Big Changes

 Today's song is: Be the One ... Dua Lipa

Finally, something to write about.

Jaidan is back in the classroom and enjoying it. Thavorn has a job on a mushroom farm working in quality control (final inspection). The hours are long, sometimes 11 hours a day and she has to work every second weekend. However, after the first couple of days which were tough, she is managing easily, as joyful as ever, and is enjoying watching her bank account grow as she becomes a contributing member of society.

The best part of the job is that it is a 5 minute drive from where we live so I drop her off and pick her up without much of a disruption to our daily routine of putting Jaidan on and off the bus.

However I find it lonely and a bit boring without my 'tilac' at home.

My business work is finally becoming manageable as new features were rolled out in September. The business is growing slowly which is fine by me as I get a life :-)

The Canadian dollar has appreciated substantially against the Thai baht and is now 1 CDN = 27 Thai Baht, up from  1 CDN = 22 Thai Baht of a few months ago. Here is hoping it goes back to 1 to 30 of 10 years ago when I first started to visit Thailand.

Thavorn will be able to bank $2,500 a month so we should be able to start building her house in Kok Som Lan in about 2 years. At that time she can return to her life of leisure.

Also, at that time, Jaidan with be in grade 4, a grade I have taught and I will probably home school him for 6 months while the build is in progress. We may eventually be doing 6 months in Canada and 6 months in Thailand. However, we live each day, at a time, which is the Thai way :-) Fate, karma and Buddha will look after us :-)

I did not use my motorcycle as much as I would have liked so one of my goals next year is to make more use of it.

My TPA (Teacher Performance Appraisal) software is now in its 20th year. Those of you in the software industry will realize that is quite a milestone. Kudos to me :-)

Jaidan is looking forward to snow, as am I. Thavorn, is not so sure! Thavorn is now the proud owner of a six pack and enjoys being taken for a teenager. 

Life is good, take care.

TTYL

Finally - some news

 Today's song is: Take Care - Drake and Rhianna

Jaidan is back in school in grade 2 and loving it. He goes to school on the school bus, picked up at 7:40 and back home at 3:20.  He is growing up.

The big news is Thavorn has a job starting Monday at Carleton Mushrooms which is a 5 minute drive form our house. $15 per hour with room for advancement and dental and health plans available. It is a family run business and the people seem nice. Plenty of Asian working there but Thavorn is the first Thai hire. She was tentaive about the interview but got the job. It was time she became a contributing member of society.

I finally need to buy Thavorn a sim card for her phone as she will have to call me when she is finished work for a ride home. I will go with PCmobile who have some good prepaid pricing. $30 a month gives her unlimited texting and calling and 4 GBytes of data.

I also added tJaidan and Thavorn to my RTO extended health and dental plan. Jaidan aced his first visit with no cavities. Thavorn was not so good and needs some work done :-(

As for me covid life goes on and my software business will soon enter its 20th year. Who would have thunk it!  I guess I must be doing a good job :-)

I did not use my motorcycle as much as I thought this past year but I hope to get out more in the fall.

TTYL

NBA has Lost Control

 Today's song is: A 5 year old kid playing the game he loves (btw wrong size balls to train with!)

I believe the NBA has lost it.  The major problems are:

The players are calling the shot.

1. The players are getting paid too much.
2. The season is too long leading to injuries.
3. Players opt out of too many games.
4. Star players are loading up on a team just to get a ring.

The top players are now getting over 50 million a season and that is ridiculous. The top players also get at least that much in endorsements.

The top players in the NHL make 5 million and they are more than keen to work for that amount.  Why the difference? Easy, the NBA has lost control.

I can guarantee you that the bball players would work for 5 million a year. After all, outside of basketball, where would they command that type of salary? I don't recommend that level of pay, but the price of tickets is too high especially when the star player you paid to see sits out the game.

I believe the problem could be easily fixed by adjusting how the cap works.

The solution would be:

1. The max amount for the best salary on the team is 40 million per season.
2. The max amount for the next best salary on the team is 30 million a season.
3. No other player can make more than 20 million per season.

That would stop players migrating to a team and forming a super team which takes the competitiveness out of the league. Teams would now have to develop talent within the organization. Keep those caps for the next 10 years.

I would also cut the season by 10 games.

If a player misses a game due to non medical reasons (like resting) then deduct his salary.

Will the players squawk? You bet, but where else can you make that kind of money for playing a game that you love?

