Alexa Conradi, head honcho at the Quebec Women’s Federation has called for the preservation of the gun registry.  What’s interesting about this call is that to support it, Conradi chose to invoke the tragedy of the 1989 shootings at École polytechnique.  14 women were killed when an insane madman who’s name should oft not be repeated, took a rifle into the school and murdered them in cold blood.  Families of the victims in this shooting had a key role in creating the gun registry and have publicly decried the possibility of it being dismantled.

I say that the choice to invoke this tragedy is interesting because I don’t see how it’s really connected to the need for a gun registry.  In fact, it’s like fear mongering to push a gun control agenda and using fear and women as pawns to further that aim.  Frankly, it’s not as interesting as it is disgusting.  In her speech, Conradi gave no credible reason to believe that a gun registry would have prevented the 1989 shooting or even mitigated the harm done by the shooter.  Conradi gave no honest indication as to how the gun registry would have prevented the shooter from taking a gun to the school or how the victims would have been protected by a registration number attached to a rifle, assuming that the rifle would have been legally obtained.

Alexa Conradi is either horribly misled to believe that a gun registry is some how effective in disabling the firing mechanism of a rifle or she is using women and fear to drive a gun control agenda.  If the latter is true, she should be ousted from her organization and chastized by women across Canada for abusing her role as head of the Quebec Women’s Federation.  Either that or she can concisely and clearly explain how a gun registry would have protected shooting victims in 1989 and why she chose to invoke that painful memory.

Have you ever heard of KIVA?  I only just stumbled upon it a few moments ago and I don’t think I’ve ever felt this enthused about an online project in ages.  I’m not sure if I ever have felt this optimistic and happy about anything I’ve seen online ever. The worst part of this is that I’m so excited that I can’t even really think of what I should say in particular about this so I’ll get the basics out there right off the bat.

KIVA uses a network of micro-lenders around the developing world to disperse funds from charitably minded individuals via the web.

KIVA provides access to micro-loans for those who need to do simple things like repair a taxi-cab, fertilize a field or otherwise operate a business the contributes to a local economy in a developing nation.  These micro-loans provide people in the developing world with real opportunities for bettering their own lot in life as well as those in their communities by way of creating jobs and providing community services.

The lending membership of KIVA is made up of people like you and me.  You can use a credit card or pay pal account (which provides their services to KIVA free of charge) to forward money to micro-loan organizations around the world.  When the micro-loans are repaid, you get credited the same amount which can either be refunded to your method of initial payment or re-loaned to another third world entrepreneur.

While there are some criticisms levelled at KIVA, (High interest rates being chief among them) I find the project and the results to be entirely admirable.  In my own view, it’s an incredible privilege to be able to access a lending program that helps people out and it’s something I’m exceptionally psyched about.

There’s only one hurdle I have to jump and I should be jumping it soon.  It’s been rough becoming financial solvent lately and things like my truck’s transmission being puked on by my bank account didn’t help.  That being said, I’m still on my way and the nearest financial horizons are looking bright and full of colour.

It is my intention to devote $5,000 to KIVA donating through the “Atheist, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious” lending team.  Incidentally, this is the largest group on the KIVA website.  Established on August 28th in 2008, the “lending team” has loaned out a total of over $1.18 Million USD and has over 7,000 members.  It is the largest group of lenders on KIVA and I will be happy to participate.

While I would love to see a bunch of people with thousands of dollars flowing through KIVA, $5,000 is only my own goal.  I would be thrilled to know of anyone else who decides to jump in with a bit of their own money to simply lend a portion of a $200 loan to buy fertilizer, stock a local grocery store or expand a bread making business in Peru.  $25 for instance, makes for a great help toward some one’s future success in the developing world and it’s not a heck of a lot of money.  Even building a kitchen in one’s home to raise their standard of living is important and often facilitated by KIVA lenders.

I hope to be in a position to establish my $5,000 KIVA budget by Jan’ 01, 2010 which is just a month and a bit away.  In the mean time, care to challenge my commitment by starting earlier?

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

Next step is convincing a bank to issue a credit card that charges no fee for transactions through KIVA.

During every working day, I wonder what may go wrong next.  this is probably not the best way to approach any job or general task but I just can’t help it.  Will the tarp on my trailer get stuck for some reason?  Will a loader operator accidentally rip a hole in the cab of my truck?  will I get stuck in that muddy field we drive through seeing as my vehicle weighs north of 45 tons?  Will a vampire cat innocently fly into my field of vision with no malicious intent directed toward me but end up startling me and thusly send me flying into the ditch before figuring, since I’m already injured, the vampire cat may as well feast on my bloodied remains even though he didn’t think of it before but hey, I’m just laying there right?

