Along the Way: Thoughts On Guns

Along the Way: Thoughts On Guns

I'm testing out the "Blog This" feature of Blogger, and linking to an insightful article on guns.

Fingers survived the holiday

Well, my blogging hands survived the holidays as expected, and I'm back at a computer in the daytime to read and write to my heart's content. I spent the last 4 days on the road and in Winnipeg and Sanford Manitoba, although most of the time I was sleeping off a cold that came back with a vengence shortly after Christmas Day. Buckleys Mixture, and Neo Citren [which contains Tylenol] got me through the night and day with less coughing and full-headedness than I would have otherwise experienced.

As always, much more is at my main blog site of http://www.abandonedstuff.com

Christmas Eve Eve

It's the most wonderful time... of the year.

I went to a pot luck tonight, and Santa gave my 23 year old sibling a candy bag. He shared some with me.

I might not blog much over the holidays, but I will return after New Years, barring some horrible blogging-fingers accident.

Merry Christmas everyone

My thoughts on Daycare

My verion of Beer and Popcorn.
From Jenkew's blog:

Tanya, I disagree with a few of your points [on daycare being the best way to raise toddlers]. I think a blank check to parents is the way to go, since the state gets ages 5 through 18 to raise the child in school, and ages 0 through 5 should primarly be a parent(s) of the child. The structure of school doesn't suit a little kid very well, the important thing is that a child respect an adult when they are told to do something. Grandma can teach this to a kid as well as a certified stranger, as structure has little to do with it. Sure kids need to spend some time in activity groups with other kids when they are of a pre-school age to get their feet wet, but it's a very modern [and I think largely incorrect] notion that kids should be shipped away from their home every workday to do whatever in daycares. I think unintended consequences of planning on putting "our" [in the societial sense] children into daycare through their preschool years has a lot to do with so many parents being out of touch with their children, not realizing when they start having unsafe sex, and doing drugs, later on in school.

I feel the best family planning is where the parents decide who the wage earner will be, and who will stay home with the kid(s). Our society is causing a lot of children strife by expecting families with two parents to have two incomes, and it's creating a gap in the middle class - those who have two wage earners, and those who don't. Parents who sacrifice the second wage aren't rewarded by society enough for their time spent raising their own children.

Interpreting Bowling for Bush

Last night I watched "The Interpreter" [5/10] which would have got a 7/10 if Will Smith or someone less irritating had played Sean Penn's role.

Bush is cooked? Not likely, but one can dream. Violating the US Constitution just doesn't hold the same stigma it once did. Bush authorized the NSA to spy on Americans in America, thus breaking the law, although he will try to argue that there was oversight and another law that authorized him to order the spying without a warrant. Will he be impeached? Hopefully.


I'm off to bowl now, 5 pin. I haven't 5 pin bowled in a couple years but I'm hoping to hit 200 points in at least one game.

Well, I'm back now, and I scored 138, 151, then 77 [in an abreviated 3 frame game because our hour was up]. My friends and I had so much fun that we are going back tomorrow too. When our time was running out, I encouraged my friend Brien to try left handed because he was having trouble scoring more than 100 points. It turns out he's better left handed, despite his claims that he's quite "dextrious" and not "ambi-dextirous". On his first bowl, he got all but a 2 pin, and cleaned the last pin on the 3rd bowl much to everyone's surprise. In my last three bowls, I got 2 strikes, and then a spare, meaning I had to quit in my best game of the day, as I was on track to shatter my score record of about 260. My first strike of the day came in the 10th frame, and I was so excited I didn't notice it was the 10th frame an I had my next two shots right away. Brien ended up missing in my second shot, then I missed in the third :-) There were remarkably few scores in the 100s across the 20 lanes or so there. It was also glow bowling, which means there are black lights to make white stuff glow green, and loud music and disco balls everywhere.

On the way back home, we saw a truck that had mounted the pile of snow in the middle of Albert St. It wasn't clear why he was there, but there was a cop behind him already, and the guy was sitting in his cab on his cell phone, probably telling his wife, "You'll never guess where I am..."

