November 2005

I have been in office pools for many different things but never an election. James Bow is conducting an election pool.

Check it out and join in the fun

So here are my picks

Liberals 117
Conservatives 101
Bloc Quebecois 55
New Democrat Party 35

Voter Turnout 53%

Our Minority Government has been pushed out of office due to a Non Confidence vote. The Prime Minister Paul Martin has asked the Governor General to dissolve Parilament and he has scheduled an election for January 23, 2006. With the current make up and number of parties which are seeking to win seats in Parliament I beleive that we will see another minority government in the Canadian Parliament. If that is the case it will be interesting to see how long that government lasts before we see another non-confidence vote.

Over the past 15-20 years or so Canada has seen the evolution of our political system with the addition of several parties which started out as regional parties and have become national parties. The major players are the Liberal party which is a party close to the centre and has been in power for 12 years. The Reform party was based in the West and evolved from a fringe party with an agenda to bring more recognition to Western Canada to a national party when they merged with the Progressive Conservative party. This merger allowed for a national party which could challenge the Liberals. Another of the parties to join the national scene is the Bloc Quebecois which is centered in the province of Quebec and their platform is to promote sovereignty for Quebec. They are a regional party and have little support outside Quebec.

There are sevral other parties which maybe on the ballot with the Green Party and possibly the Marijuana Party having the possiblity of winning a seat or two.

It should be an interesting time leading up to the election.

Let the mud slinging begin

Canadian Election, Canadian Politics,Minority Government,Non Confidence

I was out for a drive on Sunday and within a span of 15 minutes I saw 3 potential accidents.

The first was a lady and she was turning left across a main thoroughfare and she misjudged the speed of the oncoming traffic and turned into the traffic almost hitting a car and was narrowly missed by two trucks. She did not seem to be aware that she had driven in front of two vehicles which almost hit her and were forced to stop to avoid her.

The second was in a parking lot and the driver was having problems backing out of the parking spot and was blocking the entrance to the parking lot because he was having problems and going backwards and forwards. From my vantage point at the entrance to the lot I was in a precarious position as I was unable to enter the lot and anyone entering the lot and not paying attention would run into my vehicle. I went around the lot and saw exactly what I was afraid would happen. A car came into the lot at a high rate of speed and almost hit the older gentleman’s car. After a few minutes of yelling and horn blowing the older gentleman finally moved his vehicle out of the lot and he appeared obvious to the other vehicle waiting to get into the lot.

The third incident was a car was parked in the fire lane in front of the local Walmart and behind the car was a delivery truck. This had the effect of making the car invisible to anyone approaching from behind the truck. The roadway is narrow and passing is difficult with the amount of traffic. I saw 2 vehicles try to pass the truck only to almost hit the parked car and then have to pull around the car. The driver an older gentleman was sitting in the drivers seat and did not react to the honking or yelling from the frustrated drivers.

The thing I noticed in each case was the drivers did not seem to be aware of what was happening around them. (Speculation on my part) The drivers seemed to be so engrossed in what they were doing that they did not realize the situation they had created.

Don’t get me wrong I am not making an generlization just my observations and how dangerous these situations could have been. It is a point that a lot of people believe they are safe drivers and do not have accidents but the question is not how many accidents you have had but how many did you cause by your inattention.

Drivers,Accidents,Older Drivers

Well I have just gone through the hell of my Hosting company having a server go down. It just happened to be the server which had all my stuff stored …so you guessed it everything lost and no backup on their end. This hapened last Thursday and to get any details concerning what happened was like pulling teeth. My hosting company Ace Net Hosting was not forthcoming and I had to wait patiently while they first tried to explain to me that it was a server issue (RAID 10 Config) and then fix the server and recreate the customer accounts. The thing that bothers me the most is this is the second time this has happned to me in the last 12 months and at that time I was told I was being moved to a newer server so that this would never happen again. So why am I pissed off…well one of the explanations I received was that the server I was on was an older server that had not yet been upgraded. How is that possible….obviously someone at Ace Net lied to me. I had requested this time to be moved to a newer server and while this has not happened yet my request has not been denied. Probably they are just hoping I will shutup and put up with it.

I was lucky that I had a backup from Oct 6th so I just needed to recreate all the info after that date. I was able to find some of the posts I did not have backed up by looking at Google and checking the cached information for my page. While I was able to recreate my pages it took me the better part of 2 days to put everything back on the server. I am not a happy camper and am very displeased with my server company. Ace Net Hosting

Hosting,Ace Net Hosting,Webserver

I must have been on another planet as I did not realize that yesterday was an election in my province. I knew there was an election coming up but did not know when it was happening. I was under the impression it was not for several weeks. I am really out of touch with what is going on to miss something like an election. As I look back I tried to figure what happened and why I missed it. For the life of me I cannot figure out how I missed knowing when the election was supposed to happen.

The only thing I can think of is being out of work has caused me to “tune out” alot of what is happening in the outside world. I am wondering what else I have missed…..Makes me a bit concerned that I am missing some stuff that I shouldn’t.

Not really sure what I need to do to get with it.

As a postscript the Mayor of Chilliwack was elected by acclamation. No one ran against him so maybe my excuse is I knew that and did not really care about the rest of positions.

