So, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

To celebrate the occasion, I headed out to the driving range with my parents and then to Caffé Milano in Palm Beachfor an amazing dinner. I had an entré of baked calamari followed by lamb ravioli with artichoke and thyme. Dessert consisted of a chocolate with fine layers of pastry that was exquisite. Topped off with a nice grappa on the house.We had a bottle of 2000 Le Macchiolle Paleo Rosso from their special wine list with the meal. (Now, they only have 2 bottles of it left.) A very nice cabernet franc  that went well with the meal.

I like traveling and flying doesn’t bother me. However, there is one aspect of flying that I don’t like: early morning flights.

Apart from the fact that no one I know would describe me as a morning person (and many would probably laugh out loud at the suggestion), early morning flights always mean that I sleep poorly the night before because I’m always afraid I’ll sleep in and miss my flight.

This morning saw me have to catch a flight at 5:50am – a time that normally does not exist in my world. Since I ended up finishing my packing late yesterday evening I decided to stay up rather than go to bed for a couple of hours. A flight that early means that I had to head out the door by 4:30am, which realistically meant I would have had to get up at about 3:45am.

I’m in Montreal waiting for the second of three flights today (the’s nothing like traveling on points to cause creative routings) and it’s grey and wet. At least it’s not snowing and they don’t appear to be deicing the planes.

Next stop: Newark, an airport of which I do not have fond memories.

Gaius Julius Caesar learned a valuable lesson on the 15h of March in 44BC: Never tease a haruspex.

Titus Vestricius Spurinna, an Etruscan haruspex (a soothsayer or astrologer), warned Caesar a week or two before his death that some danger would befall him no later than the Ides of March. The 15th of March arrived, so Caesar couldn’t leave well enough along and resist teased Spurinna saying “The Ides of March are come”, to which Spurinna replied “Yes, they are come, but they are not past.”

Unfortunately for Julius Caesar, Spruinna’s prediction came true later in the day when he was assassinated by a group of senators shortly before he was due to appear at a session of the Senate. Among the group of assassins was his friend Brutus Albinus. Shakespeare’s version of the assassination has him utter the phrase “Et tu, Brute?”, though other possibly more reliable reports have him saying either “καὶ σύ, τέκνον?” (Greek for “You too, child?”) or nothing at all.

Happy birthday to one of my very good friends, who celebrates her birthday on the anniversary of the death of Julius Caesar. 🙂

Yesterday evening I noticed that I was one post away from a kind of blogging milestone: namely my 700^th WordPress post. (In fact, I’ve written more than 700 posts since there are some posts in my old Pivot-based blog that I didn’t import into WordPress when I made the big switch back in August 2004, but I’m not going back to count them.)

So, I’ve been looking for something to write about. I didn’t want to write another rant about annoying drivers on the Queensway or stupid drivers who don’t stop at stop signs(Oh, I had a chance to get run into by a big car carrier today that blew through a stop sign on Johnston and Southgate after work today) and it’s too early to write about the Ides of March (that’s tomorrow). We switched our clocks forward on the weekend in a vain attempt to save energy, but I grumbled about that a couple of days ago.

And then a topic came to me…

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When did stop signs become suggestions instead of a requirement?

I was waiting outside my friend’s house on the way to the climbing gym this afternoon and over the course of five to ten minutes none of the cars that went through a three-way stop down the road came to a complete stop. Many of them, in particular those that were turning right, barely touched their brakes before going through the intersection. Of those that did touch their brakes, they did what can only generously be described as rolling stops.

On more than one occasion at four-way intersections within a block of where I live I’ve pulled up to the stop sign and come to a full stop only to watch people from the cross street roll through the intersection as though their stop sign didn’t exist. Fortunately, I was paying attention so I didn’t get hit, but less attentive drivers could find themselves in an accident.

This problem has gotten worse over the last couple of years. A little more enforcement of one of the basic rules of the road is probably in order.

I had queued this up to be published yesterday morning, but decided that grumbling about losing an hour of sleep when Japan had just been hit by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake really wasn’t appropriate.

This is the weekend that we fall forward through time. Specifically, at 2am Sunday morning, everyone should set their clocks forward by an hour – unless you’re in Saskatchewan in which case you can stay asleep. That right – I’m  talking about changing to Daylight Saving Time.

The US Energy Policy Act of 2005 defines when most of the US switches its clocks forward and back in an attempt to maximize useful daylight hours save energy. Most of Canada changes its clocks at the same time to minimize the amount of chaos caused by this.

The province of Saskatchewan, along with little parts of British Columbia, Nunavut and Quebec, however, does not switch to daylight saving time, which really isn’t surprising given its agricultural heritage (translation: cows don’t understand daylight saving time). Apparently, the provincial government has been mulling holding a referendum to determine whether they would start switching to DST. According to a story in the Leader Post, they did some opinion polling and found that the majority of people are happy with the status quo, so they’re not going to hold a referendum and save the roughly $500,000 it would cost for something else. Good decision!

As I’ve mentioned before, there’s been no evidence that daylight saving time has resulted in the saving of a single watt of power. Australia tried to use it to offset power consumption during the 2000 Olympic games and found the demand did not decrease as a result.

Accidents also tend to go up in the days following setting the clock forward, probably because everyone’s a little sleep deprived while waiting for their circadian rhythms to adjust to the change in the clocks.

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So, it’s been another busy week – the culmination of several months effort at work on Wednesday and a number of blog entries, too. The weather in Ottawa still sucks, but at least it’s been raining rather than snowing the last couple of days. Can you imagine how much snow would have fallen if it had been just a bit colder? It probably wouldn’t have deterred the diehard winter cyclists who are sometimes on the roads when it’s really not safe for them to be, however.

Fortunately, the weather didn’t interfere with my seeing the Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station Tuesday evening. I managed to take a couple of long exposure photographs and I even managed to catch the ISS in a video.

And, of course, the week ended with a massive earthquake in Japan. I took the afternoon off work because I’m waiting for a Bell technician, so I’ve had the tv on in the background. Most of the news channels have coverage of the devastation in Japan. CNN has had the same collection of footage running while various “experts” are talking about whatever they’re talking about. It makes me wonder sometimes if the hysteria surrounding natural disasters like this isn’t fuelled by the news outlets themselves. (Actually, I’m certain that it is a factor.) I wish the Japanese people well as they start their recovery. Two major earthquakes on the Ring of Fire in the last two or three weeks – hopefully the last for a while.

Looking ahead to the weekend: I’m curling on Saturday and looking forward to climbing on Sunday. And it looks like we’re done with the precipitation – at least until 3pm tomorrow afternoon:

TAF AMD CYOW 112014Z 1120/1218 VRB03KT P6SM FEW008 OVC030 TEMPO
1120/1208 OVC020
FM120800 23005KT P6SM OVC020 TEMPO 1208/1215 BKN030 PROB30
1209/1212 1/2SM FG VV001
FM121500 23010G20KT P6SM BKN030
RMK NXT FCST BY 112100Z=