Doug Rutherford

July 2, 2013July 2, 2013

Fixing the deck

The deck was built in two stages. First, I built the veranda when we built the house. This was in 2005. And, because the veranda is more than two feet above grade, there were railings required by code.

I built the deck the following year, with a step down where the back steps were. The deck was built 15 inches below the veranda. This created a bit of an issue, in that the railings on the veranda closed that section of the deck off. So, this weekend, I pulled the railings off the veranda, built a new step along the full width of the deck.

I was going to stain the full deck, using the gallon I bought a few weeks ago. However, Home Hardware is completely sold out of the base used to make the colour and won’t have any back in until later this week. This screwed up my staining plans. I was going to stain at least the veranda and the new step, but the rain and other things joined up to keep me from doing it until Thursday (yes, it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.)

I also put in a new hidden screen on the back door. Now, I need a project.

deck with new step — The veranda and new step.

Screen door picture — The new screen door.

The project I’ve chosen for the new deck, even though it isn’t stained yet has been picked: maple smoked lake trout…

June 28, 2013June 28, 2013

Some thoughts for Canada Day

With Canada Day coming up, and since this particular post has been viewed several time through search engines, I thought I might run it again.

Doug Rutherford

I’ll willingly admit that this is one of my favourite holidays. I know, nothing holds a candle to Hallowe’en but, this is close. Because, much as we are governed by idiots and often, our leaders aren’t sure of where we are going or what the handcart has to do with it, we still live in the greatest country in the world and the last 40 years of imbecilic governments at the Federal, Provincial/Territorial and Municipal levels have failed to destroy it, regardless of how hard they’ve tried.

Living in Canada:

I can e-mail my MP and tell him he’s an idiot and a liar.
I can get really pissed at my MP and run against him in the next election.
I can join a union.
I can join any political party I want to (and, when you consider how wing-y some of those parties are, that is really saying something).

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June 27, 2013

What? Another Facebook scam?

If you have a Facebook account, as many do, you may have received an e-mail similar to the one below. It claims to be from Facebook and asks you to confirm your request for deleting your account.

“Wait!”, you say. “I didn’t ask to delete my account,” although like most sensible Facebook users, this has crossed your mind on many occasions. You notice the instruction near the bottom, “To confirm or cancel this request, follow the link below.” Is this legitimate?

Here’s a hint. First, you’ll notice that the e-mail sender is not Facebook. It comes from an account called noticemail5490@facemail.com. That doesn’t really look like a professional e-mail address, does it? And, while Facebook’s e-mail system is called Facemail, it does not have a separate domain name from Facebook itself. Facemail is part of the facebook.com domain.

Another hint can be seen in the fact that there is only one choice to confirm or cancel the deletion request. Normally, this would be two separate operations, and any reasonable website developer would have two separate links, one for confirmation and one for cancellation. Also, with alterations to any profile of any type of website account, you usually receive an e-mail that states that you should ignore the e-mail if you did not initiate the change in question.

In short, this is an attempt to get you to log on to Facebook, although that’s not where you’re really logging into, and giving the perpetrators your Facebook e-mail address logon (which they already have) and your password. This allows them to either take over your Facebook account or to logon separately from you and glean any information about you and all of your Facebook friends that they can.

Suffice to say, don’t click on the link in the e-mail. Simply delete it and forget about it, after a good laugh at your superior intelligence at avoiding the fraud.

By now, you may be asking, “Why did I get this in the first place? How did they get my e-mail address?” The short answer is that one of your friends did this to you. And, they may not even be one of your Facebook friends, either. Your e-mail probably got gleaned from someone using the Facebook Friend Finder, where they basically gave complete access to their e-mail address book to Facebook. Facebook retains the information in your address book, other than the username and password which they promise not to keep, to create shadow profiles of their users. They integrate the information from e-mail address books with the information you’ve shared on Facebook itself to build a substantially more detailed profile on you than you have provided.

And, since Facebook does seem to be incredibly lax in their internal security, it appears that much of this information has been stolen in a data breach.

