TREES ON 69 STREET

Do you like trees on our streets like I do? Would you like to see trees on our 69 street going north of 34 avenue? We don't have any trees on our section of 69 street at all. Did you know though that we have trees to the south of 34 avenue, and trees on 69 street north of our complex. These areas not only have trees, they are on both sides of the road and on the center median! And we have none!

I have emailed Craig Burrows, I have emailed Joe Connolly, and our current Alderman Pootsman. Sometimes I got a reply, sometimes none, like now with Pootsman. I will be writing him again and asking him why no reply and why no trees.

Recently the Calgary Herald had a piece in the paper pointing out that the city had far too few trees. Here is a golden opportunity to plant some on our boulevard. The Herald also said the city was doing a good job of replacing trees that had died. Well, you couldn't prove it by me. Look along Sierra Morena Blvd th next time you go to Superstore and look at all the dead and missing trees on the center median.

You can add your weight and support by writing your ward 6 alderman by email if you like, and asking him why we don't have trees on our section of 69 street. You can reach your alderman via email at: Ward6@calgary.ca

 

give it a shot, the only thing a politician understands is tonnage. Lots of people writing on th same subject. So lets send him some of that tonnage and maybe we can get some trees on 69 street.

Our ward 6 alderman can be reached at Ward6@calgary.ca

CARIBBEAN CRUISE

Just the thing for these snowy and cold days, a cruise of the Caribbean! These are some of the pictures I took on our cruise in January 2011. It was warm and seldom rained, just a few showers. It was a lot of fun and the food was good. The booze not so much, too expensive. The ship in many of the pictures is the Caribbean Princess a 3100 passenger ship, that is too big, 

Hope you like the photos, there are others but look for the Caribbean Cruise 2011.

http://community.webshots.com/user/gmman55

COMPUTER SCAM

     I got a phone cal the other evening from one of our residents concerning a phone call he received from a Florida location. He was very concerned about it since it was a person who was telling him he had a virus on his computer and that his company could check his computer over and remove the virus or any other problems that the computer may have. The bad guys can do this with your consent by allowing remote access to your computer. You do have to follow a process and permit it. Remember these people are skilled at this kind of thing and prey on the unwary.

St. Lucia, me and a snake!

     The caller was very insistent, and finally the resident told him flatly "No" and hung up on him.
     I have heard about this before, but never got a call myself.
     It is worth noting that this whole thing is designed to gain remote access to your computer so that the bad guy can skim your social insurance number, passport numbers, credit card information, or any other kind of information on you that they consider useful. If you get a call even similar to this, consider just hanging up, or if you feel kind, tell the bad guy NO, then hang up the phone.
     Remember that if you are having a problem with your computer, YOU initiate the call to a local computer repair company, hopefully an honest one, and engage their services. You want to do this only in the event you are having a problem.

Google Chrome.

It's been a while since I posted anything to my blog. Mainly because it was just not working. Links failed, pictures could not be uploaded, it was a failure in so many ways. Then I thought I would try a different browser. Well, what a difference that made!

Internet Explorer was rejecting links all the time. It got worse every time I used it. I thought I had nothing to lose, so I looked at Google Chrome. Wow, it is FAST! It is simple, and no more dead links! You can download tons of extensions, that actually work. This is the best browser I have ever used! Not only that, but the Blog works again!

Even Joanie is getting used to it, and I haven't heard any more of those four letter words from her when she is on the net.

St Thomas US VI. Blackbeard's Castle

If you would like to take a look at it, kind of a try before you buy thing, click the link http://www.google.ca/ and dig down a bit to Google Chrome. It loads quickly, and you don't have to give up your current browser, they can both sit on your computer. No need to uninstall the old browser either. And here is the best part. It's free! And the Blog works again!

In a way this is a test and I am going to add a photo from our Caribbean trip, just to be sure the photo upload works.

So what do you think, care to try Chrome?

Using Picasa

I have noted how useful the Picasa softwre is from Google. It can do a lot of editing, straightening of crooked pictures, fixing exposure and sharpness problems and so on. It can find and identify all the pictures with faces in them. All you need to do is identify a couple of them and Picasa will do the rest. You can also put a very neat caption on your photos identifying the subject matter. When you create and burn the photos to a DVDhe captions show up on the screen with the slide. You can GEO tag your photos, it will index all the photos on your computer. The list goes on.

You can spend up to a hundred bucks buying something like Roxio, or Nero and get much of the photo editing from Picasa for free. What it doesn't do however is offer a "Burn DVD (cd)" button. For that you can always look to Windows live DVD maker for help. It works well too.

Windows DVD maker will also do a lot of the things Picasa will do for your photos, plus you can burn a pretty good DVD as well.

Calgary Co-operative Memorial Society

A number of years ago, a lot of people got tired of the high cost of funerals, and some of them decided to do something about it. In Calgary the above named society was formed to allow members to have a dignified burial/cremation at a much lower cost.

