"Flight Risk" Has Taken Flight

[diversions]

Back in May of 2003, there was a minor controversy about this blog called "She's A Flight Risk." Here's a Wired article about it.

Well, the interesting thing about the blog (but non-newsworthy, I suppose) was that if it was a hoax, she was really biding her time before revealing it - for over two years since, she simply continued posting little missives that ranged from interesting to banal - and nothing else happened. If it's a hoax, there seems to be no actual point to it. To me it lends some credence to the possibility that it was actually true. To be sure, someone once did some real investigation into the mysterious Isabella V., and came to a conclusion. Sort of. Well, not really.

I found her writing interesting. I'm not sure if her story is true, but I tend to be a trusting type, so I've assumed that it is, and I've been reading faithfully for the last couple of years. Until today, that is; something is happening.

This morning, I found that her blog has disappeared.

Has she been found and taken back to her former life? Has she been found and "taken care of?" Or has she decided her blog was too risky to continue, and is she still on the run? Or maybe it's simply a temporary technical glitch.

I have a feeling she will never come back, and the wider public (or to be precise, the few die-hard readers like me) will never know.

A Civilized Way To Blog

[personal]

I think I can really come to like this laptop. I can do things that I couldn't before... like blog on the road, of course, as I was doing a couple of weeks ago. But also, it lets me use a computer while sitting on the couch in a silent room. All my other (desktop) machines make a lot of noise.

Well, it would be quiet, anyway, if my refrigerator weren't whining away. Still, I can turn aside and contemplate the Ottawa cityscape as I type. This is very peaceful. Although there are currently some spooky clouds hovering over the city.

Part of this ambience is also thanks to a big change I made to the arrangement of furniture in my apartment, oh, over a year ago. That may seem like a long time ago, but I've been living here for almost seven years, so from my own perspective, it's like I took six years to find a good layout, and the change was relatively recent.

I have two main rooms, you see: a bedroom and a living room. When I moved in, I did the logical thing and put my bed in my bedroom, along with a desk, bookcases, dresser, and a computer (my main workstation). My living room contained chairs, coffee table, television, and, well, all my other computers (my gateway, server, and my game machine (that is, my Windows machine), as well as some junkers I was playing around with. My workstation and my server stayed powered up, so this meant that both rooms had the constant thrumming of at least one computer going all the time.

Well, about a year ago, having accumulated a lot more furniture over the years (including an honest-to-goodness couch), I was pondering how to rearrange things. I'd never been satisfied with the layout of furniture in my rooms, and this was perhaps the seventh time I would be moving big things around in my apartment.

It was then that I decided to think unconventionally. I cast off those things that I'd recognized as "rules" I'd been following: for instance, that the couch must face the television, and that the bed must go in the bedroom. I thought of my apartment space in terms of how I actually live in it - how I use it. I realized that I would do better to divide my life into two halves: geekery, and everything else. Geekery involves my tinkering with computer hardware and software, and for this, I really want a workshop. So I decided, why not? And I turned my bedroom into a workshop. I moved my bed into my living room, and put almost all my computers into my former bedroom. In the end, I kept my Windows machine in the living room area, but it doesn't stay powered up; I play games on it occasionally, and it is also my only working DVD player, so it is definitely a part of my "home life."

Then, one of the big advantages of the new organization dawned on me when I closed my bedroom door, went into the living room, and enjoyed silence in my apartment for the first time in years.

The current organization is not perfect, by any means, but for the first time, I am at least satisfied. I think I've now gone over a year without moving any furniture around, and that's a record.

Ah, the refrigerator stopped. The soft hissing of the laptop is now competing with the distant sound of traffic that seeps in through the closed windows, here on the twentieth floor. This is, indeed, a civilized way to blog.

Trantor Disk Failure

[computers]

When I returned from my vacation, I tried booting Trantor up (that's my server machine), and the BIOS refused to detect the second IDE drive (hdc). This has actually happened once before, but I re-booted, and it worked the second time. I thought, that was weird, and didn't think of it any more. Maybe I should have. Wednesday night, it did the same thing, and continued to ignore the second drive no matter how many times I tried booting.

I tried plugging the second drive into the same cables as the first, to eliminate other possible problems. Nope. The second IDE drive is definitely dead. I don't think it's even been a year since I bought that drive. That's annoying. Not the kind of thing I've been looking forward to upon returning from my vacation. I suppose I should be happy that it was in a RAID, and so I haven't lost any of my data. I just let the machine finish booting, and the RAID started up in "degraded mode," and I could use it normally. Yay for RAIDs!

