Monday, February 27, 2006

Katsulas dies- Babylon 5 loses G'Kar, a Narn

The actor who played G'Kar on Babylon 5, has died at age 59 of lung cancer. He had also appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation as a Romulan, and in The Fugitive as a one armed murderer. A reunion of the original B5 cast now would be difficult with both Dr. Franklin and G'Kar's actors dead.

Haloscan |

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Olympic sized coverup; Don Knotts

I watched the rebroadcast of the Olympics closing ceremonies, and CBC switched to different shots of the stage as a protester or drunk person ran up to the podium before Jack Rogge was speaking. There was only one microphone after he tore it away when he was dragged off the stage which you could see in the rebroadcast if you knew what to look for.
Who the man was with, I have no idea.

Update: Here's a media mention. CBC Sunday Report also did a segment on the prankster who tore off the microphone.

Bode Miller a US alpine skiier went to the games to have fun, not to "win medals" as he revealed in an interview. And the USA wonders why they didn't do as well as they expected they would? Miller didn't even, "get drunk the night before races." Well shucks, that's good to know.
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Don Knotts died on Friday. He played Barney Fife on the Andy Grifith Show

Haloscan |

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Valentines expense, and Interview with me by Ash

Samantha Burns linked to me since I wrote an article she published.
==

  "While the average expected Valentine's Day spending on gifts for others
is $92.59 per person, Canadians are more concerned with showing appreciation
than with extravagance." - Source Pollara

But in Sask. the average guy spends only $60 on his sweetie on the big day of romance. I'm happy to have brought that average way down. Birthdays and Christmas are the "big" gift times, or just any time for a little gift.
==

First part of the Interview Meme for Bloggers

Who's better Barbie or Ken?
Ken's better, because even though he's unable to remove his underwear, at least he has room for his internal organs.

What would it take to get you into a glittery dress and a bra? $1 Million Dollars, and it would have to be at Halloween.

Compare your IQ to a Simpsons character, and which one do you think has an IQ closest to yours. My IQ would be closest to Principal Skinner's, and to compare myself to another Simpson's character, I'd choose Homer because there is no way I could come out dumber, because I am so smrt.

If Puff the magic dragon flew by your window tomorrow night and invited you to a party in his cave with the teletubbies and Catherine Zeta Jones, would u accept and why?

I'd have to say no, because I don't like the teletubbies, and I'd be concerned that Jones' husband Michael would get jealous.

Haloscan |

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Save Wonderland

CBC was saying "our hockey hopes went down the drain". Err, we won GOLD in women's hockey, the men don't count for all of hockey. It's a shame the loser men hockey players will get more press than Cindy Klassen who's won her 4th medal, a gold today. The second place in that race was also Canadian, and we got a Gold in ski sprint as well.

CBC as I reported earlier, is cancelling This is Wonderland, but you can fight their choice and sign this petition. Wonderland is my favourite CBC drama, and it's a hoot too, so hop over and add your initials to the petition please.
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Someone lost their camera in Hawaii, or did they have it stolen? It seems it was taken by a Canadian family who decided to smuggle it into Canada and keep it after telling the victim what they did!
==

CCD inventors were honoured this week. According to CBC News, "Willard Boyle, a Canadian scientist who helped invent the light-sensitive chip, accepted [the prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize] in the U.S. on Tuesday. Boyle and George Smith will share the $500,000 US award for the invention of the "Charge-Coupled Device (CCD), a light-sensitive component at the heart of digital cameras and other widely used imaging technologies," the U.S. National Academy of Engineering said." Those other devices include the Hubble Space Telescope, and orthoscopic medical instruments. "Boyle and Smith came up with the idea for the device while working at Bell Laboratories in 1969. 'It was after maybe an hour's work,' Boyle recalled. 'We went over to the blackboard and we had some sketching there. We went down to our models lab and made one.'"

This story went on Slashdot's frontpage tonight.

Haloscan |

East Vacation 2006; Smartest Listener; Unipage

I planned out more of my Summer trip to Ontario and the Maritimes, last night. The Canada Pass for Greyhoud that lasts for 10 days is my best option, and it's only $379. I'm flying back home in July on Air Canada from St. John's.

Marjory at the Provincial Library won the Sask. Smartest Radio Listener contest this week. What significance does Shilo have to Saskatchewan? Well 100 years ago during the period of 1905-1911 American blacks from Oklahoma settled in Shilo, SK to escape racism in their home state and made one of the first black settlements in Western Canada. Of course there were already many in Nova Scotia, Ontario and elsewhere in Canada.

Unipage is a free program that might replace Adobe Acrobat one day.

Gormley's 60 seconds I mentioned the other day.

National "Be Glad You're not Cheney" Week. Let me guess, during the week, the population will be encouraged to bag a lawyer to trim the herd down to a less litigious size? Lawyers running across the freeway after ambulances, have bcome a major safety concern around some parts. An open season might be just what nature needs to put things back into balance.

Haloscan |

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Moose Jaw; Modeling old sk00l

I drove home to Yorkton from Wood Mountain Sunday, ending up for supper in Moose Jaw with my friend. We went to Wayne and Lavern's and stuffed ourselves on the buffet which was Italian themed today. I ate pizza without a fork and knife even, to much surprise, but hey it wasn't falling apart because the pieces were small enough. I filled up in Melville on ethanol blended gas, running on a very low tank when I rolled into the Mohawk. And I added a spider plant to my fish's water which will spruce up his bowl a little bit.

