Heritage

I'm dragging myself around today, travelling from coffee cup to coffee cup.  Last night was our final presentation for a series of Heritage Lectures at our local centre for the arts.  I have a little project that I spearhead.  It's a park in called BT Corner which commemorates the Beatty family who brought industry in a big way to our little town.  As part of our lecture series I presented on the park specifically and making heritage interesting and accessible in general.

This is the entry to the park - seen on this blog several times before.  Here's a little about the materials used and why.  The replica grist millstone pays homage to the very first industries in town.  Mills were the cornerstone of our community and without them and the agricultural landscape surrounding Fergus, the Beatty Brohters would never have come here.  The limestone boulders surrounding the millstone represent the building material of choice for buildings in this area.  The sandblasted stainless steel sign bearing the BT logo reminds us of the Beatty foundry which was located in the building directly across the street from the sign.

You can see the factory attached to the foundry in this picture.  The factory found reuse as the Fergus Market for many years before having a makeover five years ago and become the more upscale, Fergus Marketplace.  In the foreground is a dry stone wall which highlights the Scottish roots of the town.  It will house the interpretive panels.  It looks really, really nice.

And finally here's just a really nice shot of the stonecutter's hammer and the design drawings sitting on the wall as it was being built.

The lecture series seems to have been a success.  Turnouts were good, though I suppose you always wish there we more folks in the seats.

When I wasn't presenting, I had the pleasure of sitting with local actor, Colin Fox.  We spoke a bit and he seems a delightful man with a genuine concern for the heritage of his community.  We'd met briefly before at the Elora Writer's Festival and I've had occasion to bump into him at events around town.  I needed to tell him that he has thrilled my kids with his work on the animated tv show, Atomic Betty.

Work on Gerry has slowed as I find myself needing a little extra polish on Loremaster.  More on that as things develop.

I think that I shall never see...

A poem.

Today I unexpectedly found myself writing a poem.

Over the last few weeks I've been plugging away at Gerry, my kid's story about an orphaned giant.  Each day I've become a little more immersed in Gerry's world and things are flowing nicely.  Today, however, I opened my notebook to where I left off Gerry last night, tapped the page a few times with my pen, then leafed ahead a dozen pages to a blank sheet.

I wrote these words:

Llewellyn never smiled again

And then the first three verses of a poem bled out of my pen onto the paper.  I'm heading back to my notebook now.

Instructions...

So, we have this computer in the basement.

The basement computer serves the Beynon family as a  sort of a nerve center for all of the family's computing.  It is the place where we store our photographs.  It's where we send our documents when we need them printed.  It is the repository of all files and things electronically stored which all members of the family might find important enough to keep.

Well, the other day I came home to find a blank screen on the basement computer.  I restarted the system and was greeted by a long, drawn-out beep.  I took the computer to our local computer shop and they told me that the motherboard was shot.  I asked them about options.  They told me that I was looking at a new system and quoted me a price.  I did not like the price.

I went to another place about a 20 minute drive away and found a bare-bones system that suited my needs.  It came without an operating system but that was no problem as my previous computer was loaded with a copy (legal even) of Windows XP.  Once I got the system home, hooked up my old hard drive and loaded the operating system, I figured it would be clear sailing.  I was wrong.

First of all, the computer did not recognize my home network when I plugged in the ethernet cable.  I spent some time fiddling around with cables until I became so frustrated that I hooked up a wireless card I had lying around.  Once that was done, I could access my network and the Internet but I was royally pissed off that the built-in ethernet connection was not working.

Next, I attempted to look at one of my kid's games, only to have the new computer tell me that it was unable to support the graphics required for the game.  "Fine," I thought, "it is a bare-bones system, so maybe my graphics card for my old computer will fit."  I cracked open the case and was about to insert the graphics card when I discovered that this computer's motherboard would not accept an old graphics card.  I muttered a few swear words.

Finally, I plugged in the speakers.  Jesus Christ!  The goddamn speakers didn't work either!  I swore.  I stomped my feet.  I shook my fist at the ceiling.  I hung my head in defeat.  As I hung my head, my eyes drifted to something sitting on the chair next to me.  It was a little white envelope about 4 inches square. There was a plastic window.  Inside I saw a CD.  Screen printed on the disc was the name of the manufacturer of the motherboard and beneath the name of manufacturer were printed the words

Utilities and Drivers

"Oh..." I said.

I put the disk into the drive.  The computer seemed happy to see the disk.  It chirped a little, the disc rattled and suddenly all was right in the world.  In the wink of an eye my  ethernet cable worked, 3-D video was not an issue and sound, glorious sound, poured from the speakers.

Moral for today:

Read the damn instructions.