Yesterday, I bought another drive to replace the dead one. It occurred to me, rather too late, that the dead drive might very well still be under warranty. Oh, well. Maybe I can get a replacement for that one, and then I'll have a spare disk hanging around for the next time this happens. That would be nice, actually. Hopefully the next time won't be too soon.

So, the README told me all I needed to do was plug in the new drive, start up the machine, and run one command (raidhotadd /dev/md0 /dev/hdc1). Well, almost. I had to create the partition on the new disk. But it was just a normal Linux partition. It seemed to work, and the recovery process seems to be progressing normally.

I'm not sure how it recognizes which partitions are part of the RAID when it's booting-- I haven't changed any configuration files. Well, I can try rebooting and seeing what happens...

It worked! And the recovery process completed. All is well.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

[personal]

Actually, I got home last night.

Wednesday morning, I visited Fort Henry in Kingston and saw a bunch of cool stuff. Similar to Fort Erie, but bigger! Instead of a musket demonstration, a rifle demo. The demonstrator tried to break the record of 12 shots in a minute. The mechanism got gummed up and he had to give up after eight. That was eight chances for a cool photo... I haven't reviewed my shots yet; hopefully, at least one of them turned out well. There was also another cannon demo, and a longer tour of a much larger fort.

I did manage to stop by Gananoque briefly. I investigated the Thousand Island Boat Tour that departs there, without any real intention of taking it. I just had lunch and then continued on my way.

I continued along highway 2 until the 416 then took it straight home. The only thing that I regret, in returning a day earlier than planned (not that I had any solid plan anyway), is that I missed Upper Canada Village. But as I said before, I'd been yearning to come home, so it was very nice to be back.

Homeways Is Rightways, Maybe

[personal]

I'm increasingly finding myself yearning to return home. Maybe it's partly the proximity in which I find myself now. I'm only a couple of hours of fast driving away.

I'm going to consult that travel guide and see if anything inspires me, but I might come home today. That's slightly earlier than I was originally thinking.

So, with apologies to C.A., I might not make it to Gananoque. :-(

Loyalist Shores and Kingston

[personal]

So yesterday I made my way from Belleville south onto the island and then east, crossed the strait by ferry at Glenora. This allowed me to visit the United Empire Loyalist Museum at Adolphustown without doing a lot of backtracking. Unfortunately, in contrast to the impressive Ameliasburg Historical Museum, this one was terribly disappointing.

There was an old graveyard where many of those original loyalists were buried, but most of the headstones and markers had long disintegrated, so it was mostly just a small, fenced-off piece of land. There was a tiny exhibit with some artifacts, but nothing of the scope of the Ameliasburg museum. The landing point for the loyalists fleeing the U.S. was marked vaguely with a plaque.

I made my way along the shore to Kingston, where I had a very late lunch. I visited the Murney Tower, an old fortification on the west end of downtown Kingston. Unfortunately, it was closed for the season, so I could only see it from the outside. At that point, I was quite tired and not in the mood for more sightseeing, so I just went to a cafe and did some reading.

Isle of Quinte

[personal]

Just another quick update: I spent the day yetserday driving around the Isle of Quinte.

There's a park called Sandbanks Provincial, which has breathtaking sand dunes and beaches. I was cursing myself for having left my bathing suit behind. Although... a day at the beach is not quite the same when you're travelling alone.

I also visited a museum in a small village called Ameliasburg. It was a surprisingly large complex of old-style buildings such as a church and blacksmith shop, containing a collection of artifacts like farm tools and machines. I was quite amazed that such a small community could support such a large museum. From the displays and the accompanying text, they would seem to play host to school trips frequently.

I did a wide circular trip and stayed in Belleville again last night. Today I move on. Probably I'll be staying in Kingston tonight.

And, oh yes, another backdated post.

Northumberland County

[personal]

The last couple of days, I've been through a series of very small towns as I drove-mainly on highway 2-along the shore of Lake Ontario. Saturday night I stayed in Cobourg, Ontario, where internet access seemed nowhere to be found.

But now, I'm in Belleville, in an embarassingly extravagant hotel that provides high-speed access. And this time, it works well. I Will write more soon.

But till then, this is just a note that I've back-posted a note about Niagara Falls.

Whitby and Scarborough

[personal]

I'm sitting in a park in Whitby, writing stuff on my laptop again. The bright sunny day is quite gorgeous, but not conducive to reading the screen. Not that I'm complaining.