My project this week might be to finish the assembly of a model Zero airplane, but I think I don't have the tissue covering that will be needed. I remembered to grab the dope [glue] but no paper, unless it's in the box still. Painting will have to wait for another time when I either find the right stuff at home, or find a model shop with the right paints, in Yorkton or online. After about 12 years, it seems unlikely that the tube of glue will still work for the bit of assembly left, although I do have carpenter's glue on hand which ought to work well on balsa wood. And the tool most important that I will need to improvise on, would be an xacto knife. I think my swiss army knife is sharp enough and ought to do the trick if I have any more peices to cut out.

Haloscan |

Monday, February 20, 2006

Catch the Crazy man; title combos continue

Poor crazy baseball player. Daulton was a player against the championship Blue Jays of 1993, in the World Series. It's sad to see someone so famous, so delusional, unless he's that way just to "convince" others of his doomsday scenario for some unknown purpose. Sure I might be advertising a foil hat for pets on this webpage, but that doesn't mean I actually THINK that the government and aliens are reading kitty's mind. Although I have told Springfield, IL through WMAY radio that I do think that, but they knew I was kidding.

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I watched "Catch Me If You Can" [8/10] tonight, and found it to be really entertaining. I also learned how to make a wireless router work on dialup, I just needed to set the Windows sharing IP address as the DNS server for the router, and presto the webpages worked on the wireless laptop. I taped "Cast Away" yet another Tom Hanks movie and will watch it [again] later. I first saw the movie in 2003, when I was travelling North America, and it was in the tape collection of a friend in Oregon.
==

In my post titling gimick, I seem to be combining the themes of the post into one sentence. It makes for interesting reading when I go back over them later, thinking to myself, "what in the heck is that about?"

Haloscan |

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Birthdays; Producer article on Wood Mountain; The Jaw

Happy Birthday on Feb. 17 to Michael Jordan, Richard Karn [Al from Home Improvement], Luc Robatille of the Kings, Denise Richards, and Renne Russo. And Clair and Evan too, since they know who they are.
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"But Lisa, that's the beautiful part of the plan... When Winter comes the apes freeze to death." You've just been subjected to an obscure Simpsons quote with Principal Skinner outlining the town's plan to control one pest with another predator animal. It seems Australia forgot to make its toad-killing Winter backup plan.
==

The Feb. 9 2006 Western Producer has an article about my hometown:
Clay mine possible in southern Sask.
Subscriber Content
A proposed $15 million kaolin mine near Wood Mountain, Sask., could be the first step toward revitalizing the community of 20 people.
Unfortunately it's a subscriber magazine though, so the body of the article is hidden to us. The part that I do know is that the mining operation is based in Georgia USA where kaolin comes from in spades. They'd like to use a railline to transport the white chalky clay, but CP Rail plundered Wood Mountain's branch line years ago, and the only steel still in the bed is the occasional lost spike, and 1km of stranded track running through the village of Wood Mountain where the municipal government took a legal stand against the CP pirates. If the mine does get rolling, no thanks can go out to the RM of Old Post, and the Sask. NDP who let our ecologically friendly infrastructure be ripped away without a fight. It was torn out less than two decades after the federal government used Canadian tax dollars to upgrade the quality of steel in the rails. Guess who got to profit when the high quality rails were taken away, and your hint is it wasn't the Canadian taxpayer?
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I was in Moose Jaw today and saw the two Tunnel tours. The Chicago tour was more interesting to me than the Chinese tunnels, mostly because one was glamourous with funny acting from the male tour guide, and the other was about racism against Chinese immigrants. At one point I saw a wood stove in the Chinese tunnels that was nearly identical to the wood stove in my parent's kitchen [which they don't use as anything but decoration]. In the Little Chicago Tunnel, a '20s barmaid took the tour group to a secret door and told a little boy the secret knock of "four knocks". Well we didn't get in right away because the kid knocked about 10 times. Then we almost all were shot when the barmaid slipped up and asked the guard to "take care of us", then corrected her mistake before he went to get his Tommy gun.
The most interesting thing I learned on the tour was that the Tommy gun was invented for the Great War [WWI] as a trench spraying gun, but was never used for that, then was hardly sold because of its poor accuracy. Capone bought some for about $2000, and history was made.
When the guide once asked what we were all there for, and I excitedly spoke up, "Booze!" that prompted giggles from some ladies near me. I also got asked to look into the secret hideaway fireplace to "check that no one was coming".

While I was in "The Jaw" I had a tour of Palliser Regional Library headquarters, including their dog trick course downstairs from the library. Lunch at Mr. Sub, a -30 drive past the abandoned hospital and CCSchool, and watching "My name is Earl" TV show, and "Kinsey" [7/10] rounded out the weekend vacation in "The Jaw" with my friend. I then drove home to Wood Mountain and had rabbit stew for supper, and ruhbarb-strawberry pie for dessert.

Haloscan |

Friday, February 17, 2006

Yorkton Blog has a new blog for city citizens

Yorkton has a Blog.
I'm vacationing in sunny Wood Mountain.

Haloscan |

Thursday, February 16, 2006

RIAA: CD in DVD Player is scandalous!; Cold; Cherry; PEMS

My creation The PEMS got a mention from another Sask Blogger.

