Moola

Deal or No Deal? Bah! Now that I got my computer back I can play my friends Moola Advertournament. Brilliant system they have, I tell ya. I mean, advertisers fund the thing. You, the player have to watch some ad to play a game which is essentially like Rock, Paper, Scissors. You win, you double your bet. You lose, you lose your bet. Top prize is over $10,000,000.00 but you can cash out before that.
Frankly I think the brilliance is in the whole game theory which will have players cashing out well before they ever get to 10 mil. You start at a penny (paid by the advertisers and try double it with every win. You could, theoretically do so all the way up to 10 million dollars after 30 straight wins. But I ask you... who would wager 5 mil on such a game? Who would wager even $160 (the top pay out I've seen). Well I've won over 11 games straight and am at $10 going for $20 but can't find anyone to play with.
Doesn't cost a thing. If you want an invite, email me. I've got 6 to give.
Moola

Recommended

Agggghhhh the pain and anguish. Why didn't I backup all my data before? They say hindsight is 20/20... I'd like to add that it's quite expensive and painful, too. I picked up a Western Digital automatic backup dive (paid too much at Futureshop) and will still be waiting up to 14 days (they said up to but I'm betting they meant "at least").
I will never advise another to go somewhere which I don't have complete trust in. That's why I can say with confidently that if any of you are looking for some computer related thingamajiggy then this is the place to go. NCIX has gotten me parts that were near impossible to find (odd cables for example). And though I am currently tied into Futureshop's Service Plan (not worth it in time or cost) I will be buying my next computer from NCIX. You can click below to see what I mean about deals.

Crash Update: Hooray for Opera!

So here I am having to adjust to the old 233Mhz PII with 32mb ram Dell and a whopping 3gb drive... since I did a fresh install of Win98 (have yet to find a linux flavour that runs well on such poor specs) I started to look for some new things to play with. First stop was Mozilla for Firefox. Those Firefox fanboys can be so loud that I thought there might actually be something to it. After downloading I started looking for ways to speed it up (Fasterfox plugin), maximize browser space (new theme), do mouse gestures (another plugin), and have the BlogThis button (yet another plugin). Then I had to restart and could really start playing with it. Initial impressions: meh.
Net install: Thunderbird. I mean, It's got to be at least as good as Outlook Express. Got it installed and, yup, it's as good as Outlook Express... but no better. Impression: meh.
So then I think, Opera is free now... I can go get Opera 8.0 and have both email and browsing in one app. My only fear is that it would be too slow. Got it freshly installed and imported all the prefs from Thunderbird. No problems. No issues. Looks good. Tabs automatically. Didn't have to install plugins to do all these things (except the BlogThis Button). And it is indeed faster.
Impression: Rawks!

So here's to Opera. I know you don't do everything (mlxchange and point2agent but neither did Mozilla and I can keep IE around for those tasks) but I forgive you for all the joy an happiness you bring. I sound like such a geek.

Now if I can find a decent WYSIWYG editor to replace my downed Dreamweaver... Need to work on some templates which will work with Joomla.

Terrible! Horrible! Catastrophic Crash!

Aggggghhhhh Hindsight may be 20-20 but foresight is all the sweeter... which makes ignoring that common-sense incredibly, regrettably, bitter. That's right, my 18 month old Toshiba notebook has suffered a mechanical hard drive failure and will be out of comission for up to 4 weeks. I may have lost so much. Digital photos, email, writings, real estate deals (copys), music. Etc. I had to pull out the old but trusty Dell Inspiron 3200 (circa 1999) with the Intel Pentium II 233 and a whopping 32mb of ram.
This old Dell is a work horse. Solid as a brick. It's too bad the new ones (I checked them out) don't have the same build quality

5, 11, 20, 30, 37, 43

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.... huh?

Winning ticket sold for $54 million prize
Last Updated Thu, 27 Oct 2005 00:31:58 EDT
CBC News

A winning ticket was sold for Wednesday night's record-setting 6/49 lottery - and the top prize is worth more than $50 million.

According to the Loto-Quebec web site one ticket was sold with the winning numbers, somewhere on the Prairies, and the ticket is worth much more than the $40 million estimate. It's worth $54,294,712.00.

Although Wednesday night's Lotto 6/49 draw has come and gone the question now is who is the lucky individual or group with the winning ticket and when will the rest of the country find out who holds the winning numbers.

Before Wednesday's draw the lineups were long in every part of the country. In the past four days, Canadians have spent an amazing $90 million on 6/49 tickets.

