Maybe it's an American thing, that belief that more power is always better. The big engine, the big car, and so on. Today I have a story where (so far at least) the opposite is true.
At our old home in the Santa Cruz Mountains, we had 2.5 acres of land, on a slight slope. We had redwood trees, what remained of an old pear orchard, and a lot of very tall weeds that needed to be mowed several times during the season to keep the fire danger down. Then the rains arrived and you didn't mow until it started to dry out because your mower would get stuck or slide on the hillside.
To do that work I used a walk behind, high weed mower from one of the big manufacturers of such things. (DR, in my case, but there are others.) It had a 17 HP motor and a 30" blade. It had four speeds powered going forward, one in reverse, and weighed something like 400 pounds. Steering it was real work. I also used a heavy duty, gas powered string trimmer made by Stihl.
Mowing took 12 - 16 hours spread over 2 or 3 days, and left me dehydrated, with leg cramps, blisters, and callouses.
Then we moved away from all of that. And oddly I am mowing the yard in our rental. Doing so got me a small reduction in the rent and the landlord bought me a mower and string trimmer to do the work. The lot is large by suburban standards, perhaps 20,000 square feet, or nearly half an acre.
On arriving, the house had not been maintained for months. The grass was two feet long, dried out, and matted down.
Based on the agreement with the landlord, I bought a $300 gas mower and a cheap string trimmer that is either battery or extension cord powered. Both are laughable in comparison to the gear I used in California.
And yet...
Despite worries from the landlord about how large the lot is and the work involved, once the initial overgrowth was mowed down, mowing this place is trivial. I can mow and trim the whole thing in two hours or so.
It turns out that the cheap gear is just fine for this job. It uses a lot less gas, and is easy to steer and move. (The mower doesn't even have powered wheels... it's up to me to make it go.)
Fascinatingly, I am told the previous owner of the house had a riding mower (amusingly called a "sit mower" by some up here). I didn't even have a riding mower in California, as I didn't trust such a thing on the sloped ground. But I am certain that a riding mower is totally unneeded for this lot. Compared with what I am used to, this is an easy lot to maintain.
I admit that first mow - trying to cut the grossly overgrown grass - took a long time, and required hours of effort. But now the job is easy.
And I find it interesting that in this case, less power is just fine. Not a very American point of view, I fear.
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Saturday, August 26, 2017
Monday, August 21, 2017
Random Canadian Obervations
Just Trudeau tweets in both French and English. Should be obvious, but still made me say "huh... that's kind of cool." Imagine if Donald Trump was able to tweet in two languages. Actually, forget that. Imagine instead that he was actually fluent in English. How different things would be.
Tortillas in Canada. Yes, they exist, but note the manufacturer:
I have to admit I laughed out loud when I found these in Costco.
Speaking of Costco, you know how the items they carry are different from store to store down in the US? Well, it gets worse up here, because there are products that are US only or Canada only items. Years ago they stopped carrying Turkish apricots in the US, switching to California apricots (which are not as good in my opinion) and (for a while) some awful organic things that tasted like bland cardboard soaked in bit of corn syrup. Well, those Turkish apricots are available up here. For me that is just about reason enough to remain a Costco member all by itself.
Also, alcohol is expensive. We're trying BC wines out of curiosity. So far they are drinkable, but a bit sweeter than CA wines. The red varieties I see most are Merlot, Malbec, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, plus blends of those. On the white side I see Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, and a couple of others. Thus far the most impressive bottle we've had (and all the ones we've tried have been comparatively inexpensive) is the Naked Grape Pino Grigio. It's quite good. Not too sweet, with some citrus notes in it. Most of the local bottle shops, however, have fairly poor selections as a rule, and we'll have to go a bit farther away to find more choices. The Wikipedia article on BC wine indicates there are more varietals grown up here, but I haven't seen them yet.
People are pretty much unfailingly polite, unless they are driving. A small but significant percentage of drivers are rude, aggressive, horn honking, elegant gesture making, um... individuals. Not sure why that is, but it is a thing. In person, though, apologizing really is as common as the stereotype would indicate - much more so than in the US - and it's a way of greasing the skids, of making society work more smoothly. Apologize early and often - and be certain to politely acknowledge apologies! - and you'll blend in a bit better. (Being American means I will never completely blend in, but I try.)