It's a wickedly cold day today, and my car made bad cracking thud noises when I hit potholes or manholes on the way to work this morning. Even though I had plugged in the car, it still had to turn over twice to start, when usually it starts instantly. I'll have to put gasoline in the tank for my trip to Moose Juice tonight and hope that it warms up to the promised -26 instead of hovering at the current -32 at lunch time.

Canada might end up with a silver and a bronze in women's short track speed skating from the other day because the current silver medalist lifted a skate to an angle at the finish line which isn't allowed. I don't like to DQ someone on a technicality when she was clearly faster, but I don't know the sport well and if it's a rule it should be the law. There is video review in the sport, and the judges missed the obvious call for some reason, so a protest is in order. Just today we won two more silvers in skating, and a bronze in women's skeleton.

Also, Don Cherry has made a point that Canada's women's hockey team is not doing themselves a favour by playing hard and running up the score in their lopsided games. By embarrassing the European teams, the IOC will vote women's hockey out of the Olympics after the Vancouver games, like they've done with softball and baseball for London's 2012 games. I agree with his reasoning, which doesn't happen much with me and Grapes.
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RIAA: CD in DVD Player is scandalous!

The RIAA [and by extension the Canadian RIA] wants it to be illegal to use our CDs with our iPods or other MP3 players. That's not surprising since they would like us to buy the songs we hear each time we hear them. They must have cried a river when jukeboxes stopped being popular because that's a business model they can relate to: no music until they see the coin. And really, if owning a CD doesn't give you the legal right to listen to the music now in their opinion, then what will? Do they even want people to play their CDs anymore if the player is a DVD player, since that's another digital format and we haven't paid again to use our music on that format if we use our CD? Why aren't they offering DVD versions of all of our music CDs?

Do you think it's reasonable that Canadians shouldn't be permitted to put a copy of their CDs onto their computer for personal use? You shouldn't have to go out and buy a 50 CD jukebox to have modern access to the songs you've paid for. The RIAA is smoking crack if they think that people will gladly pay for a CD, then pay AGAIN to download the song into iTunes for their iPod portable music player. Anyone from a 12 year old to an 80 year old grandmother could easily figure out how to put their CD music onto an iPod, unless Sony has broken their computer with a DRM rootkit I suppose. The RIAA's greed has passed into the absurd many times before and this time is just yet another attack on their customers.

It will take many millions of customers and forward thinking artists like Steve Page of the Bare Naked Ladies standing up against the CRIA and RIAA copyright amendment , to keep our current freedoms intact. I'll keep you posted with simple ways you can get involved and make sure that Harper's government doesn't cave in to lobby pressure from businesses that would tell you that putting music from your CD onto your MP3 player is an offense that could cost you thousands of dollars in court.
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Haloscan |

New African Food Crisis Looming From Drought; India

Africans may be facing a worse food crisis than they currently are dealing with. I don't think it's within the realm of possibility for any starving nation to pull itself out of war unilaterally, and obtain resources through trade from more powerful nations. Canada's shoulders have to bear the responsibility for a lack of aid getting to drought stricken African people.
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On the topic of bad things that need ending, the obnoxious ads for Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale have been pulled due only to the recent child porn charges against the actor who plays the rude Scotsman in the TV ad series. I heard this news on the radio, sorry no hyperlink. News.Google.com is your friend today.
I declare today, as a Lyon descendent, SCOTCHTOBERFEST!

Haloscan |

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Heritage; Secrets; Spam blog

Heritage Canada's mission statement:
Canadian Content - Promoting the creation, dissemination and preservation of diverse Canadian cultural works, stories and symbols reflective of our past and expressive of our values and aspirations.
Hopefully they will realize that things like DRM and stricter copyright laws which the CRIA favours, are a hinderance to both dissemination and preservation of Canadian digital cultural works.
==

Computer User Secrets is a blog in the top 100 most popular by "links-to" and it's pretty easy reading aside from the flood of ads they feature everywhere. They don't appear to get very technical, so it may be good for beginners interested in learning a few new areas of computing.
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I just wrote Blogger support and asked them how a "spam blog" managed to have a blogger site without a "flag this" report button at the top. It was going to be the first time I'd ever use that button - and it wasn't there! Here's what I wrote:
"beforexjobs.blogspot.com
This spam blog doesn't have a Flag button at the top, how did they remove it? The blog is gibberish with only links to poker sites." I'll let you know if Blogger responds with an answer, or possibly a bugfix.
==

Haloscan |

Explanation of Windchill's index

More updates for the blog are coming tonight, if I don't freeze outside when I go to plug the car in. It's going to be -41 with the windchill. What's "windchill" you might ask if you're not from Canada? Well it was invented by Sir. Windston Churchchill as an attack threat index during WWII. The more likely we're to be attacked by the Axis of Evil, the lower the windchill value. Tonight the threat index is high because it's so low, thanks to rumblings from Iran. North Korea is also peeved they've not won any Winter Olympic medals yet too, and have threatened to stop importing James Bond movies to feed to their cattle and starving masses.

Haloscan |

Sask Liberals and Can. Taxpayers: The tale of two Daves

Fighting for Taxpayers: The tale of two Daves
Taxpayer Federation's topdog Dave is indicating that David Karwacki and the Sask Liberals may be contenders in the next election. I think possibly the Liberals will be cutting out the NDP seats in the cities while the Sask Party takes many rural seats.

