I’m making good progress with my memory work and reading a little bit each day out of “The family tree.”

Anne and I were watching a National Geographic television show on building tunnels for trains etc. They began with the first attempt at building the Thames tunnel partially built by Marc Brunel all the way up to The Chunnel and the Gothhard tunnel in Switzerland. Very interesting show. They say that one modern day tunnel they were moving 14 meters/day. For the LRT to go from the Health Science Center across the river up 87^th Ave about 7 kilometers, That’s about $160M/kilometer. Including a bridge across the river and stops along the way the West LRT line could run about $2B.

On Coast tonight they are talking about Early earth. Might be worthwhile to listen in. I missed last nights show and apparently a good one.

Wow hard to believe that oil is now $80/barrel in November. I’d have guessed at least holding around $55. So why with $80 oil are we in a recession here in Alberta? Several reasons being is the demand for oil has eased and Stelmach’s revenue policy has driven oil activity out of the Province. Instead at a jobless rate of 7.1 here in Edmonton we should be at about 4%. But the economy will get better experts are saying in 2012. We’ll see.

I’m having a decent enough afternoon. The temperature climbed up to +16 right now. Here’s a photo off the TV weather channel. I had an image but the software screwed up and won't let me publish it. I'll try again later.

Temps are above zero heading right until about the 22^nd. Now this is unusual but it is not evidence of global warming. We’re getting a warm front from the Pacific. Still it’s nice weather to get this time of year. We’ll take it.

I like my Edmonton Oiler’s and Eskimo’s but while I’m having my lunch at 3pm there’s usually nothing n except news. CNN is 90% American news and there’s nothing else on. I try and catch an old rerun of The Beachcombers on Vision but that’s over by 3pm. Bummer. So about 3 months ago I found on The Score hardcore sports talk radio with Gabe Morency and Cam Stewart. Every other word was a bleep this or a bleep that. They had real time sub screen with the texters chiming in and various guests talking sports betting all kinds of good stuff. For the half hour I could watch the show, it was great. Anne hated Cam Stewarts laugh. I was warming up to the show. A few weeks ago their main guy Gabe who hosted the show was away for unexplained reasons. I’m thinking H1N1. Then I learned the other day that the station fired him. I don’t know what the details were but Morency as he always called the show was the best thing on TV at that hour. Sometimes they’d go on for an hour and a half or more. The show is still on but with just Cam Stewart there it’s not as good. I went to Gabe Morency’s Twitter page because he was always promoting that and apparently soon he’s going to be starting up his own web show. I wonder if Sirius will take it on. I hope so.

Last night on Coast George had a great guest on the first hour guest, author Henry Kroll discussed the early history of Earth. He said our planet was in a billion-year ice age, and it wasn't till a star in the Sirius system, with its heavy ultraviolet radiations, broke through the atmosphere that the Earth began to warm. The guest kind of lost me when he talked about giant’s living on this planet with huge brains. It was a good show and he made a lot of sense. Of course Kroll is promoting a book but this one looks really interesting on Cosmological Ice ages. I didn’t like the way George cut him off at the end though just to plug his own opinion on the topic.

Speaking of The Beachcombers TV series it remains Canada’s longest running show lasting for 17 seasons filming 387 episodes. My favorite character on that show was Robert Clothier and I liked the Constable as well. It ran for half an hour. Robert Clothier was also on several X-Files episodes when it was being filmed in Vancouver. I wish Vision would bump up The Beachcombers to air at 3pm because it seemed that

In about an hour or so, I‘m calling Neil to see if I can get a ride to Lodge. I appreciate George giving me a lift but he usually likes to get there to early. I like to get there about 7:15pm sign in and do my Tyler duties (while I‘m Tyler) but I’m now moving up to junior Steward next year. Tonight is our Remembrance day evening and I think we‘re doing some balloting as well.

Anne’s really keen on getting me a laptop. She’s looking at one that is on sale for $519. What I like about this one is it’s got a ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics card, 4 Ram and 802g WIFI. But there’s no speakers. The other one is identical and cheaper but it doesn’t have a graphics card but it has speakers and WIFI. It’s about $20 cheaper. The thing I need to find out is if any of the hard drive copy software will let me copy applications as well as files. Thing is I have an backup and recovery external hard drive. I’m wondering if I cant just load up the software and take the contents of the newly back up hard drive and go from there? I think I can. But more about that when I get the laptop. I don’t necessarily care about the graphics card so much as I care about. Also one of the first things I’m getting is a laptop skin for both screen and keyboard.

The other thing I’m thinking about is the Rogers stick. Switching from Shaw to Rogers as my Internet service provider.

Anyway gang, that’s about all for now

Jim