Some things are expensive. Car insurance is something like four times what we paid in the US. Renters insurance is also costly. Maybe our rates will go down once we've been in country and insured for a year or two, but I have my doubts. Gas is also really expensive. Blueberries, though, are pretty cheap at the farm stands. Still trying to figure out electricity and natural gas. The weather has been so warm that we haven't needed much of either yet. Come January, that will have changed, and we'll see what the bills look like.
The overall pace of life is a bit slower here. Admittedly I am used to Silicon Valley - where things are rather intense - so perhaps most places would feel slower, but it is notable. It's not quite all the way to island time, as on Hawaii, but it is still significant. I am told that Vancouver Island - home of Victoria, the capitol of BC - runs on island time. Eventually I will confirm that one way or another.
Video availability on the internet is highly variable. Some things I used to watch simply aren't available. John Oliver is mostly not accessible. Rachel Maddow's stuff on YouTube is available, but the free segments from her show on the MSNBC website are not. (And don't ask me how to get paid content. Last time I looked into that, MSNBC wanted to know which cable service we subscribed to. Being cord cutters, we had none, and the same is the case here. So I guess we're out of luck on that front.) But some of these limitations are odd. Why isn't the stuff that John Oliver puts up on YouTube available world wide? No clue. Seems like they are unnecessarily reducing their available audience, but maybe there are considerations I don't understand.
Speaking of TV, so far it appears the city of Richmond mostly shuts down on Sunday evenings for Game of Thrones. Without a cable subscription, we don't watch it (and I began loathing the books somewhere along about volume 4 or 5) but we can see the park is mostly empty on Sunday nights when I think it is on. We walk the dogs every night, so the difference is pretty obvious.
Canadians pay for most everything with plastic. Credit or debit, makes no difference. Some, apparently, never carry cash at all. And they use a tap & go (NFC) system for smaller payments that doesn't require any ID confirmation. Above a certain amount, though, you have to enter a PIN. We had the tap & go system in the US briefly. I think it was called something like "pay wave" but it never caught on, and as far as I know it disappeared from all our cards after a brief time.
And of course the US never went to chip & PIN on credit cards, opting for chip & signature instead, which is dumb. Chip & PIN is much more secure, but apparently the CC companies in America thing Americans are too stupid to adapt to that. Alas, the current occupant of the white house makes me think the CC companies might be right about that.
I'll probably have more observations like this over time, but school will overwhelm me starting in about two weeks, and I hope blog posts start being about art more often once that happens.
Tortillas in Canada. Yes, they exist, but note the manufacturer:
I have to admit I laughed out loud when I found these in Costco.
Speaking of Costco, you know how the items they carry are different from store to store down in the US? Well, it gets worse up here, because there are products that are US only or Canada only items. Years ago they stopped carrying Turkish apricots in the US, switching to California apricots (which are not as good in my opinion) and (for a while) some awful organic things that tasted like bland cardboard soaked in bit of corn syrup. Well, those Turkish apricots are available up here. For me that is just about reason enough to remain a Costco member all by itself.
Also, alcohol is expensive. We're trying BC wines out of curiosity. So far they are drinkable, but a bit sweeter than CA wines. The red varieties I see most are Merlot, Malbec, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, plus blends of those. On the white side I see Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, and a couple of others. Thus far the most impressive bottle we've had (and all the ones we've tried have been comparatively inexpensive) is the Naked Grape Pino Grigio. It's quite good. Not too sweet, with some citrus notes in it. Most of the local bottle shops, however, have fairly poor selections as a rule, and we'll have to go a bit farther away to find more choices. The Wikipedia article on BC wine indicates there are more varietals grown up here, but I haven't seen them yet.
People are pretty much unfailingly polite, unless they are driving. A small but significant percentage of drivers are rude, aggressive, horn honking, elegant gesture making, um... individuals. Not sure why that is, but it is a thing. In person, though, apologizing really is as common as the stereotype would indicate - much more so than in the US - and it's a way of greasing the skids, of making society work more smoothly. Apologize early and often - and be certain to politely acknowledge apologies! - and you'll blend in a bit better. (Being American means I will never completely blend in, but I try.)