Haloscan |

Smartest Radio Listener; Flag Day

Sorting mail on the train stopped happening in Canada in 1971, after happening for over 100 years since the 1850s. I was going to guess that door to door milk delivery stopped in 1971 across Canada, but I probably would be wrong. It might even be going on still today in select regions.

Happy Flag Day, by the way. Time to replace that tattered old thing you might have fluttering in your front yard, and show your Canadian pride by buying a new flag [made in China of course, home of modern communism].

Haloscan |

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Mouseland needs SK Liberals; Wonderland gone, UK kicks the butt

The Sask Party's Brad Wall speaks about Mouseland for the 21st century. I wonder what kind of cat Karwacki is?
==

This is Wonderland, my favourite CBC drama-comedy is being cancelled after the third season wraps up this Spring. Oh, woe is me! DaVinci is also getting the axe, as is The Tournament. I never watched either of those shows.
==

The UK has voted to ban smoking in pubs and private clubs, giving the healthy non-smoking movement a huge push across the ocean. With the rise of smoking in Asia, it's good to know that at least another country is starting to get their laws headed in the right direction when it comes to stamping out nicotine addiction. "The government predicts an estimated 600,000 people will give up smoking as a result of the law change."

Haloscan |

Valentine's Day Essential Gift: PEMS

PEMS is the humourous Penis Enlarging Metric System and you should read more about it at the link provided here. Designed with the metricly challenged male member in mind, this magnificant merchandise will show your man you notice him, when he's noticing you.

The primary problem with penis size is related completely to math and measurement standards throughout the world. American men are particularly affected by numerical penile envy because the old imperial measurement of inches is used to determine a body's sizes. Don't give in to spam messages, and purchase pills with dangerous and ineffective chemicals in them, because you can now use the non-invasive and 100% guaranteed safe PEMSâ„¢.The Key to PEMSâ„¢ is the SI Metric system. Why complain about a lack of inches, when you can have TWICE as many centimeters.

Don't delay, get your PEMS today.

Haloscan |

Reinstalling Windows XP - oh joy!

I finally had 5GB free on my computer so I decided to take the plunge and install Windows XP on another partition in the hopes of starting fresh and cleaning up:
  1. DVD drive doesn't work at all unless the computer is started with the Windows CD in the drive.
  2. ATI All in Wonder TV card doesn't play TV and stops the computer from entering the Hibernation mode which saves a lot of power. Attempts to upgrade to current drivers reboot/crashes the computer in a loop.
  3. A junk filled registry from years of software installations and uninstalls.
  4. A Twinkle 2110 USB webcam that crashes the computer when used in conjunction with Yahoo Messenger.
  5. Firefox crashing every few days, possibly from over-extension.
  6. Banishing any undetected rootkit or trojan to the past [although I have no reason to suspect one is installed since I practice safe hex].
  7. And giving myself the ability to back up my Windows partition to a Ghost image for easy restoration later. My 20GB C: didn't give me that possibility, and lack of an easy backup is worrisome to me.
Now that I have a "clean" Windows, I have to do all my little customizations, and utility installations again, but I'm going to do it carefully so I can identifiy what, if anything, was breaking stuff in the past. And when I'm satisfied that I have an improved computer, and I've imported all of my data from my C: drive, then I can toast the old system installation and have oddles more room. Then I can go about moving to Ubuntu Linux so I can ditch Windows XP whenever I don't wan to use it as my TV recorder.
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In other events, Canada won a silver in women's team skiing. This is Beckie Scott's second silver medal, oh wait it's her first because her silver was upgraded to gold, after finishing originally in third place behind two cheating skiiers in the Salt Lake Olympics.
==

Gormley's "Reality Check" was probing the question: Should Ezra Levant of the Western Standard have published the cartoons that are accused with instigating riots in the Middle East? More people said that he should have published them, since it's more of a question of freedom of the press, than tip-toeing around a particular religious viewpoint. I agree with that, since how can anyone know if all of the cartoons were as tasteless as we'd been led to believe if they haven't even been viewed? The bottom line is that someone, somewhere is always going to take offense to something, so as long as the speaker's intent isn't to rally people to cause harm to others, then freedom of speech should stand paramount. Samantha Burns has made a few of her own cartoons to mock the situation, because humour is often the best window to an absurdity.

Haloscan |

Monday, February 13, 2006

Gormley fawns over Harper: He can do no wrong

John Gormley of CKOM.com has fawned over Harper's cabinet picks before.
Gormley's "60 Seconds" bit today was laughable. While he's pushing that the big bad liberal media fawns over "Canada's natural governing party - the Liberals," he's ignoring that his natural governing party is the Conservative Party and he puts his own fawning support behind it with the same kind of blind and emotional loyalty. "Harper hasn't yet begun to rule, and the media is already saying he's lost our trust. What if he brings in the Federal Accountability Act?" Yeah, what if he does that? So what? He's already broken two or three cornerstones of his campaign platform with his bungling of cabinet/Senate appointments. If he can't be expected to work under his own "government accountability" conditions, then why should he inflict that untenable law on the next party to govern? He can't even live for 2 weeks with his own promises, and own laws, so what does that say about his governing skill, and his truthfulness?

