The results of the last elections here in Quebec, late on Monday Oct 5th, has got my spouse and I thinking about moving out of the province again. We are fed up with Quebec’s language laws and even though, for the most part, I speak fluent French and I write it decently enough, and the same goes for my spouse, but we just don’t like the fact that it’s being shoved down our throats. The party that won the election, The “Parti Quebecois”, has at its very core of their platform, the separation of the province of Quebec from the rest of Canada. I for one am completely against this, I am a proud Canadian and Quebec is better off staying in, and being part of Canada, period! I love Montreal, where we live, in fact I’ve lived most of my life in this city except for four years where I lived in the Toronto area. My spouse, who was my fiancee at the time moved down to the greater Toronto area in 1998 and we tied the knot in Mississauga in March of 2000. We both missed Montreal very much and about a year later we decided we’d try to go back to Montreal. Lucky for us both are jobs were flexible enough to allow for this. I must admit that even back then, 25 years ago now, I wasn’t really excited about going back to Montreal, I had started making a life in Ontario and had started coming to grips that I would make my life elsewhere. You see, I had moved to the Greater Toronto Area, specifically, a little sleepy town of Burlington, nestled between Oakville and Hamilton a year or so before my ,then fiancee, had joined me, so I kind of got used to living away from Montreal. Now as we are both looking down the tunnel to retirement we’re both wondering if we should move to a smaller, more rural town for peace and quiet. For many years it’s been in the back of our minds but with the PQ winning the election and talks of a separation referendum looming again, we are seriously starting to think about moving.
In part 2 I’ll look at the cost comparison between Ontario and Quebec, and the feasibility of moving.
Category: Update
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Moving to Ontario – Part 1, The Trigger
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Wait…where did Summer go?
Holy smokes, Oct 8th already, what happened to August, wait…what happened to June?! Wow, I can’t believe how fast the Summer came and went, I had so many plans, so many projects, things I wanted to do, things I wanted to see, and now we are in the colourful foliage of yet another Autumn, which mind you, is my favourite time of year, and then another long Montreal Winter.
I’m not complaining really, as it has been a productive Summer, I finally got to work on regrading the Eastern side of our land next to the house and raise it so that it formed a proper swale between our house and the neighbors which will hopefully mitigate the water flow coming from the back yard, which was turning and dumping straight into our garage drain and into our sump pit in the basement, and threatening to flood said basement as it has done on several occasions. The last time this happened was the last straw and I told my spouse, enough of this, I’m going to regrade the land and see if I can cut the water drainage by at least 50%. I’m happy to report that after all the work of building a small retaining wall and back-filling it with dirt to create a positive gradient away from the garage and the drain, the water drainage I believe has been mitigate by more than probably 75%-90%, so I’m ecstatic.
With this almost finished now, I only have a few paver stones to finish installing and levelling, I’ll be able to bring my project indoors where I have the basement walls to finish covering and some time during the Winter I’m going to start replacing the kitchen floor and the countertop.What else is on the horizon? Well, I’m currently working on launching or perhaps re-launching my slandi.net page, which used to be my main domain and is still the domain for my email. Several years ago I came up with a neat acronym for that domain, Stefano’s Laboratory of Analog and Digital Inspirations, it fit the letters perfectly and also one of the ideas of what I wanted to do with my website/blog long-term, use it to share some of my passions, be it electronics, computers, photography and music. I say both analog and digital, not only because it happens to line up with the letters in my domain/name but it also encompasses my dual-love of what is digital and also what is purely analog, be it technology from simple tools to art forms such as painting, sculpture or woodwork. In fact, I used to love to carve wood but haven’t done so in many many years, so it may be something to re-discover in the years to come. As for the Analog side of things, I’m thinking of getting back into simple discrete electronics and have started re-reading some old electronic books that I got from Radio Shack more than 45 years ago now.
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Blog Facelift
I’m sitting here in my office/studio/workshop/sanctuary, yeah this little room of mine, this little corner of the world serves many purposes, but the most important it is my safe place. I suppose I feel the same way about my little blog site, oh sure I don’t come and visit very often and when I do I usually have to clean off the dust and perk things up. Such was the case earlier today when I opened my site as I wanted to check on something and realized how pitiful the last theme was that I had chosen. So I took things in hand and decided to try and find the cleanest, fastest and best looking theme I could and settled on this one, it’s called Twenty Twenty-five and is one of the default themes that comes with Workpress. I’ve finally found a nice clean theme, easy to read and navigate. In fact, for years I’ve been trying to find a way for my readers, oh all 2 of them I think, to easily navigate my site. One thing I’ve always wanted to do is create a navigation menu to bring my reader to a page containing all of my blog posts for a certain category. Some time back in 2025 I found out that the block “Latest News” can be customized to show only posts from certain categories, bingo! It works perfect and has finally allowed me to shape my blog the way I’ve always envisioned it. Now, to update this blog more often, hmm… I wonder if there is a theme for THAT!