The NCAA also has a problem with so called student athletes. The problem is the one and dones that teams are loading up with to be competitive. Student athletics are for students who plan on an education, not a jump to the NBA.

To solve the problem I would make athletic scholarships permanent for 4 years. When a one and done comes in, he is awarded a scholarship. If he leaves after one year then that scholarship is frozen for the next 3 years and can not be given to a new incoming player. 

For example, when Kentcuky has 5 one and dones, they will be good for a year, but the next year they will only have 7 scholarships to award. If they again, recruit 5 one and dones, the next year they will have 2 scholarships to award. It won't be long before the school starts recruiting athletes that will stay for 4 years.

The NBA wanabees can opt for the G league or let them go right into the NBA if they are good enough and let the teams develop them.

TTYL

WWWHHHAAAAZZZZUUUUPPPP

 Todays's song is: Resurrection ... Kinky and Willy

Covid is still with us but Thavorn and I are double dosed as is everyone in our extended houshold except for Jaidan who just turned seven at the end of July. Time has slipped by and the little guy is now past Thavorn's shoulder in height and is looking forward to in person classes in grade 2 at Osgoode Public.

I do miss my expat friends in Thailand but most of them are back in their countries at this moment in Time except for Shaun and John. Life in Thailand is very boring and hazardous with Covid 19 rampaging through the Thai population with very little leadership form the brain dead PM, who makes are PM Trudope look smart, which is very difficult to do.

I get out on my new motorcycle from time to time and most excursions are to grocery stores, McD's and Tim Hortons. It is a nice dry and sunny summer in Ottawa without the drought and fires plaquing western Canada.

Antivaxxers may be the death of all of us as they are giving Covid many chances to mutate (the Delta variant) and I beleive there will be more to come. IMHO it is time to put the squeeze on these idiots as they are a thraet to not only themselves but the general population. I suggest we tatoo their foreheads with the 'I am a dumb f__k' as a start.

The above paragraph suggest that I am not 'woke' which is probably true. Wokeness leads one to believe they have all the answers to everything in a very complex world. I would suggest they are too stupid to realize they are stupid.

My two Russian friends reached out to me on a video call recently and it was great to see Sveta and hear Aly. It appears that Malaysia experiencing the same covid wave that Thailand is. Political leadership (leadership being an oxymoron) is lacking in many countries.  My friends have decided to search out a new country that offers more than Malaysia. I wish them luck and Canada is always welcoming new immigrants and it is not a bad place to land in.

Meanwhile back in the USofA, the 4th wave is gaining in strength due to the anivaxxers that seem to trive in the American gene pool. Covid may be a harbinger of Darwin's survival of the fittest theory. Is anyone missing Trump? CNN must be short of things to comment on these days :-)

Some pics:

TTYL

Life of James

 Today's song is: Happy by Pharrell Wiliams

I thought I would reflect on my life. Why, because I often do so on my morning 2.5 km walk at about 6:30 am. Here are some thoughts I had.

My first decade was pretty uneventful. The 50's were 'Leave it to Beaver' on TV. Not that there was much on TV with 2 channels and TVs were black and white until late in the decade. Ice cream cones were 5 cents and the milk arrived on your doorstep (as well as bread) pulled by horses that gave way to trucks later in the decade. Children died of diseases such as the red measels as anti biotics and vaccinations were still not the norm.

My second decade, the 60's were a decade of change as the Beatles arrived in 1964 and the yohawks with long hair fought the greasers who were clinging on to the old ways of Bobby Vinton and other singers of the 50's. It was the decade of the Cuban Missile crises and air raid sirens were installed across Canada and were tested regularly which scared the crap out of us. This decade was also the start of my teenage (troubled age) years. It was also the decade that my dad abandonned our family during his mid life crises. My Mom also went out to work for the first time. I started playing high school football (which I excelled at) and started working fast food outlets such as A&W and Harveys. I bought my first motorcycle at the end of this decade which started a life long love of biking.

The next decade saw me working at my first job at Carleton University in the library. I did that for 2.5 years while studying part-time at night. I decided to enroll full-time and play football again at Carleton and had a fairly successful 4 years until succumbing to injury. At this time I also worked as a bouncer in the University pub. I also moved in with a girl I met clubbing and spent 4 years with her until my first wife showed up job interviews at the pub. I eventually decided to graduate and went to work at the Royal Bank in Kitchener/Waterloo. My wife and I were married at Christmas in 1977. In the summer of 1978 I quit the bank and attended the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. In September of 1979 I started teaching in grade 4 in the Ottawa Catholic Board.