Haloscan |

Gretzky gets good news

An update this morning in Gretzky news. Chris from the blogosphere pointed out that a wiretap revealing Gretzky knew about the gambling ring run by Tocchet, was conducted after the news started to break around him, and not a month ago which could have indicated prior knowledge of the illegal ring.

Haloscan |

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Yorkton Melville Regina weekend

Feb. 12, 2006 Sunday

Friday afternoon I had off work, and I went to the Yorkton art gallery on Smith St. with my friend Ashley and we got an impromptu tour by the curator of an art exhibit that was opening that night. We weren't able to make it to the 7pm wine and cheese opening with the presentation of the artist who's from Alberta. The topic of the display was the female body, and in the middle of the room were bronze and other castings of pregnant torsos. The walls were covered with torsos made of real lichen from Ontario, and plaster and paper mache which was quite disturbing with fake stitches mimicking an old mummified body. There was also an ancient wax painting technique with magnified skin from knuckles and scars.

On Friday night I watched "Interview with a Vampire" [8/10] which was very good and worth a 9 for some parts, and just a 7 for others. On Saturday I watched "Cheaper by the Dozen" [6/10] with Steve Martin and no Oprah when they said she was appearing later in the movie, but apparently were just using her name as a plot ploy. Then I saw "Starship Troopers" [7/10] which I'd seen before many years ago, but this time caught all but the first few seconds of the show. It has some very good special effects, and political propaganda humour.

Beggar on Gordon and Albert I ate supper in Melville at Dairy Queen and had a Choco Cherry Love Blizzard which was very good. The roads were a little icy from the blizzard we've had the last 2 days, although today was nearly perfect for driving.

I watched some of the Olympics today, inclusind short track speed skating. Canada has a gold medal in moguls, and a bronze in short track.

On the bus home from Regina, I was talking a bit about movies with the guy sitting next to me (the bus was so full some seats were two people side by side) and we both thought there's been no really good movies lately. I didn't even want to see anything at Rainbow today, so instead Rob, Brien, Peter and I went to Walmart and bought playing cards and poker chips, cleaned off the kitchen table, and played cards for an hour. I learned Texas Hold'em Poker, and Rob learned Poker, period. When we came out of Walmart, a Snowbird buzzed the parking lot, which was super cool, and I had to kick myself a little for not having my camera out and ready to take a picture of the lot like my spider senses had been telling me once I got outside.

Haloscan |

Friday, February 10, 2006

Skiing; Terrorism; Monitor; Donate

Beckie Scott, Canada's golden skiier from 2002, only won gold after the first and second place finishers were booted from the race for obvious cheating using drugs. Hopefully she'll bring home another medal, and won't have to fight for what's rightfully her's. Why do so many cheat in pro sports when they know they'll be tested?

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From Daring to be Remarkable's website I found the link for terrorism signs. Don't get confused, be ready when that radiation hits your groin region for 5 minutes and 12 seconds.
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I spoke to a helpful person at ViewSonic [it's about time!] in their call center at Raleigh, North Carolina. He was able to get a replacement monitor for one that broke and was sent do be repaired back in NOVEMBER, slated for shipment to me by next week. The previous call center person needed the tracking number of my shipment, even though they had the RMA number and everything else they'd need to have confirmed that they did have the monitor still. ViewSonic is such an awful pain, please don't buy from them.
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Don't forget to be an organ donor - Tell someone you know that you want to donate your organs, and sign a note in your wallet. And hey, if you don't want to save kids from organ failure, at least donate them as food? Your organs, not the kids. Mmm, liver. Yes I'm kidding - liver tastes awful.

Haloscan |

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Scam Baiting to Betting Scandal

Scam Busted is a new blog with the developing story of a Saskatchewan person toying with a Nigerian scammer. I'm going to keep my eye on it and post the most interesting updates.
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Sweet! Money in the mail from SGI coming soon. Now if only people would be good drivers more often, and we could always have this 8% rebate, and fewer medical bills to pay for too. SLOW DOWN! I'm talking to you. Yeah you in the fast car skidding up to the red light which has been red for the last 5 seconds.
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[Update: An update this morning in Gretzky news. Chris from the blogosphere pointed out thae update that the wiretap revealing Gretzky knew about the gambling ring, was done after the news started to break around him, and not a month ago.] Well, the "Great One" [was] starting to look like he might be in hot water. Could he become the next Pete Rose by "not" betting on baseball? I'm hoping the facts don't show that he was involved in Rick Tocchet's gambling ring, because we still need sports heroes that haven't tarnished their name. See: McGuire, Sosa, Palmerio, Rose, hmm Baseball players are a theme. Could they be why the IOC has pulled baseball [and poor ol' softball] from the 2012 Olympics in London? Oh wait, there's McSorely, Brasheer, Federov, Tocchet [conviction pending] of the hockey world with a touch of scandal around them too after attaining fame in their game. Speak of a scandal and what shall appear? Theodore tests positive.

Haloscan |

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

How much does God pay?

A Google Ad that makes you think:

Believe in God?
We'll pay you $75 right now to complete a simple survey!

Who knew that there was more than one God, and they pay you for doing surveys for them? Why don't they know the answers, is the bigger question.

Also, why would you bother doing the survey, if you didn't believe that the test giver actually exists, and wouldn't that skew the results?