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Fiat gone, but not forgotten, new ride, laptop woes
As the snow flies this Saturday afternoon and I prepare to go out with my spouse to run some errands, I sit here quietly in my office contemplating a warm cup of coffee and looking at wires and harness connectors strewn all over my desk. The wires are for a new car radio that my spouse bought me for Christmas for my new ride, a 2012 Toyota Yaris I picked up about two weeks ago (lower left)
As you may recall from my previous post, my beloved little Fiat 500 (above right) had a problem with a drive shaft that turned into an almost two week ordeal trying to find a replacement part. Since I needed a car to get to work, time was of the essence and in the end I had to get rid of a whole car because I couldn’t find a part in time. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. I ended up finding a good deal on a gently used Toyota Yaris four door Sedan. It’s certainly not sexy or cute like the little Fiat was, doesn’t turn heads or make children smile, but it will be dependable transportation, hey it’s a Toyota! I’ve had many Toyota Echos grace my driveway over the years, so I know these cars very well. As you can see above, the little Fiat, which I had named Kira, ended up on a flat bed truck as I gave her to a charity who will fix her eventually and auction her off to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to the Montreal SPCA to help little kitties and doggies. Good luck little Kira, hopefully you’ll go on to some great adventures.
As for the little laptop I ordered, a Lenovo X270, it was never shipped and fearing a scam, I opened a dispute with Paypal to get a refund, that is still pending as of this writing. I think I’ll just stick to my old laptop for now and use the money perhaps for a trailer hitch on the aforementioned Yaris, more news on that later.
What’s next, financial recuperation for one, buying another car was never in the cards. I also have to seriously start looking for Christmas gifts for the gang. Like last year I’ll probably do the donations on behalf of everyone along with a fun little joke gift or stocking-stuffer. I’m hoping once things settle in the new year I can get back to some other projects, ideas and past-times that I’ve been meaning to get reacquainted with.
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Four day week
I finally took the plunge and have decided to reduce my full-time work hours at my job. I’m dropping down to a four-day week, which I hope will give me a bit of time to get back to some of my projects and past-times that have long since been swept aside. I’ll have more details coming soon as it’s been several months since I’ve posted anything on this site. In fact my last post was ‘supposed’ to be on my trip to Calgary and Banff and I realized I never finished that post.
So just an update, I signed the necessary documents and so starting Sept 15th I will now be working four days a week, which, as I mentioned, will afford me some time to pursue some of my other interests. Now what will be a little strange is that I have an accompanying website, which will be my actual virtual workshop and lab, you can find it over at http://www.slandi.net, there I hope to post more in-depth articles about some of my projects and creative endeavours. Exactly what those are remains to be seen, as I have so many interests, hobbies, past-times and I’m constant finding new things due to my insatiable curiosity. So many, in fact, that more often than not I never finish I start. One of the reasons I’ve started this blog and also my slandi.net site is that I want to force myself to see some of these projects through to some kind of end, or at least give them some substance.
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Four years and counting
According to the date calculator on timeanddate.com I’m due to retire in 3 years, 11months and 5 days, but hey who’s counting, I’m looking very much forward to retirement, there are so many things I want to do, projects I want to work on, things I want to learn. During the next few years I will be slowly preparing for retirement by purchasing those tools and items for many of my past-times and interests, this might include specialized measurement tools for my electronics hobby, woodworking tools, mechanics tools, etc… Perhaps a nice new synthesizer is in the mix as well, we’ll see. I both anticipate my retirement but I’m also a little leery of it as I worry that I’ll have enough to do, enough things to fill my time. Then again, there are many things I haven’t thought of, like perhaps some meetups I could go to, some social events or perhaps other outside activities. I’ve always loved the theater, so perhaps something like that is in order. Who knows really, I just hope that I’ll be healthy enough to enjoy my retirement years. This brings me to another point, physical fitness, which unfortunately I’m sorely lacking at the moment. You see I have a life partner that is an avid fitness guru. She loves to exercise and has the discipline to do it, alas it’s not my case at all. I’m not so much a couch potato, as a desk potato and spend untold hours on the computer doing a myriad of things. I really need to find a hobby/interest that gets me moving, gets me out of the house at least and doing something physical. I was thinking of getting back into photography and maybe doing urban photography or hiking in the forest to do some forest bathing, etc… That is a possibility, I just wish I had more discipline. In any case, I’ve got a little less than four years and in that time I have to get my ducks in a row as they say…
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Canada first initiative
Now with the US administration having put into place the 25% tariffs as they had threatened and Canada doing a tit for tat and imposing tariffs on incoming US goods I felt it was time for me on a personal note to reduce the number of US-based online services and products I am using. I started with my domain name and email provider. I initiated a transfer to a Canadian-based domain and DNS host as well as email provider. This should all go down by the end of this coming week.
