Check this out: http://www.holdthebutton.com
At this website, you are invited to click on a button and hold down your mouse button for as long as you can. I know there are some competitive people out there but if you win this competition then what's the award?
It has now been reported that the RCMP is investigating reporters of rampant insider information in regard to Income Trusts. Apparently several Liberal friendly financial traders made millions of dollars in these transactions.
Members of the Liberal party might be found guilty of this but nothing will change in the minds of the Ontario electorate who are so clearly drunk on large doses of Liberal Kool-Aid. In fact, they could be found guilty of supplying gay Nazis with party hats & Canadian flags and could even be caught red handed stealing new puppies from the hands of children on Christmas Day but even that won't change things one iota in Ontario.
Signed,
A Disillusioned Westerner!
Ever thought about starting your own Amazon.com or eBay? Just follow these 10 steps and the dream can be yours!
Today the Federal Liberals announced that they're going to add another $6 Billion to the $5 Billion they've already allocated for a disastrous, completely unfair national daycare plan.
$6 Billion?!? Excuse me?!? I guess money must grow on trees in the fantasyland that Liberal politicians have created in their own minds.
But even worse is the fundamental unfairness of the plan in the first place! It's modelled after the subsidized daycare system in Quebec. There is absolutely no means test. That means that the wealthiest parents in our society will have their daycare subsidized by childless people, no matter how poor. Just envision a rich woman in her $90,000 BMW dropping off her children at daycare and then driving off to have drinks and a fabulous lunch with her equally adorned girlfriends. As she approaches the restaurant, her car passes through a large puddle that splashes all the poor people waiting for a bus. The great irony is that these cold, shivering public transit passengers will be paying for HER children to go to daycare!
And under the Liberal plan, those parents who choose not to have strangers raise their children get absolutely NOTHING from the government.
The Conservative party, on the other hand, have advocated a system that would give parents a $1200 per child benefit, to use any way they choose. While I don't agree that there is no means test with this plan either, at least it's a start in a much more sensible direction.
The Liberal National Daycare Plan is so clearly the wrong path for Canada.
A friend of mine sent me a link to this comprehensive document. It's a 50 page document that explains everything you ever wanted to know about how optical media like CDs and DVDs work and how to care for them to greatly lengthen their lifespan. A great reference to bookmark!
I received the following in an e-mail from a friend but can not verify its authenticity:
Vancouver (Reuters)
Day 2 - Vancouver Blizzard 2005 - Revenge of the Commuters
Chilled Vancouver commuters faced their second day of winter hell today, as an additional ¼ centimeter of the peculiar white stuff fell, bringing the lower mainland to its knees and causing millions of dollars worth of damage to the marijuana crops. Scientists suspect that the substance is some form of frozen water particles and experts from Saskatchewan are being flown in. With temperatures dipping to the almost but not quite near zero mark, Vancouverites were warned to double insulate their lattes before venturing out.
Vancouver police recommended that people stay inside except for emergencies, such as running out of espresso or biscotti to see them through Vancouver's most terrible storm to date. The local Canadian Tire reported that they had completely sold out of fur-lined sandals.
Drivers were cautioned to put their convertible tops up, and several have been shocked to learn that their SUV's actually have four wheel drive, although most have no idea how to use it.
Weary commuters faced soggy sushi, and the threat of frozen breast implants. Although Dr. John Blatherwick, of the Coastal Health Authority reassured everyone that most breast implants were perfectly safe to 25 below, down-filled bras are flying off the shelves at Mountain Equipment Co-op.
"The government has to do something," snarled an angry Trevor Warburton. "I didn't pay $540,000 for my one bedroom condo so I could sit around and be treated like someone from Toronto."
At 10:23am PST this morning, on Vancouver's CKNW radio station, Prime Minister Paul Martin lied to the people of Canada. Interviewed by veteran broadcaster, Peter Warren, Martin was asked a direct question of what he would do if his wife urgently needed a hip replacement, was in excruciating pain, but had to wait 18 months under Canada's public healthcare system.
He responded that he had in fact discussed this with his wife before and that they would wait the required time under the public system.
How easily politicians like him lie.
What he failed to mention is that his own doctor in Quebec runs the largest number of private medical clinics in that province.
P.S. For the record, NDP Leader, Jack Layton, uttered the same lie on the weekend. Only Conservative Leader, Stephen Harper, answered it truthfully: "I would do whatever is required to help my family out." Just like any other self-respecting man would.
Prime Minister Paul Martin, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, and Revenue Minister John McCallum are flying on the Executive Airbus to a gathering in British Columbia when Martin turns to Goodale and says, chuckling, "You know, I could throw a $1000 bill out the window right now and make someone very happy.
Goodale shrugs and replies, "Well, I could throw ten $100 bills out the window and make ten people happy."
Not to be outdone, McCallum says, "Well I could throw a hundred $10 bills out the window and make a hundred people happy."