Haloscan |

Laser Glasses + Old Film = Absolute Power

I like stories like this one, it's like time travel almost. An antique camera had undeveloped film in it, and a historical society had it developed which revealed a picture with an old man on a ladder. With a little work they found his name and some of his history in the Piapot and Yorkton regions of the province.
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Super vision LASER lenses

Sharks with poor vision are reportedly thrilled by this news. This is a great idea. Lasers in the eyeball? What could go wrong? Seriously though, this is cool stuff. But also, seriously, it'll go wrong.
The hope is that people with poor retinas might be helped by this auto focus technique also used to compensate for atmospheric disturbances when pointing a telescope through the air. As someone on Slashdot pointed out though, people might use this as a vision crutch, weakening their eyes for normal use when not wearing their vision device.
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Saskatchewan's Smartest radio listener contest from CJME.com:
Q) It was a cold February long ago when Saskatchewan first had this?

A) The children from Borden school who always call in guessed the coldest day, but Saskatchewan in 1946 had the first air ambulance in the world.
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Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The only problem for Stephen Harper, is that he DOESN'T have absolute power, so what's his excuse? How can any clear thinking person support his campaign promise breaking on day one before things even put pressure on him? I thought he was supposed to Stand up for Canada, not put down the idea of accountable democracy on day one.
==

Haloscan |

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Hey Bill, feeling Blue?

Do you like Bill Clinton? He's going to Regina to give a talk about Canadian and American relations. I'm thinking I'll go to moon him.
I'll wear a blue dress, then bend over and pull it up. Maybe I won't bother, since I'll have to take up cigar smoking for full effect.

...Greatest American President of the last 15 years.

Haloscan |

Dinosaurs posed for art? Aboriginals 65 million years old?

Apparently, a squiggly drawing on a petroglyph is rock solid proof that Native Americans were alive 65 Million years ago. I knew that Native Americans had been in North America for possibly 10,000 years, but who'd have thunk that some Young Earth oddball would give them several million years prior claim to this land we all call home now. Oh, wait, maybe that's not what they were getting at.

I could draw a picture of Abe Lincoln, but that doesn't mean I was alive when Honest Abe was. Or I could sketch a parakeet/robin/kiwi, but does that mean I am drawing a picture of an extinct dodo bird? I guess when one rejects logic, it's easy to get carried away and figure that everyone else is also incapable of telling facts from fiction. That would explain why there was such a push to banish Harry Potter books. Modern fiction written by a woman = evil. Ancient fiction written by old dead white dudes = sacred.

What's most depressing about this bible.ca site, is that I saw a huge ad for it on a university educated Saskatchewanian blogger's site. It wasn't there for satirical purposes either, which is the only plausible reason I can think of for an educated or religious person to give it any publicity. After all, who would want their religion to be dragged down by associating with a half wit web site featuring only arguments attacking scientific theories like carbon-14 dating, and well tested sciences like geology, astronomy, biology, and chemistry? Is this the Middle Ages again where some Christians are trying to whip up support to burn the heretic scientists?

Shouldn't all educated Christians be trying to distance themselves from crackpot theories and web sites by calling publicly for logic to prevail? After all it's not like science is a threat to religion. No scientist has ever burned a bible at the stake, forced a priest to publicly recant his faith in God or Jesus, or demanded stickers be put in every Bible saying, "Jesus being mankind's only saviour is just a theory. For alternate theories on salvation, see your local library for books such as "Stephen Hawking's Universe: The Cosmos Explained", or "An Introduction to Buddhism"." Sure, the destruction of Western society's education system isn't as dramatic as burning down embassies with an angry mob, but it could hurt society even more. And who really deserves more scorn in the world: An uneducated eastern Muslim man who is told his religion is under attack by western countries, or an educated western Christian man who concocts lies about science to attack the education system?
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

*Cross posted to Life of BRex.

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And now for a topic non-controversial [I would think]:

If you need to burn CDs or DVDs, but don't want to copy software, or pay mega dollars, you can use CD Burner XP Pro 3 for free.
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Did you miss the Super Bowl and the famous ads? If you have highspeed Interweb, you're in luck because iFilm has the consumery goodness ready for digesting.

Haloscan |

Mindless Blog Blather - Because I can talk about non-issues too.

Will the snow stop please? I actually had to shovel out my parking space a little yesterday for the second time this year [plus one ploughing of the lot]. What is this, Winter or something? It's February now, so it's traditionally supposed to be +6 in a week or two right after Valentine's Day.
Speaking of which, who's got a jump on their Valentine's Day plans? Is it like Christmas where you're supposed to prepare around the time of American Thanksgiving or sooner? Should guys be putting up decorations? Should I be asking all these questions?

Haloscan |

Monday, February 06, 2006

Out of the gate: It's Harper's irony by an American mile!

It was a wild day in politics with David Emerson crossing the floor of the House to sit as a Conservative MP from the Liberals. He did exactly what so many Conservatives said was unfathomable for an honourable MP to do after Belinda Stronach left their party last year for a Liberal cabinet job waiting for her. The Conservatives now have 125 members, and the NDP 29, giving the two parties 154 seats, only one shy of a majority coalition. Oh look, there's an Independent MP in Quebec looking to change the CRTC [an organization friendly to the CBC]. Hmm, can anyone see oddball partnership coming along for the House?

In a bizzarre attempt to add to the irony of the day, Harper appointed a non Member of Parliament to a cabinet post to represent Montreal, and stuck the guy in the appointed Senate which Harper had vowed in the campaign to make an elected body of government. And who said before the election ended that Harper would go back on his word about an elected Senate? It was probably me, but let me check on that and get back to you.