Harper and Martin pass the beer and popcorn

Monte Solberg is a Conservative with a popular blog because he has the occasional witty catch phrase that has them rolling in the aisles in the House. In an offhand comment on his blog he said, "Oh, the other thing [Tim Horton's]-- get rid of the blowdryer things in the washroom too and go back to paper towels." Now I enjoy paper towels more than air driers too, but it's my understanding that air driers are more energy efficient even with their use of electricity, than it is to bring in paper towel rolls, and dispose of them. It is disappointing that Monte is not aware of this reason, or doesn't care. Although it is encouraging to hear he washes his hands when leaving the restroom.

[I've sent the above paragraph as an email message to Mr. Solberg in case he'd like to clarify his position on air driers and the environment.]

We need a new national controversy. Move over "Beer vs. Children", it's going to now be "Air vs. Towel"? We know where Monte stands. Where do you stand?
==

Read Stephen Harper's speech from the 1990's. Harper wouldn't want you to read it, so you can
either wonder why that is and not, or read it and find out why. My friend 'Leet Hacker has archived the speech so that it will be preserved in its entirety as found on the web in a Google cache this
morning. Feel free to share the link with others who are interested in learning more about the Conservative's mysterious leader.

In otherelection news, the Green Party has assembled a factual webpage explaining the unfairness used to exclude them from the debate. They aren't whining, they have legitimate complaints because the choice to exclude the Party's leader Jim Harris from the Leaders debates starting tomorrow, is breaking the precedents of 1993, when both the Bloc and Reform parties were allowed to debate despite not winning any seats in the previous general election.
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Feeling morbid? Here's a link for you to read about recently dead Saskatchewan residents.
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There was more bad weather today, and I was fortunately able to do most of the repairs I needed to do over the phone and using remote control software. Tomorrow I'm probably headed up to Norquay though.

Saturday - Updated my blog's features

I've found where to comment on Rick Mercer's blog posts from his site. I've also added the ubiquitous comments feature to my blog, finally, so people can leave a message here if they don't feel like emailing. They can also blog about something I've written here, by putting a "trackback" link to my site. Don't ask me how it works, I've not learned how to do that part yet, but the comments part is very straight forward.

Make Stupidity History: A site about the dumbest criminals in the world.

Yorkton is getting a curbside recycling bin program, starting with a mere 400
bins, in this city of about 18000 people. Hopefully this will help keep down taxes in the long run, as the landfill ought to last many more years because of it.

Added Haloscan comment feature on main blog

I added the ability to place comments on my main blog page at Abandonedstuff.com
It wasn't hard at all, Haloscan produces some javascript code to put into the HTML of the site, and they store and display the comments for my page, for free. I guess if I get attached to some of the comments, I'll have to back them up should the company decide to go under or delete them.

There's a "trackback" feature, which a blogger can use to cite another site as the source of their blog information. Here's a test, I'm putting a trackback link to my Pet Foil Hat Page here, and am going to try to increment the Trackback count there.

My first picture on Blogger

I haven't tried putting a photo on my Blogspot blog, so here goes a test. This is also the first time I've added two entries here in the same day. I often do that at my main blog site www.abandonedstuff.com though.

Sony puts foot in mouth yet again

Sony started the day with its foot in its mouth. Mediamax, their other known DRM infection had a patch released a few days back. The patch opens new flaws which can endanger your computer. The EFF which is typically a good guy had sadly endorsed the patch, so now they look like idiots too. The bottom line is, don't even think about buying a CD with the Content Copy Protected logo which is a black circle with a white triangle offset in it. I tried submitting this story to fark.com as: "Microsoft files "patch with hole" patent infringement suit on Sony, after a released patch for Sunncomm DRM has a hole in it".

Glyn Hotz has since found evidence that in late September 2005, EMI was aware of a problem in a DRM infected CD from the band Switchfoot that was breaking people's ability to burn any CD on their computer after playing it.

CJME.com has asked me to be on their People's Panel for Monday afternoon at about 1:00PM so I should be on air then. You can listen online if you don't get 980 AM radio in Regina. The topic is supposed to be just about the election generally, so I might get to spout off on whatever issues I think are important.

I went out for Christmas lunch with my co-workers today. There was freezing rain, which on the radio was said to be bad enough to make it hard for emergency workers to stand up on the highway. However, when we went at 1:00 PM, the rain had stopped, and the roads were fine because it was warm enough for melting. I used my ING bank card to get money for maybe only about the 2nd time since I've had it in all these years, and I went and got my car registration until next November. They gave me 18% off the regular price, because I'm such a fantastic guy... errr... fantastic driver.