Difficult as it may be, hard decisions often need to be made. The Toronto District School Board, Toronto, Canada, has seen an average of 4% falling enrollment for their students for a good decade or more. This is a well known problem, but has been highlighted recently because of funding shortfalls and possible scandal at the school board. The under utilization problem is very well known. There was even a Queen’s University study on the subject.Yet there is no political will to close schools, even in the face of an obvious decline in students and therefore, government funding. Elected school trustees seem to not be able to do their jobs.
How did the world here in Toronto become so rude once people have a mobile phone in their hands? There was once a time when people walked around and acted with much more manners. These times seem to have passed as people gab on their phones, oblivious of the inconvenience they cause others. You think you can multitask, like talk on the phone and walk. Well, no, you cannot.
Sans car, we have begun renting on a semi-regular basis, trying out many brands of compact cars, here in Toronto, Canada. These are my biased opinion about what I have liked and disliked about these cars. In trying out different brands I hope to understand what I really like in a car. It seems like these small options can really make the difference in your love or hate of the car. I also received the input from the kids and SO.
The way we choose to live goes a long way to determining how long and how well we will eventually live. More troubling is that our choices are observed and learned by our kids, who then take on very similar choices and lifestyle. While kids theoretically have a choice, in reality they follow their parents, for better or for worse. This study from Active Healthy Kids Canada is really troubling, in that it points to what I call “Rich Country” disease, where here in Canada we have lots of organized sport activities, lots of proper environment and equipment, but not a lot of actual physical exercise. It would be more appropriate to have the best of organized sport, with great facilities, that results in the fittest, most healthy kids on the planet. This is certainly not the case.
Sometimes one sees a well accepted solution that simply does not work. Having the public purchase large paper bags in order to dispose of yard waste is at best a bad idea and at worst simply a waste of money. Yet here in Toronto, Canada, these bags are almost universally used for yard waste.
This old Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, handed down to me because it was really broken, was tired as tired could be. I brought it back to life by eschewing Windows and embracing Lubuntu 14.04 LTS. Now it hums and runs really well. Here are some of my observations.
This Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop has 500mb of Ram, 2 of 4 broken USB ports, and a missing down arrow key. Apparently my mischievous nephew had heard that one of his toys was able to insert into a computer, so he tried this, twice, on this laptop. Two USB ports had sorted out and remain damaged, and Windows XP had crashed hard and was irrecoverable. I tried to rebuild XP, and it was largely successful, but could not configure the wifi to work. XP was slow, and running a browser was painfully slow. In essence it was a dead laptop.
Telecommuncations have come a long way in a short period of time. Smart phones are near ubiquitous in society, and as common as a wallet or purse in public. How people have become addicted to carrying and using smart phones, I do not know, but in our quest for permanent and persistent connectivity, we inadvertently agree to give up some of our privacy. Scary it is, but the writing is on the wall and near inevitable unless governments step in to prevent this. Given that people are freely looking for phone connectivity, I do not believe that such tracking by stores or any other agencies is immoral. Shocking, yes, but not immoral. Each person has the ability and means to turn off their phone when walking around. If they do not then this is their personal choice.
Hate it, I do, when a product fails before I believe it should. I have ranted about such products here before and I stand by my rants. Specifically you see products fail mere months after the warranty has expired, seemingly on queue for you to purchase yet another replacement. The old one goes into the garbage and then landfill, and the environment takes an unnecessary penalty for our stupidity. Clearly this should not be. I purposely buy products that last a long time, if I can, and take measures to ensure they do last.
Saw it coming, I did, through my incessant weather forecast watching here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Warned, we were, by the sages of climate. Still we really did not know the gravity of the situation, nor that we were to lose power for 18 hours. As we are always prepared, this matters little, because we know where everything necessary is located and we have done this before. It is worthwhile reflecting on what worked and what needs improvement, so that the next one, an inevitable event, really, will be that much more fulfilling.
Like most large cities, Toronto, Canada has storm drains. These drains help remove excess water from the area after a heavy rainfall. Usually forgotten until needed this unsung system requires very little maintenance. Here is what is done in Toronto.
Storm drains are located on both sides of the street, about 6 houses apart, or 120′ between drains. In the past the storm drain cover was parallel to the road and sidewalk, but this was problematic for cyclists, who would get their tires caught in the drain cover. Now the cover openings are diagonal from the curb to the middle of the street. Storm drain covers are cast of heavy iron and do rust.