[I checked, and I said on Dec 16: "Especially amusing on The National tonight was word that both Harper and Martin have promised an elected Senate. While Harper might be serious, the idea that Martin is telling the truth is laughable. Months ago he appointed 3 Alberta senators, and none of them were from the elected group that Albertans chose in a democratic fashion. Actions speak louder than words, and Paul Martin does not really want an elected Senate." Oops, I guess I was wrong, and Harper is simply imitating his idol Mr. Martin. I was thinking of this quote I wrote on January 24: "Harper might actually enact parliamentary reform, so that our senate will be elected, and elections called on a fixed schedule {which I have mixed feelings about}."] It's too bad that Harper couldn't even last one day as PM before appointing someone unelected to the Senate. What's next, handing out actual beer and popcorn to parents instead of their $1200? Oh how the mighty Conservative ideals for accountable democracy have fallen. Big surprise that was, eh?

Adding to the roundness of cabinet, Bev Oda the potential Heritage Minister that got legal money contributions from the CRIA is now in a role to scratch the back legally of the music and other copyright cartels. Oh goody. And SK got a female cabinet minister, which is good, as long as she turns out and does a good job.

Haloscan |

Sunday, February 05, 2006

University of Regina new buildings; Bus ride; TD fake crash

Here's a photo of a church in Quill Lake, on Thursday.
Quill Lake

On Sunday I wandered around the UofR campus for a few minutes and stopped by the site of the new Lab building. Ralph Goodale would be sure to note it as one of his accomplishments for the improvement of Regina's university grounds. It seems unlikely to me anyway that without his input as Finance Minister during Martin's government, that we'd not have got the funding for a construction project like that. I ended up in Luther College and played a few games of pool with a film major I knew from a few years ago, and he's almost finished his degree.
I walked through the Library hallway, and there are locked display cabinets with photos of dignitaries lining the walls. Some saucy chap had slipped a contraband poster into a case, advertising a truly Saskatchewan product, but they left their phone number off the poster for some reason:
Image hosting by Photobucket
Now that's what I call, a dirty joke. By the way, on CJME the dictionary lady guest they had on the air the other day identified 'gitch' and 'gotch' as uniquely Saskatchewanian words, possibly with a Ukrainian origin. Although in Alberta the words 'ginch' and 'gonch' replace the 't' sounds with 'n' sounds.
Image hosting by Photobucket
Image hosting by Photobucket
The bus ride home was uneventful, even though there was freezing rain. The bus driver who I recognized from the bus route through Lafleche in last Summer, was concerned at Fort Qu'Appelle that he was leaving someone behind, but it turns out the passenger got off early there instead of at Balcarres. There was a car in the ditch before Melville, but the driver'd already been picked up. There were three people with headphones on listening to their music that was audible to even me. Two were sitting in the seats around mine, and one at the very back of the bus when I was about 4 seats back from the front. At the Fort, the driver asked the one he'd heard if she could turn it down. It hadn't bothered me because I had been asleep before White City even, but it was bothering him because "it wasn't country [music]" he said jokingly.
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I think there's a problem with TD's market indices page tonight. Otherwise there's been a market crash in the United States unlike any seen, because the Canadian dollar wasn't worth $57,575.80 US dollars yesterday, and it's not up $4.20 today too. If it is though, today is the day to buy US currency, and then go out and buy the state of your choice. My friend Robert has dibs on California and North Dakota, but I called Nevada and New York.

Haloscan |

Defending smoking in a sealed tube trap?

I'm not sure why this posted comment didn't show up yet on a previous blog post:
"I got word last evening that miners trapped in Potash mine refuge rooms were smoking. That's the word on the street anyway. It makes one wonder how seriously they were taking their situation."

Are you fricking serious? Seventy-two men were trapped a kilometre underground for almost two days - thank the Lord, all returned safely - and you criticize them for smoking [while trapped in a tube with no air scrubers or guaranteed air circulation]!?
Why don't you just be thankful they're alive and keep your environmental/health politics out of this. Save your breath for debate on real issues.
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Posted by Chris to Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy at 2/04/2006 11:04:06 AM
to http://saskboy.blogspot.com/2006/01/smoking-gun-hp-dnd-busted.html

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Chris said:
"Seventy-two men were trapped a kilometre underground for almost two days - thank the Lord, all returned safely - and you criticize them for smoking!?
Why don't you just be thankful they're alive and keep your environmental/health politics out of this."

You see Chris, the smoking criticism and being glad they got out safely are not mutually exclusive thoughts. So save your pro-smoking defence for someone who won't put that silly kind of argument in its place - the garbage. Save YOUR breath for a debate worth winning.

There are nicotine patches and gum for the painfully addicted, and if they haven't thought to put things like that in their emergency station kit while trapped under ground in a sealed tube where air quality is a serious issue, then shame on them.

Haloscan |

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Garry Breitkreuz's pool night pre-election

Here's a picture of me with Canadian Member of Parliament for Yorkton-Melville riding, Garry Breitkreuz.
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Garry's against the gun registry, which I agree is a fair position considering the massive waste it has been, but he's also against gay marriage, and also apparently against answering my emails regarding the failed Bill C-60 which was to "modernize" Canada's Copyright Act in favour of media cartels. He'll get a 4th chance to respond in the coming weeks when I send him another email to the address I got from his campaign office in the mall during the election campaign.
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I'm headed to see "Flight Plan" tonight which looks good, and can't very well be a worse choice than Syriana was last night. For now I think I'll get some bike quotes to finally get my favourite mode of transportation ready in the Spring which ought to be coming soon according to many groundhogs.