The wind rustles the leaves of the maple trees overhead. Behind me, near the swing set, a child is sobbing somewhat half-heartedly, wanting attention but not willing to work too hard to get it. Sea gulls are yelping at each other. A truck roars noisily by... hrm. The sun is showering little glittering diamonds onto the surface of Lake Ontario. An attractive blonde is sunning herself on the grass some distance away. To my right, in a take-out cup, some iced coffee, and a hungry wasp. Daaahh! Get out of there! In the distance, under some fluffy clouds, a bright white and red lighthouse stands watch at the entrance to the harbour. The breeze is nice and cool today - almost too cool actually - but it's a nice change from the muggy heat I've had to endure for the last few days.

Maybe it's time for lunch... maybe not.

Yes, this is why I'm travelling.

On my way to Whitby, I noted a little mark on the map labeled "Scarborough Bluffs." I thought, that sounds interesting, so I decided to check it out. It was pretty awe inspiring. White cliffs that soared about 50 metres up from the water level. It looks like it would make great climbing, except for the fact that they're all composed of clay.

Back in Time

[meta]

My first backdated post has appeared here.

By the way, not that it really matters, but I'm not doing as much proof-reading and editing of my posts as I usually do, so you'll have to forgive me if my writing is not up to my usual standard.

Managing Serendipities

[personal]

Yesterday was another relatively slow day; I managed, after all, to get in touch with Kimiko of the drumming group and her partner, Max. I got their coordinates: they're living fairly close to downtown Toronto. If they weren't in Toronto, I would have hopped onto the 401 and skipped the city, since I've already spent some time here.

Instead, I incorporated it into my trip by driving in along Lakeshore Blvd, which, in Oakville, Burlington and Hamilton, is Lakeshore Rd. It's virtually unbroken the whole way. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to extend to Whitby, which will be my next stop.

I spent the afternoon with Kimiko and Max as they ran some errands: taking Nami, their daughter, to a nearby clinic for an examination, and selecting some paint for their new house.

Next, I also finally managed to line up my trip with the other Kimiko, that is my sister. She is supposed to return to her in-laws place in Whitby today, so I'm going to arrive at the same time. I let myself get talked into a stay at their home overnight; I'm trying to think of some kind of gift I can get for them...

Last night, I satisfied a craving for Indian food with a late dinner at a small buffet in Little India. It might be my last chance for ethnic food for a while, so I may as well take it, while I'm in the big city.

Time Warps and Time Lags

[personal]

Okay, just to warn you, a lot of posts are going to appear backdated. I'm going to pretend that I've been writing in this blog faithfully every day. Will you pretend with me? Just like yesterday night at 10:45, I posted a little missive about my day in Oakville. Yup.

By the way, this high-speed internet at the hotel is not what it's cracked up to be. I frequently get long lags where the connection just gets hung. Really long lags. I've switched to using a modem with my own service provider, because it's faster... and that's saying a whole hell of a lot, because I can't seem to get connection speeds better than 28.8kbps here.

A Quiet Day in Oakville

[personal]

I intended today to be a nice, slow day, and it was. The last few days, I've been a bit too caught up in vacation fever: trying to visit as many sites as possible, getting as many pictures as possible, that sort of thing. It can turn a vacation into a stressful experience. So today, I slowed down. I decided that I don't need to do any sightseeing at all.

The one site I did visit was Dundurn Castle, on the outskirts of Hamilton. My guidebook claimed it should have been open at 10AM, but when I got there, I was told it didn't open until noon. That was a bit too late for me to wait around, so I just wandered the grounds, took some photos, and went on my way to Oakville.

[I'm behind with posting pictures to flickr, but I'll edit this post and add thumbnails here when I do.]

I took the slow, scenic route along the lake shore, through Burlington. When I arrived in Oakville, I bought a map and found a hotel. I decided to splurge a bit by checking in to a Holiday Inn. They didn't have a single room available, so I got a double executive suite. It's niiiice. They have high speed internet!

I tried to contact Kimiko, a friend from the drumming group who recently moved out this way. I left some messages with her parents and her husband, but haven't heard back. They're probably occupied with moving into their new home. It would have been nice to meet up with them, but it's not looking hopeful.

During the afternoon, I sat on a cafe patio with an iced latte and my trusty ThinkPad, and wrote a whole bunch of blog entries about the long weekend in Toronto and the Niagara area. I still have to do some editing, but I should able to post it here, within the next day or so.