Here’s a few things you may want to consider if you have a Facebook account:

After every published data breach, regardless of whether or not you think your data was affected, change your Facebook password.
Never use the Facebook Friend Finder. All you’re really accomplishing is screwing over your friends.
Read any e-mail claiming to be from Facebook, or any other social media site for that matter, with a grain of salt.

And, whenever you use social media, keep in mind the advice they used to give the police officers at every briefing in Hill Street Blues: “And remember. Be careful out there…”

June 24, 2013

Coming back

I haven’t posted a lot lately, but this is due to us either being camping or getting ready for camping. We’ve made two trips since I last put something up on the blog.

We went back to Fox Lake for five days, although conditions were quite different. There was no more flooding, the weather was quite sunny, and there was no snow this time. We brought out the boat with the camper and I managed to get a few days of fishing in. I’ll admit, Fox Lake is not the world’s greatest place to fish for lake trout. However, I’m happy bobbing up in a down in a boat on a nice, peaceful lake, even when the fish are not cooperating.

I did get one fish, but it was quite small. It was of legal, but not moral, size. The fish was about 12″ long, and I prefer my “lakers” to be at least 16″ long before I keep them. After all, it is still a baby.

I was pleased to see that the flooded out campsites and roads had been repaired. It was a little rough, since some of the gravel in the sites wasn’t packed down as much as the old sites, but this opened another eight sites at the campground.

We were able to get a site just above the creek and you could see the little waterfall that’s about 20 yards upstream from the site. In the picture above, you can see our campfire and the little waterfall in the background.

As you can see, Clara is enjoying the bright sunlight in here zero gravity chair. She spent the time enjoying the campsite while I spent much of my time trolling for trout.

As mentioned, the weather was really nice. It was nice enough to go out in the boat in shorts. This had a bit of a down side, since I managed to sunburn my knees. I didn’t burn the upper parts of my legs, or the lowers. All that turned out crispy were my knees. For what it’s worth, it did look a lot worse than it actually was. They seemed warm for the first day but didn’t really end up hurting. I could have done far worse, I suppose.

We headed out to our favourite campground last Wednesday. This is Kusawa Lake, a little more than an hour west of Whitehorse (60° 35’N, 136° 9’W).

We left about 4 PM and it was almost the last trip we took. There is a turnoff from the Alaska Highway to the campground road. I signaled my left turn, started to slow down, and checked my side mirror. I learned the last part in the two Defense Driving courses I’ve taken (one in high school and one in the army). The car behind me was slowing down but the idiot behind him decided to pass both of us. He should have been able to see the turn signals so he probably knew exactly what they were doing, and did it anyway. I caught a bit of his facial expression and he seemed unhappy with what I screamed at him while waving a one-finger salute. If I didn’t have the motorhome and boat behind us, I may have followed him down and yelled at him at his first stop. I’ll admit, visions of a tire iron may also have crossed my mind. It was a dark blue Toyota or Subaru, by the way.

We spent five days at Kusawa, and in a trend, the fish weren’t biting much there either. I did catch two trout, one about 1½ lbs. and one about 2½ lbs. I froze these and will smoke them some time this week. The weather was hot, with temperatures in the high twenties, except for Thursday. There was a nice overcast and it only got up to 23°. It’s hard to argue with weather like this for a whole weekend, and we enjoyed it to the fullest.

There were three more things to the trip that were an annoyance. First, the neighbours on one side of us had the most whiny dog. He was constantly whining and the neighbours really didn’t seem interested in doing anything about it. On the other side, the other neighbour was a bit of a winner, too. There was someone who moved into the site Thursday afternoon and, before that, there was nothing at that site at all. A little later Thursday, this guy shows up and says he had that site and, basically, kicked the other people out of it. If you like trends, the people at the two sites on either side of us were together.

The third problem was the road itself. I have never seen the road in such rough shape. There are 11 km of washboard, and some of the dips in the washboard are three or four inches. It is one lane in a few places and there is no evidence the government has graded it this year. Before they fixed it almost 20 years ago, it was better than it was this week. And frankly, that annoys me since, for the last three years, you see the following sign at the beginning of the road…

May 29, 2013

New motorhome, new problem

I have to admit that we really like our new camper. The furnace works incredibly well, which was an important aspect to camping over the May long weekend. Further, the huge solar panel on the roof keeps the batteries charged and I haven’t bothered to find a way to bring the generator camping for emergency charging purposes. Not only that, it gets really decent gas mileage.