Yeah…there’s a lot that can go wrong but thankfully, most of it doesn’t and I did manage to escape the vampire cat that one time time.  I still receive threatening letters from him but they’re all in e-mail and he doesn’t actually know where I live.  I’m actually impressed that he can type.

Anyhow, something actually most recently did go wrong and while I’m kinda stressing out about it and even though it promises to be an expensive incident, it had a very very cool streak to it.

As I troddled down the road on my way to a landfill located just a stone’s throw away from the American/Canadian border, I heard what I thought sounded almost like flapping rubber.  “What an odd sound” I thought as I tried to figure out where it was coming from.  Off went FOX News Talk radio as I made every effort to determine whether or not a tire had blown out.

After a few seconds, it seemed as though it was perhaps coming from the front of the truck but that was impossible.  If a steering tire had blow out, I would definitely have felt that and likely would have been facing vampire cat in the ditch.  You know, he doesn’t even have wings so I’m not sure how he pulls off the flying bit.

I decided it was time to pull over as the noise started to get a little louder.  I was led to think that perhaps I could track down this noise were I to pull over and have a listen outside.  Suddenly, the origins of the nasty flapping sound became all too obvious as it turned from a flapping to a clattering and every time I shifted down, it got worse.  By the time I was pulled over on the shoulder by Ceylon, SK (Approx’ population 90) I was hearing noises that could only be coming from a very unhappy transmission.

After calling a friend of mine for advice, I shut the truck down, tested the shifter to see what it could do and grabbed a socket wrench for no other purpose than to achieve the possibility of dipping my finger in transmission oil in order to taste it and see if it was “brassy” or otherwise metallic in taste.  guess what.  It tasted like synthetic oil!

Since the truck could still move, I figured I would forgo the idea of calling for a tow and limp to a near by CASE I H agro dealer in hope that they could work on my transmission.  After limping to their location in Pangman, (about 27 kilometres) I was referred to perhaps one of the neatest shops I have ever been to in the small town of Radville about 50 kilometres away.  With a clatter and rattle coming from underneath the truck, I went on my way leaving the agro dealer behind for the small shop owned by a fellow named Dick who seems like a very friendly guy.  After getting me a loaner truck to get rid of the load I had on my trailer the next morning, his mechanics got to work on my transmission and when I got back, an incredible show started.  I’ve never seen inside my transmission before and they managed to take it all apart and even let me watch and snap a few pictures.

This is at the end of the transmission furthest away from the inspection plate that you can take off when the transmission is still mounted to the truck.  In other words, there was no chance the mechanics would have seen it without taking the whole thing off as they did.  The gear at the bottom there is missing three teeth that have been snapped off.  This was likely done by me after purchasing the truck but I can’t for the life of me remember an incident where that could have happened.  Regardless, the incredible amount of torque it would take to snap those teeth off the gear simply wouldn’t be done by the transmission all on its own.  This is likely going to be an expensive part.

Unfortunately, this wouldn’t exactly explain the sound my transmission was making either so the call was mine.  It needed to be dismantled to get at that gear anyway, did I want it all fully inspected?  The answer was yes and the show that followed was amazing to me.

This is a set of the gears from inside the transmission.  There are two other similar looking gear assemblies that came out making a set of three shafts that work in concert together.  underneath each of the gears are timing gears, sprockets and bearings that all move in concert in specific time to each other.  All I can think at this point is that whoever invented this device had to have been an exceptionally talented individual.

These are pieces of one of the gear assemblies laid out on a bench as well as some other part of the transmission on the left there that I am told, facilitates the switching of gears sliding from one to another.  The shaft near the upper right hand corner is what the gear assembly sits on which you can see in the second picture above.

This is the rearmost end of the transmission which was also later dismantled.

Finally, the star of our first image above.  You can see clearly now where the teeth are missing and sitting just below it are two of the three that were snapped off.  The third was eventually found in my PTO (Power Take-Off) which is used to pump hydraulic oil to my trailer to raise the box in the air so I can dump a load I have on.  These teeth fortunately didn’t get tossed around in the transmission but fell to the bottom of the casing instead.

I was incredibly impressed by the mechanic that took most of it all apart with the help of a younger fellow in the shop who had about as much experience with transmissions as I have.  The mechanic got at the casing with air tools and detached each gear by hand with a swift and determined type of motion.  After finally seeing my transmission splayed out on multiple work benches (all having been cleaned off before hand) in the shop, all I could think of was how screwed I would have been had I attempted any of this myself.

About an hour later, the better half of my life came to rescue me from Radville as my truck will almost certainly be in the shop until Monday.  Putting it in on Tuesday Afternoon, this means almost a whole week that my truck will be earning exactly zero dollars.

It’s not exactly good and this will absolutely be expensive when all is said and done but hey, it could be worse.  Vampire cat could figure out where I live right?

Hey, there’s a knock at the door.

Thanks for reading.