Kermode 🇨🇦 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Older than dirt linux guy in Terrace, BC, Canada
Left, Pro-Palestine, demo's, marches, does other things too.
Have done board repairs and field work on too many things to name.
Dev-ops. Alarms and controls. Not gifted, just useful.
Fishing, poetry (reader!), volunteering, foraging. 1960. Single male. b. UK Left Wales as a child. Canadian citizen for a loong time now ;-)
I used to have like 35-40 websites. Now I only have toys and gifts.
#BiteSizeEconomics
https://gemlog.gemlog.ca/
I'm on the 'FediLearns Classifieds' site advertising help with YUNOhost https://fedilearns.fyi/#technology

https://radio.gemlog.ca/
https://skeenavalleyseniors.org/
https://christmastrees.kalum.ca/
... and like those. I am not a going concern. Never was really.
Actual join: April 2017

Last Notes

2026-08-23 14:26:28 UTC

@nprofile…l7em
https://cosocial.ca/@mpjgregoire/117102990188028944
Roadtrip completed.
About 12 000 km.
He just did that! :-)

2026-08-22 22:18:16 UTC

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@nprofile…z6pc Oh, my. You seem young for that. I know BC med provides a middle of the road lens option, so you are buy specialty one? Some friends of mine have had this surgery. Which one are you opting for? Reading or distance?
Or maybe this is different and I don't know what you are doing.

2026-08-20 18:36:28 UTC

About GEM.Wiki
Global Energy Monitor provides comprehensive datasets of individual energy assets and publishes factsheets for each facility on GEM.Wiki--whether it's a coal mine, oil pipeline, solar farm, and so on.
https://www.gem.wiki/Main_Page
And amazing site. Lots of gaps, but some things are very well covered.

2026-08-19 21:55:15 UTC

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@nprofile…l7em I"m not really that worried about IC, I just want to behave decently.

2026-08-19 21:51:07 UTC

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@nprofile…l7em No, when I looked a couple of years ago, they didn't demand CW.
I'm going to charge it up and take out the manual and play.
I'm sure there won't be much, if any, traffic ham-wise.
I've been living here 30 odd years and I've only met 3 hams and I'm pretty sure two of them are dead...
Maybe I can hear some aviation or logging trucks and taxi cabs.

2026-08-19 21:32:40 UTC

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@nprofile…l7em But I should get a license though? I don't have cw. I always meant to, but... and now there doesn't really seem to be a good reason.

2026-08-19 21:28:34 UTC

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@nprofile…l7em So, do you think that, if I got an IC ham license, I'd be fine with it for local traffic (of which there is nearly zero)?

2026-08-19 20:34:58 UTC

@nprofile…l7em
Hey Alex, I got this thing a couple of years ago. I think it's exactly this. What do you think of it? Seems uhf and vhf.
I don't think Industry Canada would let me press the ptt switch. I'm not a ham.
https://img.sellerchecking.com/pic/cc/44/raciya-s-cvetnym-displeem-radiokommunikator-professionalnyy-136-174-400-520-cc440291885cf93436cbeb53b0a6d820-500.jpg

2026-08-17 18:40:05 UTC

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@nprofile…l7em I see those posters too. I think it's mostly 'signaling' for the staff. I can't recall anyone abusing staff. I've seen angry, frustrated people, sure, but they are always saying, something like, "Look, I'm not mad at you - it's not you, I know that, but I'm really upset that this is going on..." Like that. Physically touching them? Never.
Not saying that it never happens, just that it must be very rare, because I'm a little old man and haven't seen it! :-)
Or, maybe it happens in big cities and I've only lived in a couple very briefly.
But then why extend it to small towns like mine?

