Holiday Greetings..

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to All of You Scroll down to see pictures of our apartment house, "new" van (Mazda MPV), and our NEW computer. Keep in touch.

New Computer -- Yaaayyyy!

WOW! Do you see this?? It is a brand new MacBook-- the most marvelous laptop there is, almost. This is the first time I have ever had a brand new (not just a new-to-me-but-used) computer. It's 2.16GHz, has 2GB memory, 200GB hard drive, and it will soon be running the latest OS -- (the awesome Leopard, for those of you "in the Mac-know"). I have been spending a bunch of time on it, getting it all set up the way I want. It is so much fun. Gotta go, and get back to it.

Here's a couple of photos of Victoria.

Photos of new apartment house & van

This is where we live now. I don't want to include interior pics yet, because we are still getting it arranged. The car shown (top picture) is our "new" 1989 Mazda MPV minivan. Our balcony is the 3rd one up on the left, overlooking the parking lot.

Big MOVE

We have MOVED, finally, to an apartment in Esquimalt (Victoria). The new address is:

. 406-855 Ellery St.
. Victoria BC V9A 6X6
. Canada

It is on the 4th (top) floor, 2 bedrooms, balcony. It's hard to adjust to having only 1 bathroom, but it is otherwise not bad. We'll get pictures up shortly.

The phone number is still the same as before: (678) 748 5806 for US (that's our old Georgia #, local for friends in Ellenwood) (250) 984 1319 for Victoria

Trip to Whistler

Chuck and Diane Fitzgerald came to visit from California, and we made a flying trip to Whistler. We were supposed to go to Vancouver early in the morning to meet them, but we missed the ferry, by a few minutes. 2 hours wait for the next one. We finally got to Vancouver, rented a car, and went to Canada Place, where they were coming in on a cruise ship. The drive to Whistler was very nice, no major construction and some improved roads. At Whistler, we took a gondola and chair lift up a mountain where lots of people were skiing and boarding. Here are some pictures.

Insite du jour

1984 and Brave New World both predicted a future in which people were controlled by a central power. But the form of control took different forms, and each author saw a different aspect. 1984 showed the people being controlled by TV, but Orwell saw the TV as a monitor of the people so they could be punished for any deviation from the "law", (the "stick"). BNW showed the people being contolled by "the good life" and "shiny toys", but Huxley saw the shiny toys as being enough in themselves, the "carrot"). The engineers of our world used both TV and shiny toys. They got people to depend on the TV for information about what is going on in their lives, and they used the shiny toys to make them dependent. So, whenever they want to do something unreasonable, they use the TV to say, "If we don't do this, you'll lose your shiny toys." and the people believe it because they have been trained to believe the TV. If we don't use oil for transport and electricity, you'll lose your shiny toys. If we don't go to war in Iraq.... If we don't help the big oil companies.... We could use wind or solar power, but you'll lose some of your shiny toys. The result is that the people work for about 6 months of the year to pay all their governments and related stuff and for things the government should be providing, and about 4 months of the year to pay for their shiny toys, and 2 months to pay for their necessities. Since money = power, they are giving their power away to the controllers.

New/old building blocks

clipped from www.livescience.com

Houses of the Future Could Be Made from Trash

Last year’s trash could become next year’s model home, thanks to the invention of a new type of construction material made entirely from waste products.

“Bitublocks,” created by engineer John Forth of the University of Leeds in England, are composed of recycled glass, sewage sludge, incinerator ash, the by-products of metal purification and pulverized fuel ash from power stations.

“Bitublocks use up to 100 percent waste materials and avoid sending them to landfill, which is quite unheard of in the building industry,” Forth said.

Forth hopes his new invention will revolutionize the building industry by providing a sustainable, low-energy replacement for concrete blocks.

“Less energy is required to manufacture the Bitublock than a traditional concrete block, and it’s about six times as strong, so it’s quite a high-performance product,” Forth said. Something completely different -- I just liked this photo of Rio.

Space photos

Got these neat pics from the Hubble web site. Click on them to go to the site... there are lots, free, for wallpaper or whatever.

Victoria weather widget

I just put on a widget showing the weather here in Victoria, B.C. ----> The background picture changes to show the current conditions. If you click on it, you go to a really great weather site, with detailed weather from all over the world. Since my computer is a Mac, we've always had a lot of cool widgets which make computing fun. We have them for news headlines (including German newspapers), games, search engines, our appointments and activities from our calendar, timers and alarms that can be set, iTunes new releases, eBay watch list, and lots of other neat things. I understand that Windows is finally going to get them too, but they're calling them gadgets.

THE AMBERSAND CASTLE TRILOGY

The AMBERSAND CASTLE Trilogy
by Janet R. Shaw,

My sister, Janet R. Shaw, is an author and these are covers of her books: the first 2 books of The Ambersand Castle Trilogy. They are part fantasy, part philosophy, part adventure.

The flying zebra is Zendor Din, the mentor throughout the series. He can take any form and often appears as a cat. The locations range from present (or maybe future) Hawaii to Africa to Hollywood to ancient Egypt. The books would also be popular with kids who like Harry Potter.

See more on Janet's sites: click on the book covers or see links in the [Links] section.

Happy 2007

Wishing all of you a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year! We didn't do much for the New Year -- watched the fireworks on TV (this is the Space Needle in Seattle) and drank a toast to all our loved ones (you know who you are).