Some things are expensive. Car insurance is something like four times what we paid in the US. Renters insurance is also costly. Maybe our rates will go down once we've been in country and insured for a year or two, but I have my doubts. Gas is also really expensive. Blueberries, though, are pretty cheap at the farm stands. Still trying to figure out electricity and natural gas. The weather has been so warm that we haven't needed much of either yet. Come January, that will have changed, and we'll see what the bills look like.
The overall pace of life is a bit slower here. Admittedly I am used to Silicon Valley - where things are rather intense - so perhaps most places would feel slower, but it is notable. It's not quite all the way to island time, as on Hawaii, but it is still significant. I am told that Vancouver Island - home of Victoria, the capitol of BC - runs on island time. Eventually I will confirm that one way or another.
Video availability on the internet is highly variable. Some things I used to watch simply aren't available. John Oliver is mostly not accessible. Rachel Maddow's stuff on YouTube is available, but the free segments from her show on the MSNBC website are not. (And don't ask me how to get paid content. Last time I looked into that, MSNBC wanted to know which cable service we subscribed to. Being cord cutters, we had none, and the same is the case here. So I guess we're out of luck on that front.) But some of these limitations are odd. Why isn't the stuff that John Oliver puts up on YouTube available world wide? No clue. Seems like they are unnecessarily reducing their available audience, but maybe there are considerations I don't understand.
Speaking of TV, so far it appears the city of Richmond mostly shuts down on Sunday evenings for Game of Thrones. Without a cable subscription, we don't watch it (and I began loathing the books somewhere along about volume 4 or 5) but we can see the park is mostly empty on Sunday nights when I think it is on. We walk the dogs every night, so the difference is pretty obvious.
Canadians pay for most everything with plastic. Credit or debit, makes no difference. Some, apparently, never carry cash at all. And they use a tap & go (NFC) system for smaller payments that doesn't require any ID confirmation. Above a certain amount, though, you have to enter a PIN. We had the tap & go system in the US briefly. I think it was called something like "pay wave" but it never caught on, and as far as I know it disappeared from all our cards after a brief time.
And of course the US never went to chip & PIN on credit cards, opting for chip & signature instead, which is dumb. Chip & PIN is much more secure, but apparently the CC companies in America thing Americans are too stupid to adapt to that. Alas, the current occupant of the white house makes me think the CC companies might be right about that.
I'll probably have more observations like this over time, but school will overwhelm me starting in about two weeks, and I hope blog posts start being about art more often once that happens.
Saturday, August 19, 2017
We have car insurance... finally
On Wednesday evening we finally completed the car registration and insurance process here in BC. That took a long time, but it is now done for a year.
Car insurance is very expensive here. We're paying something like four times what we were paying in California, but that comparison isn't really fair, since we bunded our home and auto insurance there and got discounts as a result. In addition, we had a very long accident free record in California, and while have a letter from our insurance company saying we were accident free for 10 years (which gets us a substantial discount) there may be more discounting available once the ICBC has insured us for some time.
That takes a big thing off our backs, and we're almost fully settled in and ready to just live. It's getting close, at least. That means there isn't a lot going on for us right now as a result, which is good. We've lived the last several months in a state of heightened tension as we prepped for this move. Some down time - before school starts in September - is a good thing, at least for me.
I've had a few discussions with people about the wildland fire situation in BC, and it's pretty dire. I heard yesterday that there were 138 fires burning in BC, and an online article said 26 of them were significant. I hear about evacuations on the radio, but I am not yet savvy enough with the local geography to know where they are or how many people might be affected. It is clear that most of the problems are north and east of us from online fire maps. Also, the province just re-authorized a wild fire state of emergency for the third time, and it now continues through September 1.
I know California has sever fires as well, and I wish all my mountain friends the best as the fire season progresses. Someday the rains will come back - both here and down there - and at least reduce the danger. In the meantime, be careful and keep in touch with the news.
Car insurance is very expensive here. We're paying something like four times what we were paying in California, but that comparison isn't really fair, since we bunded our home and auto insurance there and got discounts as a result. In addition, we had a very long accident free record in California, and while have a letter from our insurance company saying we were accident free for 10 years (which gets us a substantial discount) there may be more discounting available once the ICBC has insured us for some time.
