Day: November 7, 2021

My Week Ending 2021-11-07

by dougpete, posted in Just Rambling

Here’s a summary of some of the things I learned and published this week.

Readings 

You can follow my daily readings as they happen here.  Below are a selected few, with commentary, from the past week. They’re posted to the blog daily under the title OTR Links.

Sunday

  • Windows 11 becomes available to more people for download. I was one of those people and was quite excited at the opportunity
  • Imagine a giant floor map for use to show colonial history in Canada. What a great concept

Monday

  • This is an incredible collection of images from Iceland along with descriptions. Have you ever seen a bad picture from Iceland?
  • Lakeshore Harness Racing had a terrific year and actually made the local news. If you’re ever looking for on a Sunday afternoon, August-October, I’ll be there

Tuesday

  • Probably the very best good deed picture that you’ll ever see about Hallowe’en
  • Ontario’s minimum wage is set to raise to $15 but that’s nowhere near where it needs to be for some people

Wednesday

  • I swore that I’d never buy a minivan because it was so middle-aged and ended up with at least two of them. Here’s an anniversary story about the very first one
  • Checking for distracted driving should be a daily thing but every now and again you hear about a blitz

Thursday

  • New Orleans was immediately obvious to me of a city that’s in danger of going under water. Here are eight more
  • I thought that the Power Tools might give me back the ability to move my menu around in Windows 11 but I was wrong. Still, some good tweaks

Friday

  • Google is working on a new Launcher for the Chrome OS and you can activate it following the instructions here
  • The kids are all right and concerned about their own futures and it shows in the post secondary choices they’re making

Saturday

  • Growing up, the atomic bomb was one of those things that I laid awake at night worrying about. Here are some interesting facts about them. I hope that I can sleep tonight
  • For me, it’s because I change browsers like other people change underwear but that’s only one reason for not using my web browsers password manager

Blog Posts on
doug — off the record

My daily contributions to this blog are linked below. If you’re looking for a week in review for doug–off the record, you came to the right place.

#FollowFriday – November 5, 2021

https://wke.lt/w/s/4DiUyx

voicEd Radio

This is a mostly weekly radio conversion with Stephen Hurley on voicEd Radio where we talk about some recent writing from Ontario Education bloggers. It turns into a Friday blog post. Here are the people you need to be following.

Featured Bloggers:

  • Amy Bowker – @amyebowker
  • Jim Cash – @cashjim
  • Nilmini Ratwatte Henstridge – @NRatwatte
  • Bei Zhang – @TESLOntario
  • Aviva Dunsiger – @avivaloca

This week’s show:

https://voiced.ca/podcast_episode_post/student-voice-mentrorship-and-the-tooth-fairy/

Opening Song:

Closing Song:

All of the shows are archived here. The show is broadcast LIVE almost every Wednesday morning at 8:45 on voicEd Radio.

Technology Troubleshooting

As noted last week, I got the upgrade to Windows 11 and have been playing around with it and actually quite enjoy it. I don’t find the challenges that others are finding; it seems to be a good actor for me.

Except for the taskbar location. I sure would like to have it on the left side of my widescreen monitor.

It’s early days and I’ve read of some tweaks.

At this point, I’m just waiting for an update from Microsoft to make it official. I can’t believe that they’ll leave so many people hanging.

My only fear is that I’m becoming used to the workaround that I’ve incorporated and may end up just going that way.

Video of the Week

This is not good news and you had to see it coming.

Photo of the Week

It was the last day of racing at Lakeshore Raceway and I stayed for all 11. Between races, I tried to see if I could get a decent picture from my phone and I’m pretty happy with the result.

Thanks for reading.

Please join me daily for something new and, hopefully, interesting for you. I honestly and truthfully appreciate your few moments reading my thoughts. Time willing, this summary appears every Sunday afternoon.

Be safe.

dp

This blog post was originally posted at:

https://dougpete.wordpress.com/

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Whatever happened to …

by dougpete, posted in OTR

… that hour?

You know, that hour that we lost last spring? I think you’ll know when you read this post. Unless you live in certain places, you just got that hour back. Or in theory, at least.

When the clock changes twice a year, I always get a little antsy because I schedule my writing for 5am. Will this show up at 5am? 4am? 6am? I’m starting to write this post on Friday afternoon and will likely proofread and finalize on Saturday morning. I’ll schedule it for Sunday morning and hope for the best.

I totally get why the clock changes are done on weekends because it is a bit awkward as so many things are thrown off. I have this habit of looking at the online television guide to see if I can find the actual hour but it never seems to appear. I guess it just falls into place for everyone on Sunday morning. Speaking of Sunday mornings, it was always a challenge to make sure that we got to church at the correct time. As far as I can remember, it was really the only time sensitive event for Sundays. Everything else can adjust by itself. We have a day to get ready for the following week.

Photo by Ales Krivec on Unsplash

My father-in-law always went through the house a week in advance adjusting the clocks so that he was good to go with the new time. I learned to roll with the punches and just use my own watch instead of wondering why Jeopardy was on at a different time.

There are also reports of people who have health challenges with the loss or recovery of that extra hour. I’ll admit that it was more of an issue when I was employed but not so much now. My body will not make any change for Sunday morning and by the time I go to bed on Sunday night, I’ll mostly have adjusted.

There appeared to be good news earlier this year when the government of Ontario indicated that they would consider getting rid of the practice but only if the state of New York and the province of Quebec went along. Living where I live, I have to wonder – how about Michigan? Or out west, Minnesota? I guess our government is really Toronto-centric.

So, what are your thoughts about “that hour”?

  • do you still have clocks in the house that you’ll physically have to adjust?
  • how long will it be before you’re comfortable that you’ve got them all?
  • for teachers, how messed up will the time be at your school next week?
  • I always found that adjusting the car clock was always the most challenging of all. I end up hunting down the settings in the menu because I only do it twice a year. Does your car adjust automatically?
  • how many different clocks do you have to adjust where you live? I lost count here at about 20. Why do we need so many clocks?
  • why is it important that only New York and Quebec switch with us?
  • how many different time zones are there in Ontario?
  • what jurisdictions don’t observe Daylight Saving Time?
  • do you check your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors as recommended?
  • do you use ET instead of EST or EDT so that you’re not seen to be wrong when you are?
  • are there any other things that you adjust at this time?

I’m sure that you have a story or two about adjusting clocks. How about sharing them in the comments below?

This is a regular Sunday morning post around here. You can find them all archived here.

OTR Links 11/07/2021

by dougpete, posted in Links

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.