The next decade, the 80's saw me develop a love of coaching basketball, first at the grade 7/8 level and subsequently at St. Pius X HS. I also developed a love for computer technology, teaching Computer Science at St. Pius and subsequently moving to the board office as a special assignment teacher in Computer Science. From 1979 to 2009 were my career years and they were very successful in terms of coaching, my career, and raising 2 superb children. I retired as a Coordinator of IT and Learning Technologies winning a few awards along the way. I also won the Ottawa High School Athletic Associations coach of the year award in 2005.

In 2009 I decided to retire and not hang arond the board as many retirees seemed to do. My wife could not stand the thought of me not working and she pressured me into teaching overseas which eventually lead to the end of our marriage. Be careful what you wish for.

The decade of 2010-2020 was a decade finding myself and embarking on new adventures. It was a time of walking on the wild side and seeking personal happiness. It ended up with a second marriage to a beautiful. joyful,and thankful Thai lady as well as a  new child at my age of 63. As a buddy once said, 'Children are God's Gift to Mankind'.

So here I am in my 7th decade, having declared myself a minimalist, and enjoying life (except for Covid). You have to remember that 'Life is not a dress rehearsal, you only go around once. Don't fool around, buy a round, and keep smiling as your glass is always at least half full'. If it isn't. you have no one to blame but yourself.

TTYL

Morons at Large

 Today's song is: Paint it Black ... Stones

Doug Ford, our estemed Premier of Ontario, a college dropout of little accomplishment, other than getting elected by the Toronto folks announced today that classes will not resume this educational year despite the recomendations of just about everyone outside of his party.  It appears that only 24% of Ontarians have children in school so he preferred to piss them off rather than the folks who want their restaurants, gyms, golf courses, nail and hair saloons, restaurants and bars reope ned. It appears that kids do not matter. Data science at work. Who to kiss ass and who to piss off. After all, we must not forget the main goal of every politician is to get relected!

That is my rant for the day.

Don't be fooled by the talk that online learning works for JK to Grade 6. It is a joke and kids are learning very little compared to the classroom experience. How do I know that? I listen to my grade one's online experience each and everyday. He manages to succeed because I sit with him the whole time.

It appears the most we can expect is about 70% of the poplation will get vaccinated the other 30% are mostly anti vaxxers of one type or another. 

Yesterday we went for a walk on a forest trail beside one of the vaccination sites. The site was hardly busy at all as I suspect we are near the 70% mark for the first shot and the brilliant mind of Doug Ford hasn't figured out how to reschedule people for their second shot. How can he ensure the most votes? Probably catering to his home base of Toronto rather than need, age, etc.

Trudopes keeps apologizing whether it be for Italian internment during WW2, black face, or whatever. 

It will be interesting to see what happens after the discovery of 250 indigenous child bodies where discovered in a mass grave in Kamloops. Residential schools were deemed a good idea at the time but implemented similar to our old folks homes. They were made worse by turning them over to bible punchers and abusers of various types.

However, many stupid things happened in the past under the guise of good government. Nothing that handing over our hard earned dollars to the new generation of indigenous folks won't fix. That would be generational entitlement. I think we should use generational punishment and lock up the decendents of the politicians and government officials that put that abomination in place.

It also appears that the Canadians that benefitted the most from Trudope's covid handouts were large companies like Air canada and the top 30% of Canadians in terms of income. However what can you expect from the former drama school teacher. How is going to pay off the huge deficit? The same kids that are currently being hurt by Ford's pandemic decisions.  What a pair Ford and Trudope!

It appears that I am ranting again, so ...

TTYL

2 Wheels Again

 Today's song is: The Motorcycle Song ... Arlo Guthrie .. I don't want a Pickle

It has been about 9 years since I sold my last bike so it was eager anticipation Jordan and I went to the dearlership to pick up my 7th and probably last bike.  My first was a triumph T120 Bonnevile purchased in 1969. Fifty two years later a Triumph 660 Trident takes its place.

It was touch and go whether we would pick it up today, May 1st as it snowed quited heavily the last day of April but we woke up to a sunny, albeit cold 1 degree. Needless to say, today's rides will be short.

Thavorn found the short ride chilly and may not be able to drive the bike as she is on het tip toes to balance it. I may have to buy a smaller bike for Thavorn and we will go sit on some when dealers open up if covid ever ends.

The bike is my way of covid coping, a pandemic midlife crisis.

TTYL