2026-08-17 18:14:13 UTC

@nprofile…l7em
So many security guards these days! What changed?
All 3 supermarkets in town have security guards. The government agent's office has a security guard. Our new hospital employs more security guards than we have RCM Police for our whole town! I don't see more violence, just more fear perhaps.
...
OK, so I just looked up some statistics and here's an infographic from StatsCan https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/2025041/11-627-m2025041-eng.png
Nearly all types of crime are down. Across Canada crime is down everywhere, except the North West Territories - what's going on there? There are some provinces +/- 1% or so, which seems ignore-able.
My province of British Columbia (BC) is down a whopping 11% - is that because we're super good or because we were really bad and just getting up to being decent? I have no idea. I need to look at the methodology they use to create the index numbers.
Anyhow, only two crimes are up: sex crimes against children (+6%) and shoplifting (+14%). Since child porno is down 15%, I'm guessing the crimes are from increased reporting?
Anyhow, the shoplifting number might explain the security guards in the grocery stores. Hard to believe it's worth paying a guy ~$30/hr to simply stand there for the most part, but maybe 'shrinkage' is that high? I'd love to see numbers.
I could ask the guy who used to own the Canadian Tire here until last year - he was always complaining in the coffee shop about shoplifters - seeing the same ones, even in the same day after the RCMP had arrested them already... Notably, Canadian Tire does not have security guards.
It must make sense money-wise or the stores wouldn't do it I suppose. Then again, large corporation are just as often to be as idiotic as large governments.
Now. The hospital - that makes no sense. For the past two years I worked in and around the hospital. The guards are wandering around aimlessly for the most part. I can see one being in A&E and maybe Main to deal with any violent types. You know where there are never any security guards? The psych ward!
I know what you're thinking :-) but I was there once a week to deal with their plants!
In any case, I think 35 security guards for the hospital is ridiculous. Ditto for the ones at the government office - waste of money. Heck, the government liquor store right beside it has no security guards.
And don't even start me on airport security - it's a show. For a few years I had security pass and an AVOP, so I could drive air side out to our cargo charter (narcotics and banks). It's a joke. The only people to suffer are the paying passengers. And, sure, that was only YXT (Terrace, BC) - small town, but I have a friend who was an electrician at YVR (Vancouver International) and he told me the situation was just as leaky there too.
There's like a climate of fear driven by the mass media and things like fb and twit.
I think it was 5-6 years ago that I was sent to Kitimat every day for a week or so. I was installing alarms and cameras with recording in homes. After the first one or two, I realized that all the houses were management at Rio Tinto Alcan. There was a strike looming and they were all afraid of their employees! Crazy. Really.
OK, to lighten things up.
The local Loblaw warehouse style grocery store used to have a woman standing at the exit checking receipts. I found it kind of insulting and I never saw her ever call anyone out for shoplifting.
Anyhow, one day buddy's wife dispatched us to buy a box of over-ripe bananas for cheap, so she could make muffins out of them. We came back to the house with her bananas still giggling.
I got to the exit ahead of my friend and 'assumed the position' on the wall next to the woman checking receipts. Then my idiot friend did the same thing :-)
We were both nearly 40 at the time, just hadn't quite grown up. Oh, she was so mad :-) I never liked her much anyhow, even though she was drop dead good looking from Haiti or Jamaica - I forget.
I guess we were a bit of a spectacle, because not long after there was no one at the door doing that useless task.
When buddy's wife found out why we were laughing she freaked out. "Oh! You idiots! I can never show my face in that store again..." and so on. Bit of an over-reaction IMO.

2026-08-16 17:43:21 UTC

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@nprofile…z6pc I don't use sdf's fedi, but I am a member - thanks for doing that for us. What a misery.

2026-08-15 19:30:59 UTC

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@nprofile…a006 Exactly. I do my very best to avoid the tracking only on principle. Any site can avoid ublock origin / pihole simply by hosting their own ads! And that's fine.
I use both and other things to resist tracking and fingerprinting.
I'm an absolute nobody. I'm poor and I never buy from an ad anyhow. I just fight back to be obstinate :-)

2026-08-15 18:34:39 UTC

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@nprofile…a006 I liked what someone said the other day: "Web pages are a pull medium, not a push. I'm not blocking your ad, I'm simply not requesting it." :-)