I was also subscribed to the US-based Tidal music streaming service and severed my account with them and opened up one with a French-based company Qobuz, OK, not Canadian-based, but at least it’s not in the US. I also stopped donating, at least for the immediate future, to SOMA FM, one of my favourite online Internet radio stations out of San Francisco. Again, it’s nothing personal against the fine people working there or elsewhere, it’s just that I feel compelled to support my fellow Canadians in this very difficult moment.
Only time will tell what will happen next… -
Good-bye Spaced-Ex and Blue Orifice and a confession…
UPDATE: 2026-05-31
On this, the last day of May, I’m confessing that my boycott of SpaceX and Blue Origin didn’t really last that long. I suppose it’s because Musk, perhaps having understood his errors with the DOE (doubtful) and his supporting of Donald Trump after the whole Jeffrey Epstein scandal broke out, has simply vanished from the political spectrum and he’s seemingly back to talking about colonizing Mars. I certainly don’t condone any of his or Bezo’s other behaviour, but such is the pull of my interest in space exploration and rocket science and technology in general. Am I being hypocritical, perhaps a little bit. I certainly don’t talk too much about either company and praise them, I simply and quietly read and/or watch their on-going activities. I have also since started watching Scott Manley and Marcus House as I felt boycotting them wasn’t fair, they are simply space journalists in their own right. So yes, do I completely retract everything I’ve written below? No, not all of it, I still am sickened by these billionaire little boys, but I mustn’t forget the thousands of people who work at SpaceX and Blue Origin who put in hours and hours of hard work and scientific experimentation in pursuit of space exploration and so I feel I’m honouring them when watching and cheering on Starship and so forth.
I’m so done with rich billionaire little boys and their big toys. Elon Musk’s rather disturbing gestures at President Trump’s inauguration really upset me as it did many people and I’ve decided to now do a personal boycott of SpaceX flights. I’m a big space nerd at heart, so not partaking in the excitement of launches and the advancements of amazing technology like Starship is going to be very very difficult. However, I just can’t bring myself to ignore Musk’s seemingly white supremacy behaviour and Jeff Bezos isn’t any better, Amazon recently closed all of their distribution centres here in Quebec because one of them was successful in forming a union. The employees were only trying to get fair wages and better working conditions and Amazon punished them for it, closed down everything and laid them off.
For this reason I’ve decided I’m going to boycott SpaceX and Blue Origin launches. In fact I’m even going to Boycott Scott Manley and Marcus House as they mostly talks about SpaceX. It’s going to be tough as I’m such a space nerd, but I’ll continue to watch and listen to NASA but if they mention or talk about SpaceX, then I’ll switch off, perhaps in time I’ll just ween myself off NASA altogether, who knows. I’m not sure what I’ll use to fill the gap, perhaps Ham radio, my music, both listening and playing it, and then there is reading, as I have so many books waiting for me. In any case, I don’t know how successful I’ll be we’ll see. I’ll take it one day at a time and see what happens.
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OK…Now What?
I had a major catastrophe with my little webserver several weeks ago and basically had to change machines and also restart my blog. Originally I had several blogs dedicated to different topics, but over the years it proved to be too cumbersome to maintain, so I’ve decided to simplify things and only have one blog from now on – Stefano’s Place. Well, that’s what it’s called for now, I’m not sure if I’ll keep the name, but I needed something up there 🙂
I’m really not sure what this blog will contain, for the short-term I do plan on bringing over some articles from my original two blogs as I’ve kept back ups of many of them. In time I hope to update the blog with articles on diverse topics and in varied forms, be it written word, audio recordings, podcast-like or video. I can’t promise how often I’ll post or if you’ll necessarily like the subject, but I do promise to try and keep it lively and interesting, so stay tuned.