On The Road

[personal]

Well, I'm on vacation (as I mentioned briefly on a flickr photo), and I'm on the road. Currently I'm in Niagara Falls, and about to head towards Hamilton.

I think I will start writing up previous entries and post them, backdated. So if you follow my blog religiously, you need to get a life. Wait. Scratch that. What I meant to say is, thanks for reading; you can expect to see about three "older posts" appear before this post, over the next couple of days.

Possibly you have already read the entries about my weekend in Toronto, my visit to Fort Erie, and my ramble through Niagara Falls. And this little comment about "backdating" won't make much sense to you. In which case, don't worry, sit back and keep reading.

Niagara Falls

[personal]

So, my options were still open today. I've been talking about my working plan of following Lake Ontario back to Ottawa, but I could have changed my mind at the last minute and did my old Georgian Bay trip again. That was a trip I took right after university, where I rented a car for a week and drove from Waterloo to Toronto, Barrie, Parry Sound, Sudbury, the Manitoulin Islands, crossed on the ferry to Tobermory, and then returned to Waterloo.

The Manitoulin Islands are unspeakably beautiful, and I don't have any digital photos of them. It would have been great to shoot a bunch of stuff that I could share with everyone electronically (without having to scan a bunch of photos at great cost).

However, I decided to stick to my original plan. I drove out of Toronto this morning and headed via the Queen Elizabeth Way to Niagara Falls.

Niagara Falls holds a certain amount of sentimental value to me, because I had a summer job there, at the tender age of 19, working at a jewellry store. Not the sort of work you would expect to see me in, and I wasn't very good at it. However, I like to think I made up for it with a good work ethic and dedication. It was perhaps the first "real" job I held, not counting a youth employment programme called the "Junior Rangers," which I was engaged with, two years earlier.

The couple of months I was in Niagara Falls, I stayed at a B&B called the "Romax Villa." It was owned and run by a dear old lady called Stephanie Romach. She must have been in her sixties or seventies when I was there, and I rather feared that she might have passed away by now, but I took a gander and was stunned to see the place still in operation. I knocked on the door and paid her a visit. She didn't remember me, of course; it had been sixteen years. But, she was kind enough to invite me in and offer me a drink.

I expressed my amazement that she was still around and operating her B&B after so many years. "Still kicking," she said with a somewhat tired looking smile. We talked about how many changes there had been in the city since I left; the casino now dominates the tourist centre of the city.

Out of nostalgia, I tried to follow the old path I used to take when I walked to work. River Lane was still there, with some vaguely recognizable landmarks, but as soon as I left the residential area, everything was different. I think there's a couple of new buildings in the way now, not least of which is the new casino, as well as an expanded customs building on this side of the Rainbow Bridge.

Clifton Hill was more gaudy than ever. Rembmer the "Back to the Future" movies? Remember all the crazy 3-D ads and architecture in the public spaces? I had thought, that's just too crazy - that will never come to pass. Well, for better or for worse (and I have an opinion on which), it's become reality in places like the new mega-movie-theatres, and particularly in Niagara Falls' Clifton Hill. I would never have believed it.

Walking Around Toronto

[personal]

I decided I would simply walk around parts of the city today. I visited the Eaton Centre area, which is a bit of a tradition for me. If I visit Toronto, I have to visit the corner of Yonge and Dundas, even if I don't do anything there. I dunno why.

I also dropped in to "The World's Biggest Bookstore" to buy a guide book for Ontario, so I could at least do a minimal amount of on-the-fly planning. I had looked for such a book in Ottawa, but I was rather surprised that I couldn't find anything in the one or two bookstores I visited.

I went back to the B&B briefly before embarking on a second walk, around Chinatown. I decided I would try a bit of surreptitious street photography. I set my camera on convenient settings: infinite focus, to avoid the lag of auto-focus; ISO 400 for the fastest possible shutter speed; sunlight white balance. I took about four dozen shots, out of which six or seven were interesting, if not spectacular. I may not share any of them on my flickr account, as I fear the legal implications of publicly displaying identifiable pictures of people without their permission.

Near the end of the day, I dropped into a bubble tea shop for some watermelon green tea. I didn't get any tapioca "bubbles," as I'm not overly fond of them, myself. The tea was the best possible refreshment at the end of a hot day. I then decided to extend my stay, and had some cold noodles for supper, which was possibly the best possible meal at the end of a hot day.

A few photos from the day can be seen here.