That takes a big thing off our backs, and we're almost fully settled in and ready to just live. It's getting close, at least. That means there isn't a lot going on for us right now as a result, which is good. We've lived the last several months in a state of heightened tension as we prepped for this move. Some down time - before school starts in September - is a good thing, at least for me.
I've had a few discussions with people about the wildland fire situation in BC, and it's pretty dire. I heard yesterday that there were 138 fires burning in BC, and an online article said 26 of them were significant. I hear about evacuations on the radio, but I am not yet savvy enough with the local geography to know where they are or how many people might be affected. It is clear that most of the problems are north and east of us from online fire maps. Also, the province just re-authorized a wild fire state of emergency for the third time, and it now continues through September 1.
I know California has sever fires as well, and I wish all my mountain friends the best as the fire season progresses. Someday the rains will come back - both here and down there - and at least reduce the danger. In the meantime, be careful and keep in touch with the news.
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
When Moving Preparation Goes Wrong
So, you know how you're trying to plan way ahead of things when you're moving? Everyone does that, right?
Because you're doing that, a few days in advance of moving you call your Internet and phone provider (who shall remain anonymous, but whose name might partially sound like something you do when you're fishing) and setup a disconnect of your service the day after you need it. After all, you're going to be in crazy mode for a few days in a row, and the internet and a phone will help deal with surprises and thus keep you sane, right?
Your service rep is very nice and sets it all up just fine. Disconnect is set for Friday, since the moving truck takes all your stuff on Thursday. The call goes so well - almost no time on hold even - that you are lulled into a false sense of security.
So Tuesday arrives, and at about 12:30 pm, just like you didn't schedule it, your internet and phone go away. Poof.
So you call your COMunications (and fishing related) service provider and get into their automated system, which helpfully sends a reset command to your equipment and tells you to wait ten minutes to see if that worked.
But you're smarter than that, so you push deeper into the phone tree saying "Representative!" until you are hoarse and eventually (after three hours and a light snack) get to a "Live Body" (tm) who might be able to look at your account and figure out why it's stopped working three days early.
The "Live Body" (tm) eventually isn't sure but it was probably someone who didn't read the date right on the disconnect request and just did it. They are escalating to the service rep that setup the disconnect and that person's boss...
[[Here we have to make a slight digression...]]
You know how calls like this go. They always take longer than you expect, and you might as well sit down while it is going on.
And (at least in our case, though possibly not yours) the cellular phone service at your home isn't exactly stellar, so you need to step outside to make this call, where the walls and some air won't interfere with the tenuous cell reception you get from an antenna powered by three geriatric squirrels running in wheels in a cage some 18 miles to the east.
So you're standing outside and as realize you should sit down for this conversation. Happily, you have a deck and some chairs and even a table you might put your feet up on while you wait through this.
[[Here we return you to the original narrative, but you have no idea where this is going.]]
So you pull out a chair, sit down, and just as the "Live Body" (tm) is starting to explain that he's escalating this ticket to someone, your left elbow hurts. A lot. And then your right elbow. And then you realize that there are rather a lot of flying, stinging things around you. Quite a lot of them, in fact.
You leap up - as one does - saying a lot of four letter words - as one does - that almost certainly surprise the snot out of the "Live Body" (tm) - as they can - and eventually get far enough away to be sure that you're not being chased by a horde of angry, stinging things. But what things?
Wasps, as it turns out.
Once you finish the call from a safe distance, and are assured the internet and phone will be restored within one - two at the outside - hours, and drive to the local store to purchase the needed "Horrific Chemicals" (tm), use them, and retreat again for a while, you eventually turn the table over and find this:
Because you're doing that, a few days in advance of moving you call your Internet and phone provider (who shall remain anonymous, but whose name might partially sound like something you do when you're fishing) and setup a disconnect of your service the day after you need it. After all, you're going to be in crazy mode for a few days in a row, and the internet and a phone will help deal with surprises and thus keep you sane, right?
Your service rep is very nice and sets it all up just fine. Disconnect is set for Friday, since the moving truck takes all your stuff on Thursday. The call goes so well - almost no time on hold even - that you are lulled into a false sense of security.
So Tuesday arrives, and at about 12:30 pm, just like you didn't schedule it, your internet and phone go away. Poof.