All is not completely rosy with the new motorhome, although the problem itself is quite minor. With the length of the camper behind the rear wheels, it scrapes on the way in and out of the driveway. It’s not a huge problem, although I wouldn’t want to do it often. I am actually storing it in a friend’s driveway to avoid this.

So, I have someone coming in on the weekend with a Bobcat to change the driveway slope. It climbs a little hill over a short distance as you enter. I’m going to have the slope moved so that the high point is about 15 feet further up the driveway. Should cost about $200 and gives me a good excuse to put in some decent gravel on the driveway anyway.

However, if this is the only problem we have with the new camper, it’s not that bad a thing…

May 27, 2013

More working around the yard

Interesting. There were two jobs from yesterday that I finished. The lawn mower is off to the shop. The mechanic also thinks the carb is full of crap. However, cleaning it is part of a standard tuneup.

I did offer the comment that, if the carb in my pickup (a totally beautiful Holley 4810C) needed complete rebuilding, I would do it in and instant. Dealing with the tiny little parts in a lawn mower carb, however, was a completely different kettle of fish. He laughed and mentioned that he was quite glad I, like many, have the same opinion. I get my mower back before the weekend.

My second leftover task was the mosquito vac. I cleaned the lines, but it still wouldn’t fire up. Today, I took the Dremel tool to the ignitor, in hopes that cleaning the built up deposits would make it fire. Guess what. It actually worked. Presently, it’s running outside and there are mosquitos trapped within it.

I also got several other tasks complete. The boat is one step from being ready to put in the water. I cleaned it out, fully inflated it, and dealt with the unsavoury habit it had of having the seat bounce out of the support straps. This leaves you bouncing on the floor of the boat, which is a problem if you’re in the front and more so, if you’re trying to steer from the rear. I ran a compression strap from each side of the seat supports that prevents the seat from coming out. This should make the boat a wee bit more enjoyable for those that don’t like to be thrown off their seat, or worse yet, over side.

I also got the old motorhome almost cleaned and ready to sell. I have advertised it, but I was a few jobs of cleaning and removing the things that don’t go with it, such as the dishes, removed. This is almost done, and one of the local RV places is willing to sell it on consignment. This will successfully remove it from my driveway, as having two 24-foot motorhomes can take up a bit of driveway space. I take it for an oil and filter change tomorrow and it goes to the dealer immediately afterwards.

I then moved on to the next task, namely, getting the inflatable boat ready to take out and kill fish. OK, that’s not the most politically correct way to put it but, there you go. The seats are in and it’s cleaned out. All I have to do is put the motor on it and stock the tools (safety equipment, boat hook, etc.) That should take almost 15 minutes, and is the final tasks to getting the boat ready. I did the other little job I had to relating to the boat. Since it’s small, and boat and trailer weigh less than 800 lbs., it only has a 4-pole trailer connector for the lights. The new motor home has a trailer hitch, but the wiring hookup is a 7-pole system. I took two plugs and a bit of wire and built an adapter. No, it’s not rocket science, and the local Canadian Tire didn’t have a 7-pole to 4-pole adaptor anyway.

Productivity is good. How long can I keep this insanity up…

May 26, 2013

First yardwork day

The weather has finally turned. It was sunny and just plain hot, and I used the nice weather as an excuse to actually do some work around the yard. I had a number of projects planned. I wanted to repair the lawn mower and the mosquito vac, replace the antenna on the motorhome, rake the grass, water and fertilize.

Well, some of the jobs got finished. The antenna has been replaced, although that took two tries. I really should have measured the clearance between the cab over and the fender before buying a replacement antenna. I thought a 30″ one would work, but it was about 4″ too long. I went back and got a shorter, rubber-coated one for about $10.

I also got the grass done. This is the first time I’ve raked since surgery two years ago and it went well. In fact, I don’t think it’s going to hurt tomorrow, but that remains to be seen.

