Dear Ms. Walli:

 

   I must beg the Board’s indulgence in the following explanation and request. This is lengthy, for two reasons, Firstly, I need you to understand that this is not, simply, a “my dog ate my homework” excuse. Secondly, you can offer this to your computer technical people to review and offer an opinion on the veracity of my claims regarding my explanation. While my computer is six years old, it is still a reasonably appropriate machine. It has a 200 Gigabyte hard drive and 1 gig RAM. However, this OEB process has required me to download huge amounts of data. The problem with this is that whenever you download anything, there are little files required for installation and other little files required for deleting or uninstalling those. Unfortunately, these are not fully deleted, just as any file you send to the Recycle Bin and then, supposedly, delete. These, simply, have their addresses removed and are sent to your free space to be overwritten, eventually, by new files. If your computer sees a lot of use, especially downloads, your folders and files become fragmented. Fragmentation slows your machine because, now, the files are not available as complete files on your drive and your computer has to search for the various parts of each file when you summon it. Severe fragmentation can result in inappropriate file fragments becoming joined with the result that files are lost and applications are damaged.

    Over the last few months, I have had to run my various performance utilities more and more regularly. I have had to run my defragmenter as often as daily. Still, my computer was running more and more slowly. Files, programs and Internet were stalling and freezing. On Friday Mar. 7, I had to go to Guelph for a medical appointment, and as I live near Meaford I lost the day in regards to working on my Interrogatory drafts. A number of these were only recent and based on ideas derived from reading other Interrogatories. The most important one was based on the information provided in the response to my first Interrogatory set, which contained quite a voluminous amount of material. There were others that I only intended on sending if no one else advanced them. There are some things that bear being asked by a number of Intervenors and there are others that do not. I was waiting for Monday to review whatever came forward to see whether it was even necessary to send some of these.

    However, when I proceeded to work on my Interrogatories on Saturday [8^th] morning, my computer completely crashed. I had to re-install my Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Office XP Professional, my Brother Multi Function Centre software, WinZip 11 and other applications. I also had to re-install my AOL internet, my AOL Security Centre and then down load many of my third party utilities. As my Windows XP is an earlier version, it only comes with Service Pack 1 on the disk. Service Pack 2, which was lost, must be downloaded. The initial  down load for this was 17 hours. Because I am rural, I only have dial-up. Cable has not come to us yet. Also, more Microsoft downloads followed, afterwards. Even as I am composing this,  Microsoft has been downloading updates since 08:00 am and now, at 11:00 am is only at 29 %.

  It was only after another series of downloads, late Monday 10th, that I was advised that I had to down load Internet Explorer 7. This explained one serious problem that I was still having. On Monday morning, I attempted to send my 6^th Interrrogatory  set. When I attempted to upload it, it first stated that this would take over 200 minutes. However, this estimate continued to climb. When it reached 900 minutes, I shut it down. As my AOL was configured to run with Internet Explorer 7, it would not work with the earlier versions replaced by the XP re-installation and the SP 2 updates so far re-installed. Thus, any attempt to send attachments was impossible. For some reason this configuration could not invoke WinZip 11, either, hence further interfering with uploading multiple attachments.

    My best disk cleaning utility, Wise Disk Cleaner, had not been working properly for weeks now. However, although it wouldn’t permanently delete files, it would still send them to the Recycle Bin. I would then run another utility, CCleaner that would permanently delete files, using a US Department of Defense wipe protocol running seven times, including those in the Recycle Bin. What I did not realize was the sheer bulk of junk files that were on my hard drive. I also did not realize that my Wise Disk Cleaner was now limited in the amount of files that it could send to the Recycle Bin. You can set your Recycle Bin to hold a certain amount of your hard drive space. My setting was more than enough to deal with such files in the past. However, with this re-installation process, apparently a huge amount of files had to be deleted. Also, apparently, my Wise Disk Cleaner would stop once it hit that Recycle Bin limit. On Wednesday it occurred to me to delete my Wise Disk Cleaner and re-install it. It also occurred to me to reset my Recycle Bin parameters. I set it for ½ of my hard drive, 100 Gigabytes. I ran my Wise Disk Cleaner and it found almost 6000 files for deletion, over 1130 Megabytes of junk files. I removed these and had to run my defragmentation utilities  a number of times.

     I am still having problems in sending emails with attachments because of the update downloads. With those running, it interferes with trying to send the emails with attachments. Once this current download terminates, I will attempt to send again. It is now 12:56 pm and the update download is only at 47%. This also seems to be interfering with my ability to compose files. My mouse keeps crashing and then my keyboard only functions to access mouse functionality. This means that it will only function to enter Alphabetic entries normally controlled by the mouse, such as f for file and s for save.

  Based on the above, I have a request to submit to the Board. I request an extension for my deadline to submit Interrogatories. I realize that even if the Board finds this reasonable that the Applicant has a right to challenge this. I realize that this further complicates matters for the Board. I submit that these Interrogatories have merit regarding this Application. I submit that some of these Interrogatories are absolutely important in the ability to frame cross-examinations. If these cannot be asked until cross-examination, it will certainly lengthen the oral hearing process. I will, however, compose my cross-examination with the denial of this request in mind. As there is the next Interrogatory phase, with Interrogatories to the Intervenors, I submit that there is time for the Applicant and proponents to respond to these Interrogatories. I believe that it is only equitable and appropriate that these Interrogatories be submitted and responded to. I will send them, regardless, as I believe they are worthy of consideration by the Board, the Applicant, their proponents and the Intervenors, whether or not the Board decides that they should be submitted for response. I have attachments that I would like to include with this correspondence, but I will attempt to send them later so that I can be relatively sure that this communication can be sent and received.

 

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Chris Aristides Pappas.