So you call your COMunications (and fishing related) service provider and get into their automated system, which helpfully sends a reset command to your equipment and tells you to wait ten minutes to see if that worked.
But you're smarter than that, so you push deeper into the phone tree saying "Representative!" until you are hoarse and eventually (after three hours and a light snack) get to a "Live Body" (tm) who might be able to look at your account and figure out why it's stopped working three days early.
The "Live Body" (tm) eventually isn't sure but it was probably someone who didn't read the date right on the disconnect request and just did it. They are escalating to the service rep that setup the disconnect and that person's boss...
[[Here we have to make a slight digression...]]
You know how calls like this go. They always take longer than you expect, and you might as well sit down while it is going on.
And (at least in our case, though possibly not yours) the cellular phone service at your home isn't exactly stellar, so you need to step outside to make this call, where the walls and some air won't interfere with the tenuous cell reception you get from an antenna powered by three geriatric squirrels running in wheels in a cage some 18 miles to the east.
So you're standing outside and as realize you should sit down for this conversation. Happily, you have a deck and some chairs and even a table you might put your feet up on while you wait through this.
[[Here we return you to the original narrative, but you have no idea where this is going.]]
So you pull out a chair, sit down, and just as the "Live Body" (tm) is starting to explain that he's escalating this ticket to someone, your left elbow hurts. A lot. And then your right elbow. And then you realize that there are rather a lot of flying, stinging things around you. Quite a lot of them, in fact.
You leap up - as one does - saying a lot of four letter words - as one does - that almost certainly surprise the snot out of the "Live Body" (tm) - as they can - and eventually get far enough away to be sure that you're not being chased by a horde of angry, stinging things. But what things?
Wasps, as it turns out.
Once you finish the call from a safe distance, and are assured the internet and phone will be restored within one - two at the outside - hours, and drive to the local store to purchase the needed "Horrific Chemicals" (tm), use them, and retreat again for a while, you eventually turn the table over and find this:
Yes, that's the "Trump Nest" (tm) , created sometime in the last three or four weeks by a group of rather unpleasant freeloaders living on your property without paying rent. And stinging you for disturbing them besides.
Anyway, that evening, when the stinging nasties that weren't in the nest when you nuked it from space are trying to figure out what to do with rest of their lives - ideally somewhere in Siberia - you scrap that nest off the underside of the table, hose off all the "Horrific Chemical" (tm) residue, and set about dealing with all the stuff that you put off while:
- Dealing with an Internet outage
- Being stung by insects that don't care about your Internet outage
- Exclaiming in pain/fear/frustration in the ear of the "Live Body" (tm) trying to fix the Internet outage
- Running from said stinging insects whilst teaching the "Live Body" (tm) some exiting new words
- Figuring out what sort of medical treatment you have for stings, since everything is already packed
- Mentally recovering from the stress induced by these two, entirely separate - but now horribly related - events
I'm sure something just like this happened the last time you were prepping to move. Right?
Oh, and it took 1.5 hours and another email - sent over those tenuous cellular radio waves - to get the Internet back.
Monday, July 10, 2017
2.5 Weeks Left
Over the past couple of months I've been to Vancouver twice to find a place for us to live, and to get the process of moving in started. It seems to be working: the house is mostly packed, the sale papers are signed, the new home is rented, classes are signed up for, and the dogs are freaked out by the changes.
Yup... it's progress.
But how did we get to this point? Some of the back story:
Back when we decided that we wanted a change, and that Canada was where we wanted to go, we figured that it was time for me to go back to school. I've been thinking about going back to study art for quite some time. After all, I've been teaching art for nearly two decades without any formal training. Wouldn't it be nice to know if anything I've told my students is right?
And the Pacific Northwest is a very appealing part of the world, with wonderful indigenous culture that I may be able to draw on for inspiration. Add the fact that Vancouver is a very nice, livable city, with working transit & lots of culture and the destination decision was made.
So after some research into art schools in the area I applied to Langara College. Why there? There were three main reasons:
Next I applied for a student visa. The Canadian immigration system made that pretty easy, though I do admit a couple of things they asked were less than clear. But an hour on the phone with an immigration attorney and those were cleared up. Not quite six weeks after submitting the application (all done online), I got email saying my visa was approved. In addition, Canada is happy to give spouses of students an open work permit, and Anne's visa was approved as well.
