guitar hero

Here is a guitar hero! That is Michelle, with her new fisher price guitar hero game, Independent of any gaming system. We can't get games like this for the old Atari. Its all good fun, and nice to have when its -40 outside. Its warmed up today though, think its above -20. I am going to have to go out on the sleds.
Malcolm

Wood chopping drama

Here is a quick pic of home.
I was feeling really manly splitting 3' long logs for the barrel stove, when I broke the fiberglass maul handle. I only got 2 years out of that maul. Sad but true, as usual, I am stronger than my tools. In the background is our camper, and you can just see the hood of my truck slightly up beside/behind Michelle's little car. Take note of the boring blah brown and white camper, cause this spring we will be doing a sweet retro red and white paint job on it for the season.
Malcolm

Winning the war on cold

The old timers say this cold snap will last for the full lunar cycle, which means we are not even half way through. Since I added a second motor heater to the well pump, and we left the water running a dribble, we have not had any water problems. I feel like we have won somehow, wile I hear about people on city water that have no water, because it is frozen. But my truck officially doesn't start. I did plug it in for 8 hours, and it did start, but it had no oil pressure, until I revved it up. I ran it for a long time like that, but it is strange. It probably has something to do with the 0/30 synthetic oil that I put in it for this winter. Not sure what I will do about that problem yet.
We are going through fire wood like crazy, but again, our house is warm, wile others have furnaces that are not keeping up, or more likely just very poorly installed.

-35 drama

Its been almost a week at -35 here. We had a couple of days notice so I chopped a big pile of fire wood and stacked it at the back door, covered by a tarp. The house has actually been really warm, besides the water pipes and drains freezing. The drains freeze in the crawl space, and I believe the well pipes were freezing inside its uninsulated 28" concrete casing. A couple hundred more whats of motor heaters in the well case brought the presure back. Then the tub drain and kitchen sink drain backed up. We left the bathroom sink running, for the last 5 days now since we revived the pressure. We were expecting warmer weather starting tomorrow, but the weather man cancelled that today, so I had to drop a small ceramic heater below down the acces for my bathtub pipes, and in 4 hours the tub and kitchen sink drained.
I bought another beater sled today. We are both really crappy sled riders. You get the 2 of us on the same sled and we just roll it all the time. You have to lean in for the corners, but the sled doesn't lean in like a bike, and when it does lean it likes to tip rite over. If you don't lean it tips to the outside of the corner. It is so bazaar that these crappy 2 stroke engines will start in -35 with one pull of the pull starter. Wile I can crank my truck over for 20 seconds before it will start if it is not plugged in. So I just drive the sleds everywhere in town. I figured out fast that they do not turn on pavement at all, if I have to cross a street, I need to be pointing at my ditch entrance on the other side of the road, it doesn't matter which way the skis point once it is out of the snow. I have had to get off several times, and lift the front end off the pavement and put it to the side of the telephone pole that it seemed to gravitate to. Then once in the snowy boulevards and ditches it drives great.
I included a picture of Jack, the pig. He likes to stand beside, and almost lean on the barrel stove when it is burning.
Malcolm

Exciting new Forex software

I try out every trading system that I can get my hands on. The 'London Rush' is my favorite for trading the GBP crosses.
It has a much better risk to reward ratio than any of the other software that I have tried, and everything is automated, except for the trades. It tells you how much to buy and when to sell. As soon as I get a more reliable internet connection I plan on setting up 'trading robots' to do everything, and I can just tinker with their programs. Here is a link to the London Rush software I am talking about, if anybody is interested in it, I think it is relatively cheep at $100.