The lawn mower was not as much of a success. I replaced the gas, the spark plug, and blew carb cleaner threw it with no luck. It starts using the primer, but once that gas is used, it stops. I suspect the carb is loaded with crap so I’ll get someone else to deal with that. Taking apart carburetors that are smaller than an apple is not my idea of a good time. The huge Holley in my truck is one thing. A dinky little lawn mower carb is something else. It goes to the shop tomorrow.

I half fixed the skeetervac. It wasn’t letting gas into the combustion chamber and one of the lines was blocked. I cleaned out the lines and got propane flowing, but it still wouldn’t light. It seems the igniter is toast as well. That being said, you can’t order a new igniter from the company, either. Tomorrow, I’ll give it a good cleaning and see it will work. Hopefully, this will get it going soon.

All in all, I did decide early in the day that working outside without a hat wasn’t going to be a good plan. How nice was the weather, you ask?

This is a picture from late afternoon , before the sun comes around and shines directly on the thermometer. According to the news, we were the hottest place in Canada today. I did get to do my yard work in my shorts, although I’d rather not discuss my glow-in-the-dark legs. As George Carlin wisely put it, I have “phosphorescent Irish skin…”

May 23, 2013May 25, 2013

Yes, I changed the name back

I have this silly habit of ending each blog post with an ellipses (…). When I looked at changing a number of things with it, such as the layout, I did canvass some friends about a suggestion for a new name.

Hint: do not ask my friends for such type of suggestion. Many suggestions were quite funny, although their ability to be discussed in polite society were limited.

I opted for changing it from Doug’s Blog, uninteresting as it is, to Before the Ellipses. After much thought, and criticism from Clara, I have decided to be boring again and go back to the old name.

Oh, well. Lots of people don’t know what an ellipsis is anyway…

May 20, 2013

Victoria Day, 2013

We went shopping last week, and bought a new(er) motorhome. We had looked a bit last year, but the prices were a bit scary. However, there was a sale, and we shopped.

We bought a 2006 Adventurer, 24 foot Class C. It’s very nice, although I really do have to sell the older one for the driveway space. It had the main selling point for Clara, a bed in the back rather than over the front of the cab.

We decide that we would take it out to Fox Lake Campground on Wednesday, since you often have to get there early to get a good campsite on long weekends for the campgrounds close to town. This was kind of touch and go as we only got the camper Wednesday afternoon. It was a pleasant drive out to the campground. I was looking forward to really nice weather for the first real weekend of the season. That was to be kicked in the butt later on during the weekend.

We couldn’t get our favourite site at the campground. It is next to a small creek that runs into the lake. It crosses the road through the campground through a culvert; however, the culvert seems to have been blocked and the creek, in full melt water, decided to find a new path of its own. This path ran through the road and through the site in question and the one next to it, cutting off about ten of the sites up the road as well as the two washed out ones.

The alternate campsite was fine, and placed on substantially higher ground, to say the least. We finally got in to the site on Friday evening, after packing up all of the stuff that didn’t go into the motorhome due to short notice.

It was nice to get out and spend a bit of time sitting in front of a campfire. The weather wasn’t that warm and the furnace ran a fair bit over the weekend, to say the least. Sunday was particularly “un-springlike,” with flurries in the morning and snow in the afternoon. It wasn’t what you would call seasonal weather, given that May has been noted for the hottest temperatures of the year over the last few years.

On the whole, it was a nice opening weekend for the new camper. We’re psyched for some more.

By the way, the weather Sunday evening did clear enough for a really nice sunset, although you don’t see these until after 11 pm this time of year…

May 11, 2013

To whom does your MP answer… if he does at all

It has been nine days since I e-mailed Ryan Leef, MP for the Yukon, regarding direct government intervention in collective bargaining for Crown corporations. To this point, I have not even received a response, despite specifically asking for one.

I have heard others complain that they have contacted him and not received so much as an acknowledgement from his staff that they even received the request. Therefore, if you work for Mr. Leef and have the opportunity to read this blog, please remind him that, within a Westminister government, he works for his constituents. Unfortunately, I have seen little to indicate that he is aware of this.