The pilot rolls his eyes and says to his co-pilot, "Such arrogant asses back there. Hell, I could throw the three of them out the window and make 30 million people happy!"
Two fellows I play volleyball with, Dennis & Vince, recommended I go watch some higher level volleyball, to help me improve my own game. Today UBC was playing TRU, a team visiting from Kamloops. First the women
played and then the men. The TRU teams weren't victorious in either case but each of the 3 games we watched were still very interesting. And I learned several things about the game I love that I hadn't known before. Hopefully it'll 
improve my game in the new year!
Because of my programming background, it's very rare that I have a "gee whiz" moment when I'm shown new technology. Seeing something new, my mind always races ahead, trying to figure out how they did that. And I usually arrive at an answer in short order.
But I just saw something today that is VERY impressive. I was listening to a Steve Gillmor podcast and heard an extensive discussion about a new photo sharing & search site called Riya. The CEO, Munjal Shah, and his crew have created something very revolutionary.
Go to the site and search for: museum
Several photos will come up. Click on one of them. You'll then be presented with the photos in a long vertical strip. Scroll down and you'll see that most of them have several interesting things happening. Specifically, the software in Riya has performed human face recognition and optical character recognition wherever it can. It's still far from perfect but you will get a good idea of where computer technology is going to take us in the future!
I switched over to Firefox many months ago and have rarely used Internet Explorer since. I especially like its Tab features, where you can have multiple web pages in a single Firefox window, each on its own tab. But there are plenty of other great features too.
However, I've long had a problem that I couldn't install new "extensions" (add-ons), always getting a "Software installation is currently disabled" message. I followed the instructions to enable software installation but nothing seemed to work. Finally today I found these instructions in a Firefox forum:
Place the cursor in the URL box, type about:config
In the Filter box, type xpinstall.enabled ; if it shows as False, click on it to change it to True.
Close the Window or tab; install extensions.
This is caused when a user of an earlier release had blocked the installation of extensions; 1.5 should have allowed for this to be changed more easily, but the above instructions work.
And lo and behold, everything now works great! I just installed a weather extension that keeps me up to date with the latest weather forecast, right on the bottom edge of my browser. And for the first time ever I'm able to add new entries to this blog via Firefox!
I just heard an NPR Podcast story about people who are paying real money to obtain "virtual gold" in an online video game. Being a big timer gamer when I was a kid, I do understand the motivation here but it's still a strange concept to get one's mind around. You can read the full story here.
Pollsters constantly tell us how brilliant they are, claiming to know what every last voter is thinking. Surprisingly though, they're consistently wrong.
So might you have better insight into the mind of the Canadian electorate than the professionals? If so, then enter this contest from Mark Steyn and win prizes and great fame (or maybe one of the two!) I've provided a quick reference guide to the 2004 election results to help you get started. And here is a detailed riding-by-riding guide from Elections Canada.
A friend & I are holding a little contest of our own. Our questions are these:
No big prizes as of yet, but if you'd like to enter then leave a comment here and I'll record it in a master spreadsheet I'm keeping. Just be sure to leave your name or initials.
I am fiscally conservative but [relatively] socially liberal. One of my mantras in life is: "Do whatever you want as long as you don't expect anyone else to pay for your lifestyle." I apply this on both a micro (individual) level, as well as a macro (societal) level.
It disturbs me greatly that by the time I was first allowed to vote, in 1982, those older than me had willingly elected governments that heavily borrowed in order to let people live far beyond their means. This is not an opinion, but simply a mathematical fact.
Fast forward to today. Both B.C. and Canada are similar in that they each have a large debt but have eliminated the annual deficit - at least for now. But the question is, with what policies do we move forward into the future? I'm quite pleased that we're now having a public fiscal policy debate [of sorts] both in the federal election campaign and provincially in the months leading up to the public sector union negotiations.
B.C.'s economy has improved somewhat and we currently have a large surplus. It must be noted that this came about as a result of a rebound in the private sector. For it is the private sector that ultimately creates wealth. I am not one to say that public sector employees are not needed, but it'll be interesting to see how this new found wealth is divided up.
To put things in context, imagine equating B.C. to one city block of 10 houses. I'm not an actuarian but I would guess that of the homes on the block:
To do this, it obviously needs to be dark. Just visit his website after 5pm Mountain Standard time.
I had to go down to Granville Island to get some produce. Though we had a bunch of snow yesterday, most of it was gone today. It wasn't especially warm but was definitely very sunny. I took these photos and hope you like them too!
Over the past 10 weeks my volleyball team has struggled to win the golden crown. And this evening we did!
We won our first match without too much difficulty.
In the 2nd match we won the first game but lost the 2nd. The 3rd game was a short one, just up to 7 points. At one point the score was 4 - 1 in the other team's favour. But then we came back and won 7 - 4.
A big Yoo Hoo for everyone on my team: Myriam, Brooke, Frances, Rich, myself, and Dennis.
We set a goal of winning this league so that we'd get promoted to the league above. And we did! I'm sooooo happy!!!