Renovation Drama

Everything is drama to me. Recently unemployed, I have been looking at renovating this little house on the prairie we are living in. I have been networking with contractors and picking everything I can from their brains. I have no interest in building new houses, only doing renovations, additions, whatever. Next week I will go look at a $50,000, 500sq foot house close to Laduc that I may buy, to renovate, add an addition, rent out, and flip in 2+ years when oil reaches a new 52 year high again. Just tonight I put together some disturbing facts in my head, as I lay in bed. Our house was 500sq feet, then it got a 300sq foot extension years ago, that was very poorly done. That included the bathroom, where I had to rebuild the floor when we moved in. Part of my information sapped out of contractors was about this sort of thing, if I put a further extension on with permits, are they going to make me fix the previous poor workmanship and under built structures. Which leads me to my favorite question, who needs a permit anyway, why can't we just build it and ask permission later, if it comes up. The answer is, 'your right, that's what everybody around here does, build stuff without permits.' Where is the consequence? Here I will give you the best example I heard. Buddy spends 2 years making this glorious 200sq foot mud room on his house. Instead of drywall he used hand cut cedar planks, so it looked like a sauna. The room was not only for boots but also a laundry room, so he had a 220v plug for the drier, and plugs all over for this and that. When he sells the place, the buyer gets a survey, and that finds the house to be 200sq feet bigger, so the town will not sign off on the survey, until there is a permit pulled and inspection done on this extension. A valid survey is required for the real estate transaction, from what I understand. So a permit is pulled, the inspector wants to see every wire run to every receptacle and so 12"x12" holes are cut in the cedar walls above every plug. Wiring is fine. He wants to see the floor joists, spanning, size ext. A hole is cut in the hard wood floor. 2x6's were used to run a span of 16', they should have been 2x8's, basically the whole extension has to come down, now the buyer is no longer interested, and walks. A man in town that had a similar house to us, built a deck, replaced his windows, and built a garage, sold his house for $200k, but it almost didn't happen. He had permits for the deck, but figured his garage was more like a garden shed, and shouldn't need a permit. The village wouldn't accept the survey until the garage was cleared. He had purchased the 'garage kit' from a hardware store. He had to draw up plans, then hire an engineer to approve them, and all sorts of drama, and expense. I was just thinking of my awesome 3 car 'lean to' addition on the barn/garage, with its 2x4 ceiling rafters, that sag considerably in the middle of their 12' span wile the snow piles high on the roof. But if one was to change them to 2x8's or eve 2x6's the height loss would only allow ATV's and sleds to fit in there. This all makes me think back to three years ago when I bought the place for next to nothing. I know I refused my right to get a building inspection, but I think I was given the option to save another $500 and use the previous owners survey for the transaction. This could mean that all this scabbiness has to come down and be redone, if I should want to take advantage and sell during the next big oil boom. As any buyer paying over $100k is probably going to want to get a new survey done. But in my case the cost of a survey and building inspection would have added more than 6% to the cost of the house. I will have to pull out my real estate paperwork and see if I can figure that stuff out, and/or get a survey done one of these days, wile I have the time to make things right. I will keep you updated as I figure things out.
Malcolm

RCMP Victim Services Advocate

So for those who do not know
I am working with the Two Hills and Andrew RCMP VSU(Victim Services Unit)
Today i finished the last day of my VSU basic training course. It was 2 weekends.
and can now "officially" work on cases.
+ i get a really cool badge.

The training was over all pretty good. And for someone coming into this
w/ no prior experience working w/ crisis, and victims, assault, and death, then this would have been great and jam packed with useful information.
And not to say that it didn't offer me anything, but it was for me, mostly a refresher on prior schooling and work experiences.
Except for the criminal code stuff.........awesome to have that useful information at my fingertips. lots of stuff i either didn't know, and why would i, or had a complete misconception of.

Also As a result of this Volunteer Position, i am being sent away on all kinds of additional training, and i have already completed my Child Sexual Abuse Certificate.
Which I kinda already have from my schooling at GBC, but never hurts to get again.

Aside from all the info being taught and absorbed at the training, i met some amazing people. 1 of whom is a female RCMP on light duties as she is pregnant. And who will be taking me out on a ride along in roughly.....3 1/2 to 4 months time.
but I'm sure I'll be doing that through my own detachment before then.

That's about it for my exciting news.
Well that and our newest member of the family,
our miniature pot belly pig, Jack.
But he will get his own blog posting later this week,
as soon as i have a picture to post too.

Windstar Drama

The Windstar is finished, and I think I am finished with minivans. When I was researching the head gasket issue online, I read about so many people pissed at Ford. They were pissed off because the head gasket was a factory recall. Most people heard about it too late, and the antifreeze had gotten into the motor oil so they took it in for service, when they heard about the recall. The recall was really the intake gaskets, but that is harder to comprehend. Their gaskets and oil were changed, so they were sent on their way. Only to get a knock in the motor a wile later, that gets louder and louder. Within a matter of minutes the motor seizes up from a spun bearing that ford won’t pay for. They won’t pay for it because there is antifreeze in the system. Antifreeze is abrasive, much like sand paper. You could probably run a motor for a long time with the crank case full of water, but not antifreeze.

Most of those affected were F150s, and if I had an F150 I would change the motor on it, but to lift the van off the front subframe in the back yard, sucks. Dispite 4 oil changes in 2000km the van seized solid on me in Lac Labich, on the way home from work Oct 5, 08. This was the first set that I had my air card, and so I was able to call home with Skype. Michelle came out to rescue me in my Dodge 1500, which was on stand by for such incidents. We towed it with some rope, 50km and called it a night. We went back in the morning and hauled it the last 50kma

I think I will push the Windstar into the back yard and make it a chicken coop for the winter. Maybe I will cut some fancy chicken door in the side with the cutting torch, when I get more oxigen