I recently came across the Pocket versions of Firefox and Thunderbird which can be run from a memory card or Flash key. Having pocket versions allows you to take your browser and email with you and run it whereever there is a computer with internet access. I hav played with Pocket Firefox and really like the flexibilty. I have not tried Thunderbird but have loaded it on my USB Key to have when I do not have my notebook with me.

I am pleased with the ease of use of simple setup required to make both pieces of software function. I will update as I spend more time using each piece of software.

You can get them from here

As we approach the quarter point of the Season it has been interesting to watch the games with the different rules. The games are more open and exciting, it is a real pleasure to watch an end to end run without some big lumbering defenseman who is too slow to keep up trying to either clutch or use their stick to stop the flow of the offensive player. It does take some getting used to with all the penalties but the teams are adjusting and flow of the games is at a much higher tempo.

Are there any surprises? I guess some of the goalies who are underachieving such as Khabibulin, Brodeur and Lalime or maybe it is not the goalies but the lack of team cohesion. Each of these teams are finding it a challenge to win games. Some of the goalies getting it done Legace, Vokuon and Kiprusoff all have 11 wins at this point and their teams are at or near the top of the league. Detroit is leading the league with great team play and even though they have lost 2 in a row I do not believe they will stray far from the top of the standings due to their talent and mix of young and veteran players. Speaking of young players their are some really exciting players who with the one year lockout were able to develop and are now able to play at the NHL level and shine.

My team Calgary had a bad start but are currently on a 8 game winning streak and are moving up the standings. Calgary is not only winning games by playing a total team concept they are beating the best teams in the league with 2 wins over Vancouver and the win over Detroit. They have shown a defensive style which is still exciting to watch.

Overall I am very excited by the changes and even though I am a hockey purist I must admit the shootout makes the games more exciting.

Some folks have come up with what will hopefully be an annual event for Bloggers being held in Vancouver, BC. A conference for those of us who enjoy blogging. I find this quite interesting and as I am not overly interested in the technical side of blogging but more in what others are doing and why I think I will find some some good substance at the conference.

The Web Page for the conference is Northern Voice

Great idea and I am looking forward to attending.

Northern Voice,Blogging,Vancouver BC,Conference

Was doing some browsing and came across Technorati, very interesting search engine for Blogs. I have looked at this site before but never really got into it.

Not too sure about whether I will find it useful but I will definitely try it for a while and see what I come across….Technorati Tags : Technorati, Searches

I found this new theme called Regulus, while I was browsing around and decided to give it a try. I really like the look and feel and with a little tweaking I will put my own touch to it. I especially like the Admin Panel which allows you to make changes without playing in the files.

You can get it here

Let me know what you think.

As I sat on Friday morning and was doing some chores I realized it was coming close to 11am so I turned on the TV to CBC and watched as the Bugler played Last Post and the camera flashed over the Veterans. It got me to thinking how lucky we are today that these Men and Women sacrificed so much to allow us to live in freedom. I think we sometimes take it for granted what was sacrificed and the hardships that were required to ensure we live in freedom.

My mother was born in Scotland and lived through the Second World War and she provided first hand accounts about life in Scotland and about the bombings and the shortages. She made sure my brother and myself understand the sacrifices and gave us an appreciation. When we were in Europe we traveled to the different Museums and visited the different Graveyards including the Canadian ones in Holland. We also went to Dachau, a concentration camp in Southern Germany which was one of the first camps built. Quite an education for a 7 year old and something that has stuck with me for my whole life.

My Grandfather was in Army in World War 2 and and survived, I never got the chance to talk to him as he passed away when I was very young. My father served in the Army for over 37 years and my brother has been serving in the Army for over 25 years. Neither have been in a war but both have served overseas peacekeeping and my Brother served in Bosnia.

I count myself as lucky to have had the education and experience to appreciate what freedom costs and even though I do not think about the war and what was sacrificed everyday. I do think about it more than on one day a year and I think in our busy lives we need to take time out and give thanks on more than just November 11th.

My friend Sean moved up to Edmonton in September to run a Booster Juice franchise. He found a place to move into and needed his stuff moved up to Edmonton from Chilliwack for the beginning of November. I volunteered to drive the truck up to Edmonton on November 2nd. I rented a 5 ton truck from National Car Rentals. The drive was quite the experience as I have never driven anything that large before. So the trip began with a loading last Tuesday night which took about 5 hours. I left on Wednesday and drove all day finally stopping in Jasper as the weather was starting to turn toward snow and darkness fell. We had a nice quiet evening in Jasper then we started out on Thursday and made it to Edmonton by 2:30pm. We then unloaded which took us about 6 hours. I spent Friday recovering and we needed to drop some things into storage after which I had dinner with my family. The trip back on Saturday was quite uneventful and I made it to Kamloops before dark. The drive down the Coquilhalla was quite interesting as it was snowing and the road was covered in snow and ice. Normally I am quite comfortable driving in snow but with an unfamiliar vehicle it was a little slow going. We made it home and while I was quite tired I was glad to help out my friend.

One thing I have determined is I definitely do not want to go into the moving business I have gained a new respect for anyone who moves people and drives trucks for a living.