Haloscan |

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Same Sex Marriage is Not a Slippery Slope, You Dope

An Anonymous poster was trying to convince people of something he obviously knows nothing about and is parroting the "slippery slope" cliche from lame "talking points".
""Same Sex Marriage has not destroyed the Canadian social order or resulted in the collapse of our culture"........yet. It's a slippery slope, now the Justice dept recommends legalizing polygamy, what's next, beastiality?"

What's scary is that there are people actually talking like that. I wonder what's it like to give your brain over for someone else to speak through it?

How does gay marriage bring about laws favouring polygamy, or animal cruelty? We have laws against child marriage, which is the biggest strike against polygamist places like Bountiful B.C., and laws against harming animals which by law can't consent to abuse since they aren't possessions so much as minors of a pet owner or rancher. It's as nutty to say that a change in the tax law leads to pro-beastiality laws, as it is to say gay marriage rights leads to pro-beastiality laws.

Stop saying everything's a slippery slope as if it's a bad thing. You know what else was a slippery slope? Women getting the vote. That lead to women MLAs, and then women's rights regarding property in cases of divorce, which lead to more divorces, which lead to fewer women feeling trapped and unhappy in dangerous or unpleasant homes. And you can't have women running off from their men, now can you? The law HAS to protect us fragile men from that!

"Using your 'doesnt hurt anyone reasoning', how would me having two wives that I can love honor and support, hurt anyone. I can already live common law with a whole housefull, so why not marriage. I see a parallel between [Same Sex Marriage] and polygamy."

To that I'd say that polygamy doesn't hurt consenting adults obviously. The key is that they all are consenting to the multi-person relationship. Although there is no mainstream Canadian church that will marry polygamists, I don't think it's super-important for Canada to have a law banning it. It just doesn't have to require its marriage commissioners perform X-way marriages. If 3 people want to marry, then they'll just have to do it the sensible way and get married in a triangle to create as many legal partnerships to a maximum sum total of 100% legal responsibility to every one they are married to. A-B B-C C-A would all get legally married for a 3-way marriage, and there'd be 3 Marriage Commissioner's fees due, so the government wins. You could legally require the partners to draw a diagram of their legal partnerships, which ought to deter the lazy or mathematically incompetent ones anyway.

The downside to removing the law barring it, is it gives the legal system one less reason to deny potential creeps access to Canada, and one less way to throw the book at cults like the famous one in Bountiful B.C. Polygamy is good for the male [assuming multiple wives is the standard fare, and not multiple husbands] but bad for a populous society. The reason the Church got involved in marriage about 1000 years ago was to control the population: If only married people can have a legitimate child, then it can deny marriage to people it doesn't want producing children.

Does Canada want one man to feel free to marry 4 women who could in theory produce 15 children each with him? The implications of one man with 60 children could be profound in several ways. The political system alone could be hijacked legitimately in some ways through his influence on his children, just as an example. We also tend to loathe deadbeat Dads, and how is one man going to feed and care for 60 children to a standard we accept as "loving".

I think even though the idea of polygamy makes most of us uneasy, most of the uneasiness is our own fault for being unfamiliar with it because it's just not a part of our society. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and isn't normal in many places, for various reasons. Many people for instance get squeamish at women breastfeeding their babies in public, when to react badly to that sight is just senseless ignorance/prudishness. Is our squeamishness about polygamy based in reality [It's a real threat to our offspring?], or prudishness [We hear everyone say it's disgusting, so we don't analyse why it would be?]?
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Rural policing is getting more expensive according to the RCMP. The price of gas has gone up, but the money that Rural Municipalities get hasn't I'd be quite certain to say. I know my hometown has a dispute right now with Sask. Justice for the policing bill they get. They are billing the community for twice as many residents as there actually are, because they are billing based on a faulty or old census. It's not hard to do a head count and that's what the village did and paid for that number of people instead. For the roughly 10 hours of policing a year that the village gets it doesn't seem fair to be overbilled by more than two times their fair expense.
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There was some snow and cold weather -10C in Yorkton today. Tomorrow I'm planning on driving up to Quill Lake which is about 2 hours away, so I'm hoping for good roads after it stops snowing tonight.

Haloscan |

Karwacki considering a comeback / Smart Sask

David Karwacki might run in Weyburn-Big Muddy for the SK bye-election, however I don't think he will. He's hosting a meet and greet in Weyburn this Friday morning - 9:00 a.m. at the El Rancho Restaurant.
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Sask. Smartest Radio Listener was on CJME.com today.
Q: The last time this occurred in SK was February 20, 1946.

A: It was the last execution in SK at the Regina jail. He was killed 7 months after the crime was comitted. He was 28 years old, and had killed, as well as stole $350.

After the contest there was a doctor from Toronto talking about the risk of acquiring Hep A or B while in Mexico or other developing countries. He placed the risk of exposure to human feces in food at almost half of the travellers going, and recommends taking antibiotics along for cases of bowel distress and getting vaccinated for life for $180 against Hepatitis A and B.
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Haloscan |