there's an election coming up! October 19th! I'm ineligible to vote because I just moved from Ontario but if you live in the HRM and have lived in Nova Scotia for 6 months or more you can vote. I think everybody should give a shit about local politics and I think there's honestly some opportunity to move things in a positive direction with regard to transportation and planning.

you have the opportunity to vote for both the mayor and the councillor of your district. your councillor actually probably matters more than the mayor so don't get too caught up on the big ticket job. to learn more about the candidates and what's going on with council in general, check out the coast (especially Matt Stickland's reporting and work on the Grand Parade podcast) and the halifax examiner.

this has been an advertisement for caring about your city and what happens to it. you may now continue with your day

This week so far has been split between...

Medical stuff:

The long delayed repair of my nose and throat is starting to move towards surgery. The ENT says it'll be a rough one since my head meat is a mess and it'll be an overnight stay at least. And the recovery will take longer than something as simple as getting a deviated septum straightened.

I have some pre-surgery forms to fill out, but a lot of my issues were diagnosed in Asia, so I need to look up a few hospital and doctor names.

My chronic back pain? The best advice I've been given by government caseworkers is to annoy doctors until one of them takes me seriously and gives me a referral to a specialist. The local walk-in clinics seem to know about this tactic because they force you to go stand in line and see them in person.

Family doctor? Sadly, those died out here back in the days of Geocities.

Government stuff:

The government stuff is related to the medical stuff and all of the departments that can help me are understaffed and underfunded. I'm looking at two weeks wait just to hear back from anyone. And that was after four hours of being on hold just to get passed off to another number.

There's a huge amount of public anger about the state of things here in Nova Scotia. And an equal amount of unwillingness to take that anger and put the fear of the public back into the politicians and their corporate employers responsible. They'd rather deport some Bangladeshi kids.

As mentioned: Very stupid people here.

Migrating My Art Show to Linux:

So far it has been two steps forward and one step back with Linux Mint. Since Clip Studio works via Bottles I'm going to keep using the program to draw with. But there are number of small issues that have cropped up. Some, like finding the saved art in the virtual Windows directories, have been dealt with quickly. Others, like getting the fonts in place and disappearing subtool windows, need deeper Linux knowledge than I currently have.

Thankfully my brother is a decades long Linux nerd (He even uses a Dvorakian keyboard!) and he has been a huge help so far. I'll have to bribe him with dinner to get him over to hammer the misbehaving bits into shape.

The real pain? We'll probably have to do it all over again since I plan to buy myself a bigger and badder PC as an Xmas gift to myself this year. Lessons leant will be applied.

Here's a photo of our famous Nova Scotian tourist trap, the lighthouse at Peggy's Cove.

I'd say I lucked out getting there at Golden Hour but you don't have to go too far north to have Golden Hour last through most of a winter's day.

a. Chezzetcook, Canada. Canon 550d. c.2018. Two boys escape boredom by the sea via scooter and bike.

b. Gunsan, South Korea. Samsung A3. c. 2017. A food delivery man returns to the restaurant to await the next call.

The Korea photo is interesting to me because it's all that remains of a farm town that was swallowed up by the rapid expansion of apartment complexes. It's surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers. My guess is that it survived simply because it was sitting on an inconvenient steep hill.

The Canada photo is Nova Scotia in a nutshell. Flat and damp.