A side benefit of Anne's work visa is that she can work for any company. Often when people cross an international border to work, their employer sponsors them, effectively getting their visa written. Between the US and Canada such visas are apparently pretty easy to get thanks to provisions of NAFTA, but should you quit working, be laid off, or in any other way lose your job, you have limited time to find a new job before having to go back home, and your new employer has to sponsor you again. Our arrangement means that for the duration of my studies Anne can work for any company that wants to hire her, and they don't have to sponsor her in any way. It's more flexible in the crazy world of high tech, and that's good.
The visas are good for the duration of my studies at Langara. It is my understanding that I can extend the visa if needed to finish my studies, which is good because it takes 6 courses a semester to finish the diploma I am seeking in 4 regular semesters. Even using summer sessions it takes 5 courses during each regular semester and 2 each summer semester. That's a heavy course load.
In addition, once I graduate I can apply for a post graduate work permit. As the rules currently stand that would be good for 3 years after completing my studies, which keeps us in Canada for a minimum of five years, or a bit more if I extend my student visa to finish the diploma.
Of course, we're also working on getting permanent residency (PR) - the equivalent of the US "green card" - but that's harder to to achieve because we are oldish. If we were in our mid thirties it would be simple with our technical and educational backgrounds. As it is, we have to work a bit harder to make that come about, but more about that later.
For now, we're on track to cross the border in a couple of weeks and start setting up our new digs.
Yup... it's progress.
But how did we get to this point? Some of the back story:
Back when we decided that we wanted a change, and that Canada was where we wanted to go, we figured that it was time for me to go back to school. I've been thinking about going back to study art for quite some time. After all, I've been teaching art for nearly two decades without any formal training. Wouldn't it be nice to know if anything I've told my students is right?
And the Pacific Northwest is a very appealing part of the world, with wonderful indigenous culture that I may be able to draw on for inspiration. Add the fact that Vancouver is a very nice, livable city, with working transit & lots of culture and the destination decision was made.
So after some research into art schools in the area I applied to Langara College. Why there? There were three main reasons:
- Their program appealed to me.
- They don't require a portfolio from new students. Instead their goal is to graduate students with a portfolio so they can go on to the big art schools for a BFA or MFA.
- Their cost for international students wasn't quite as high as that of some others I looked at. We could afford other places, but I am more comfortable on that front here.
Next I applied for a student visa. The Canadian immigration system made that pretty easy, though I do admit a couple of things they asked were less than clear. But an hour on the phone with an immigration attorney and those were cleared up. Not quite six weeks after submitting the application (all done online), I got email saying my visa was approved. In addition, Canada is happy to give spouses of students an open work permit, and Anne's visa was approved as well.
A side benefit of Anne's work visa is that she can work for any company. Often when people cross an international border to work, their employer sponsors them, effectively getting their visa written. Between the US and Canada such visas are apparently pretty easy to get thanks to provisions of NAFTA, but should you quit working, be laid off, or in any other way lose your job, you have limited time to find a new job before having to go back home, and your new employer has to sponsor you again. Our arrangement means that for the duration of my studies Anne can work for any company that wants to hire her, and they don't have to sponsor her in any way. It's more flexible in the crazy world of high tech, and that's good.
The visas are good for the duration of my studies at Langara. It is my understanding that I can extend the visa if needed to finish my studies, which is good because it takes 6 courses a semester to finish the diploma I am seeking in 4 regular semesters. Even using summer sessions it takes 5 courses during each regular semester and 2 each summer semester. That's a heavy course load.
In addition, once I graduate I can apply for a post graduate work permit. As the rules currently stand that would be good for 3 years after completing my studies, which keeps us in Canada for a minimum of five years, or a bit more if I extend my student visa to finish the diploma.
Of course, we're also working on getting permanent residency (PR) - the equivalent of the US "green card" - but that's harder to to achieve because we are oldish. If we were in our mid thirties it would be simple with our technical and educational backgrounds. As it is, we have to work a bit harder to make that come about, but more about that later.
For now, we're on track to cross the border in a couple of weeks and start setting up our new digs.
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