February 13

Wednesday February 13, 2008 6:30 am Lethbridge, Alberta

It is -2 C with a high forecast of -1 C. Sunrise 7:46 Sunset 17:45 Hours of daylight: 9:59

9:00 am

A. Morning Musings

Our decision to drive back to Lethbridge yesterday was a good one. We are on the edge of a blizzard storm at the moment. All roads in southern Alberta are rated as being in poor driving condition. At least it is not bitterly cold.

This looks like another indoor day: books & model trains will be high on the list.

Technology will also be an item. I am about to order my online copy of Dreamweaver CS3, but first I need to see if the fact that I am a Professor Emeritus qualifies me for the educational discount. I checked with Apple when I ordered the update to the OS X and the answer was yes. Now to see what Adobe says.

Literature: I need to select a new book to read. I think I will begin reading "Snow" by Orhan Pamuk. I have read one of his earlier novels, "My Name is Red" which I found absorbing. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006.

Model Trains: I need to run a locomotive and then a train over all of my mainline track to see if I can run continuously without any derails or shorts. I am not yet confident that I can do this without difficulties. I also need to add a couple of braces to the wooden trestle before I can run a train over it. Finally I need to lay the second track over the two steel bridges and to Lennox. I will also see if I can order a couple of turnout decoders for my mainline turnouts.

I will also have to do some snow shovelling on the sidewalk and driveway. But I will wait until the snow stops. At the moment it is still dark outside

Learning Category	Planned Activities for Today	Time
Literature	Begin morning with a Rumi reading
Literature	Begin reading "Snow" by Orhan Pamuk	1 hr
Model Trains	Run trains over mainline track	1 hr
Technology	Order & install Dreamweaver CS3	4 hr

B. Actual Learning Activities

9:00 am

Here are a few more images of our yard this morning.

12:00 PM

Technology!! I downloaded the Dreamweaver CS3 software at 8:30 this morning. It failed to install properly. I have since worked with four different techies at Adobe. Without going into details, it has been an intensive 3 and half hours of working through different approaches which failed to work before finally getting a person to walk me through a series of "special" steps that eventually worked (after, once again, making a "special" adjustment to one of the steps). The bottom line is that it appears to be working now. Much of the problem was a conflict between the trial version and the paid for version (Adobe has a more stringent criteria than Apple for who qualifies for an educational discount) and then the difficulties of getting the trial version off my computer.

8:20 PM

Another first, for me. I have begun reading "Snow" by Orhan Pamuk. The story begins in Kars, Turkey. Now for the first. I decide to look Kars up on Google Earth. Not only do I now know where it is, but as I zoom in on the city I have the option of seeing a number of photos of various buildings. I can almost follow the author's footsteps as he describes where he is going. There is the traditional richness of an author's description, but being able to supplement it with both a topographic view and a photographic image is a totally new experience for me.

I followed this up by zooming in on Jasper, Alberta. I then zoomed in on our house and noticed that there was a photo near it, but that the photo was in the wrong location - it should have been opposite the train station. Google Earth has provision for moving the location of the photo (and also notifying the original photographer of the suggested change). This could become addictive. I then identified the units we rented in Ballina and Lennox Head, as well as the empty field where our friends are building their house. The resolution in much better than when I last viewed this a year ago.