Other areas of the country have similar societies, for someone who is reading this and who lives elsewhere. In Calgry he cost of joining is just $20.00 and has been for years. It is a one time only fee to join, which gives you access to one of the largest funeral homes in Calgary, McKinnis & Holloway. They are the societies provider.

For anyone interested you can call the society at 403 248 2044, or toll free at 1 800 566 9959. They have a website at www.calgarymemorial.com

We have belonged to this for years now. We expect to save not hundreds of dollars but thousands on the high cost of dying. Look them over, it costs nothing to find out what they can do for you.

CARIBBEAN CRUISE: OLD SAN JUAN

Well, we are back to the real world, for us anyway. Ariving in Calgary at night when it was 12 below zero with a little wind was a real wake up call as to what we had missed for 2 weeks. Waiting outside for a taxi did little to increase our enthusiasm for the Calgary winter, after being papmered by temperatures no lower than 78 during the day and 77 at night. Even the water temperature was well over 80!
We had a great time with a few exceptions which I will go into at later dates. The cruise itself was very nice with weather generally in the 79 to 84 degree area. Nights were as low as 77, imagine that! It was not without some rain, we had showers at times on various islands, but no real rains. Our first stop was at San Juan Puerto Rico. We got to San Juan late the night before we sailed and this tour was taken midway during our cruise.
San Juan is one of the oldst settlements in the Caribbean founded by Ponce de Leon in 1508 and was later changed in 1521 to San Juan. This is Old San Juan. There are old forts that are still in existence, along with old churches in the Old Town area. The whole thing is virtually a Unesco World Heritage site. It has been beautifully maintained today by the National Parks System. The main wall goes for miles and it is very thick and high. It's function ws to defend the harbour from invading navies. From where it is situated it looks very easy to defend any attack from the sea.
The views from the fort are spectacular. The harbour and the surrounding area scenes are hard to beat when viewed from the walls of the fort. Some of the buildings were used during WW2 as housing and offices for the US military. It is a protected tarritory of he United States. Spanish is the national language, but English is used as well by many of the residents. "Spanglish" is heard at times when an resident is speaking with a tourist.
It is warm, about 78 degrees when we are taken by our tour guide around the site. There are guard towers and gun emplacements that guard every angle of the fort and the town. The walls around the fort are 18 feet thick and 140 feet high; it took almost 200 years to complete what was started in 1540.
Today it is a tourist attraction that should not be missed if going to San Juan.

ADDRESS BOOK

I mentioned that I had a work around for the address book in Thunderbird that would make it like the one from Microsoft in Outlook Express. In the Microsoft version, you can make a small address book, like a list of names you use often. You can create names of say the people who reside in Dreamview. I have over 160 email addresses in my main address book, and sorting through all that to send something out to 10 or so people is a real pain, considering they may be all my regular email users.

So here is the deal on making a new address book. Start in Thunderbird, and click Address book. Create a "New List". Give it a name eg Dreamview. Drag all the Dreamview people into the new list. You will notice that your new list Dreamview shows up in the original Personal Address Book. At this point you cannot open it to send just to some of the Dreamview people. Clicking that name will send it to everybody! Not necessarily what you want to do.

Now comes the work around, Look on the menu bar and click "Tools", click "Export". Navigate to Documents, and give your file a name, Dreamview, Save as Type below the file name. Comma Separated or CSV. Click "Save". Now you have saved the List you created as a separate file.

Now go back to your original Personal Address book. Click Tools again and this time select "Import". When this window opens, select only the Address Books, click Next, Click "Text File", and Next. Type in the name of the file you just saved. Click Comma Separated and in this window click OK. You have now imported a new Address Book for Dreamview and it is no longer just a list.

Now finish up by deleting the old Dreamview List, leaving just the Dreamview Address Book. Check in your new book and you will see that only the people from the list you just created are all in there. You can add names to this list as many as you need as required. You can also deleted names from the list, as needed.

You can make as many of these books as you need. I have a total of 6 separate books, and it works just fine.

It sounds difficult, but it is not much different than any other cut and paste operation you would do on a routine level.

WINDOWS 7

If you are a computer user, welcome to the new way I will be handling the old "Computer Corner" that I put in the Scuttlebutt every month. Since it is only computer users who are interested, I have chosen to no longer put the information in the 'Butt. This way it will only reach those interested and those with computers. I expect to have a new item each week so it will have more information more often, I will leave a link to the blog in the paper however. I hope you like the new format, and if you have any suggestions, or questions, please let me know.

Did you recently get a new computer with the new Windows 7? If you did you will have noticed there is no longer an Outlook Express available. Windows offers up their Windows Live Mail, or Hotmail. Or you can use the ISP (Shaw or Telus) web mail. There are a couple of other alternatives for your email. One is Gmail from Google. And another is Thunderbird from Mozilla. Google the name to find it. Thunderbird seem to work OK, I have used it for a while now and I kind of like it. It is a free email program, and only takes a bit of time to get used to it.

There is a bit of a problem using the Address Book in Thunderbird, but I have discovered a work around and I will discuss it in a future Blog.

Ross