Birds

I love these colourful pictures of birds and thought I would share them.  I'm not sure what their breed is or where they live, but they are gorgeous!

It's cruise season and my thoughts on the police transition

We are finally having wonderful weather.  I have a friend going to Alaska today for 10 days and my daughter and son-in-law are boarding a ship today in California and sailing to Vancouver via San Francisco, Astoria and Victoria.  I'm on teenager duty and at 18 it's more of a sleep over and make sure the cats get fed.  

I watched the police announcement yesterday and I am 100% behind Brenda Locke, our mayor.  She's right, its politics not safety.  I hope Brenda keeps the RCMP as everyone I know doesn't want the SPS.  It's not a matter of who is better, it's taxes that are being charged to the business and property taxes to fund this change.  

We get $20 million every year from the federal government.  The province offered us $30 million a year for five years and we lose the $20 million.  Who pays the huge cost after five years, the tax payers? 

In the calculation of $30 million of additional costs with the SPS, they left out:

• the 100 officers that are being added in four years
• the IT infrastructure that's needed
• the gun range for the officers training
• SPS union agreement says two officers must ride together.  What does that do to help us?  |Now RCMP officers ride alone and call for help if they need it. 

The province keeps saying we are giving up $150 million BC Tax Dollars if we keep the RCMP.  Yes, we need to pay $72 million in severance and then the extra costs will end.  The difference is $78 million and we will get $20 million every year from the feds.  

If I lived in another city in British Columbia, I would be upset my tax dollars are being used for a city.   If other cities or municipalities want to transition from the RCMP, does the BC Government fund them too?

Minister Farnworth had this transition studied and his staff prepared a 500 page report.  He held up a copy of the report yesterday at his press conference.  One thing we did learn from the minister was the numbers given by keeping the RCMP in Surrey that were audited by Deloitte, were right.  That was good to hear.  The Mayor of Surrey never received a copy of this report.  She asked for one just before the announcement and when she received it, the document was heavily redacted!  How is she suppose to make a decision from this redacted report?

Four years ago Minister Farnsworth didn't ask for a business plan or cost/benefit analysis.  He gave the green light to proceed with the change.  He only requested these documents last November and it's taken five months for this decision.  If he did his due diligence four years ago and asked for those documents, we wouldn't be in this predicament.  

There was never a business plan, Mayor McCallum just pulled the numbers out of the air.  He didn't know he couldn't keep the RCMP IT infrastructure.  He offered every officer who joined the SPS a $50,000 signing bonus, paid the SPS the highest wages in Canada and signed a severance agreement we need to live with.  

I blame Minister Farnsworth for this boondoggle.  They should have done a cost/benefit analysis and the citizens a referendum to vote either way four years ago.  I'm sure the next provincial election will cost the NDP in Surrey their seats.

Organ Donation

I know two people who have received new kidneys and it saved their lives!   I worked with Wendy at Ritchie Bros.  She needed a kidney and was on the list.  Ritchie Bros. allowed her to do dialysis at lunch!  We would sit with her while she did her dialysis and eat our lunch.   I'll never forget her beeper (before cell phones) went off every Friday at 2 PM to make sure it worked.  Then, at our Christmas Party at about 11 PM, it went off.  Her husband took her to the hospital and her life went back to normal.  She looked so good after the transplant!  It was a deceased person who never knew what his/her decision made to Wendy, but we all did and everyone I knew at Ritchie Bros. went on the transplant list!

I have been a registered organ donor for years.  They called me once, I had blood tests, but wasn't a match.  I didn't find out what for but always hoped I got another call.   I thought I was too old to donate an organ but the oldest live donor in BC was 76 years old.  I'm still on the list! 

Here is the website in B. C. that will answer all your questions:

Transplant BC

It takes two minutes to register.  If they think you are compatible it's only a blood test at Life Labs.  At least that's what I had.  If you pass the blood test, there are a few more tests to see if you are a match with the recipient.  

Heart Attack Grill, Las Vegas

One feature of Facebook I enjoy is the pictures we posted years ago show up in our feed.  These pictures were from one of our coach trips to Las Vegas!   We didn't eat here, but took lots of pictures.  When you enter, they give you a hospital gown.  The waitresses have stethoscopes around their necks!

From Wikipedia:

The Heart Attack Grill is an American hamburger restaurant in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, (formerly located in Chandler, Arizona). It makes a point of serving food that is very unhealthy and high in fat, sugar, and cholesterol; in other words, food that, if eaten frequently, may increase the chance of a heart attack, hence the name.

The menu is generally themed around items that are exceptionally high in calories and fat.^[1] It includes "Single", "Double", "Triple", "Quadruple", "Quintuple", "Sextuple", "Septuple", and "Octuple Bypass" hamburgers,^[2] ranging from 8 to 64 ounces (230 to 1,810 g) of beef with the "Octuple Bypass" burger containing approximately 16,000 kilocalories, all-you-can-eat "Flatliner Fries," cooked in pure lard, beer and tequila, "butterfat milkshakes," and soft drinks such as Mexican-bottled Coca-Cola made with cane sugar.^[1] Customers can also order unfiltered cigarettes, or candy cigarettes for children.^[3]

Customers over 350 lb (160 kg) in weight eat for free, if they weigh themselves on a scale before eating. Beverages and to-go orders are excluded and sharing food is also not allowed for the free food deal.^[4] One of the restaurant's promotions is a reward for customers who finish a Triple or Quadruple Bypass Burger, after which they are placed in a wheelchair and wheeled out to their vehicle by their "personal nurse".

A new compter

My desktop computer has been very slow.  I had it cleaned by the Geek Squad but it hasn't helped much.  I looked up the receipt and it's over 10 years old!  Time to get a replacement.  My old one was my first all-in-one and I loved it.  It was is a HP and other than being slow, it's performance has been great!

Cec specialty ordered his HP all-in-one, but it was a high end and expensive computer!  I didn't want to pay as much as he did but I must say his 34" monitor is awesome.  I ordered it from HP and they will send it Canada Post.  It's not available at Best Buy or Costco.

HP 34" Envy All-in-One

Windows 11 HomeIntel® Core™ i716 GB RAM1 TB SSD34" diagonal WUHD displayNVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 (6 GB)

The Cat Theory

Known as the cat earth theory (which is only slightly more ridiculous than the flat earth theory), the ball is Australia, the head is China and Japan (and neighbours), and the ear (if Risk has taught us anything) is Kamchatka.

In this version of the world, Africa is the front leg and Europe and much of Asia make up the body.

As you can see, we are headed to the hind of the cat as we head west.  That makes South America the back leg and Alaska the tail.  And so it leaves us.

Vancouver is (and we stress that this is just in a cat earth geographical situation) the cat's butt.  Which makes Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands dingleberries.

A lovely gift

My next door neighbour Kathy's hobby is stained glass.  She spends the winter in Arizona as a snowbird and this year brought her stained glass tools and supplies back to Canada.  It's a lot more expensive and difficult to purchase stained glass in Canada.  She has a lovely stained glass desk set up in her garage.  What a lovely hobby!  Yesterday, she gave me this lovely gift!  It's gorgeous and so thoughtful of her.

Here are more of her creations.  She is very creative.