Back again -

Every year about now, one or two of these cute little guys shows up on my window or screen, and this one made it inside onto the wall, between the screen and its sliding door. So I took its picture. These have little hooks on their feet and can hang on for dear life if they land on the drapes. I had a hell of a time getting it onto a folded paper, so I could put it back outside. This picture, before you click on it to enlarge it, is just about life-size.


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Everything old is new again.....

This was one of those old power-hungry 300-watt halogen floor lamps, and it was tossed out by someone in the building yesterday. 

I converted it to a regular medium-base light bulb socket, and put one of my favourite lamp shades on it. It looks a lot nicer now, and it uses less power. I think I'll keep it....


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More Gabriel's Trumpet -

This was taken last week, but it's a good picture of it. Those are long flowers.

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A rose is a rose

Some are nicer than others. These remind me of wild ones from long ago and far away.

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Busy Bees....

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Today's weather is improving....

And the forecast is for nice weather for the rest of the week. I hope it's correct.

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This morning's weather....

Looks a lot like this...... The recent smoke and haze has been replaced by fog. Could be worse.

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Tonight's sunset.....

Much better than last night's.

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More flowers

Some of the roses beside the front walk.

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Last evening, near sundown

The late afternoon sun, through clouds and smoke from forest fires. Russia isn't the only part of the world that is burning up these days. Our air quality isn't the greatest either.

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The 'beat' goes on....

Another set of low-rise condos gets a new roof across the street, about a block away. This was taken on the Pentax X70 at 24X optical - the max optical zoom. For that much zoom, it's not too bad I don't think. This is why they call this a 'superzoom' camera.

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More flowers

The 'Gabriel's Trumpet' is coming out in bloom

These blooms are about a foot long, including that green portion.

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The roofing job is almost done....

Just in time too, because it looks like our nice weather is changing to something else.....
 
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Our nice weather continues....

Would you believe, this is the roof of the underground parking garage?

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We're having a heatwave.....

The above is from CBC News, showing ten indicators which together confirm global temperatures are rising, and have been increasing year over year for decades.

TV and movies and even official space programs have got some of us thinking that it's only a matter of time before mankind will walk on and perhaps conquer other planets around other stars like our own. In spite of all that entertaining chatter about 'warp speed' and 'hyperdrive' and all that fantasy, the truth is that we're stuck here, like it or not, simply because the distances to other places are too vast, and our technology isn't able to repeal the laws of science with nothing more than wishful thinking. So where am I going with all this? Just to say that instead of dreaming about some mythical 'Star Trek' technology saving our butts from our own stupidity, perhaps we should seriously consider the other possibilities, just in case.

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Looking towards downtown...

This is looking across our bridge over the Capilano River, towards downtown. This bridge is really our front driveway, and our way in and out of here.

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Today in the gardens....

The hydrangeas are looking lovely this year.

The hollyhocks are coming along nicely too.....

But these roses are my favourites, for sure. They are wonderful.

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The roofing continues....

This seems to be taking longer than other similar jobs I've seen around here, but that's likely because they are doing a pattern to it, instead of just banging them on in rows as usual.

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Operating System Market Share....

If you'd like to see a pie chart for the various operating systems, please click here.

A recent news story said that there have now been about 175 million licenses sold for the Windows 7 operating system, making it the fastest selling one yet. That's probably because there were about ten million of us helping to test it during its beta phase, and we all had a chance to submit feedback and ideas for it, and by the time it was released, it was as solid as a rock, and a huge improvement on the previous Vista system. I've been using Windows 7 now ever since that first beta came out in January of 2009, and it's great. If you haven't tried it, you should.

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