as some indie films. This man I cannot say enough times, how fabulous an actor he is. In this film he plays the smart General that tries to convince the people already on the island of Iwo Jima that if they plan to have all their people on the beach, the battle will be over before it begins. He is the one that convinces them to hide in tunnels in the hills and such, a type of guerilla warfare if you will. The Japanese in the movie are very people oriented, ex. a general shoots an American and then brings him into the hidey hole and has him tended to so that he does not die, when the soldier is coherent he then begins to tell him that he competed in the Olympics in the USA that year as a horseback rider, they shake hands and make peace. The one specific thing about this movie was that it really showed that there was mass confusion behind the Japanese lines. The mainland offered no help by sending reinforcements, tanks, or planes, they basically had to fight the battle with what they had. The story is incredible and really gets to the watcher as you see these men trying their best to stay alive when commanders are often trying to commit suicide because they know the mission is a bust. The one thing that is noticeable is that these men fight to try and get back to home to their wives and families, a true inspiration to get them through the war. Clint Eastwood did it again with another fabulous film but on the other side, showing what the Japanese had to go through, and what trials and tribulations they had to suffer.

5. We got a call from our cattle liaison today and he is going to be bringing us a shipment of cows on Sunday. He bought 3 cows that are due to give birth within the next 2 months which is right about when Bigguh is to give birth. These cows may be a slight bit darker because they have more Simmental (the red coloured cows) in them then Charolais (the beige cows) but I figure that might mean they are the fawn or light brown colour which is really nice. I can’t wait to see them. The cattle liaison also told dad that cow prices are high so if per chance we had sold Bigguh(which we would never do), she would have gone for between $1500 – $1700. Pretty surprising huh!