Peter Low, who owns a lottery ticket centre in Vancouver says he's never seen anything like it. "it has been on-going, non-stop," said Low. "I think today will be the busiest day we've ever had."

On Toronto's Bay Street, where the nation's financial wizards make the calculations and take the risks that shape the entire country's economy, sales were brisk.

Investment researchers Richard Wong and Jason Stu were caught in the act. When asked if they thought they were making a good investment, they said, "Not really."

But like millions of other Canadians they just couldn't miss out on an opportunity at $40 million. Abdul Alladin who runs a ticket kiosk says regular customers are buying 10 times as many tickets and the employees of some brokerage firms are going even bigger.

"I had one customers say they are collecting $100 from everyone in their office. They're going to collect $5,000 just from their office alone [for lottery tickets]," said Alladin.

It seems when it comes to lottery fever, Bay Street is the same as any other street in Canada. People want to buy a piece of a fantasy.

An Edmonton man has a strategy. "If I win I'd take my family and disappear," he says.

In Goose Bay, Labrador, people are "very excited."

In Ottawa one man says he's "promised all my friends we'd go to Paris for lunch."

But not everyone is enthralled with the lottery madness. Sean Villeneuve, a ticket store owner in Montreal says he hopes it ends soon.

"Well the most annoying thing is I guess are the people who say 'I want the winning ticket.' I love that one because I would love it too. I would want the winning ticket and yet they think they're special."

The chances of winning were estimated at 1 in 14 million - and someone managed to pull it off. "I would imagine the sales will be somewhere around 25 to 30 million in terms of number of tickets," said Jeff Schultz of the B.C. Lottery Corporation.

About 29 per cent of the money goes to provincial governments. A further 18 per cent is split between operating costs, payments to sellers and the federal government.

Those are the only numbers that are guaranteed- every week.

HeeHeeHeeeeeee.... Must save money... Have only 2 years until absolute joy arrives. Yeah! GTR Baby!

Svend Robinson ready to launch comeback

There is absolutely NO WAY this petty diamond thief should get a single vote. Are the NDP so poor they can't find anyone without a rap sheet to run. Maybe NDP stands for New Diamond Perps. This is sick. The guy tries to get out of everything by claiming the theft was a moment of "utter irrationality"? Voting for someone with a possible mental disorder (he's the one who plead insanity) would be a moment of utter irrationality.

CBC News
Former NDP MP Svend Robinson is set to make his political comeback official. He will announce on Friday that he plans to seek the NDP nomination in the riding of Vancouver Centre.

Robinson has been hinting at his return to federal politics for some months, and has now scheduled a news conference to spell out his political plans.

Vancouver Centre incumbent Liberal MP Hedy Fry says she's been expecting the announcement for months. "I did speak to Svend once on a plane about nine months ago, when he had been floating a balloon then, and I said, 'Oh ,I hear you want to run in my riding?' And he said, 'Yes.'" Fry has won four consecutive elections in Vancouver Centre, a riding she first won from former Prime Minister Kim Campbell in 1993. And she says she is looking forward to running against Robinson. She says Robinson has acknowledged that they share a similar position on human rights, especially for gays and lesbians. "Svend was very well aware that while he was very strongly advocating for this over most of his career, that in fact he could not achieve any real objectives unless he was in government. And therefore, it was good to know there was somebody in the government of the day, that was going to push his agenda forward

FROM AUG. 6, 2005: Svend Robinson gets probation
Robinson stepped down as an MP last year after making a tearful apology for stealing an expensive ring from an auction house in what he called a moment of "utter irrationality." Since then he's undergone counselling, and has vowed to champion the rights of the mentally ill if returned to office. He's also commissioned a poll to determine whether he'd have a realistic chance at winning an election. And he said two weeks ago he was encouraged by the results.

Wedding Snap

 

Everyone asks to see photos and since I'm not the kind of guy to post up a dragging slide show I picked the one best one of the two of us. Our photographer was Liza Biagioni of Accent Photography and is highly recommended to anyone seeking a photographer in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. 

Joomla!

Joomla! - Main

I'm working with the new Joomla CMS to develop a site... For basics it sure is easy but when you start digging into the guts of how everything is going to look and work, well, for a non-PHP programmer (heck, non-programmer, period) like me it takes some learning and getting used to. I tried to find somne guys to do it for me but they want an arm and a leg (take advantage of the neophyte) so I'll do it by my own tortured self. Good thing that there is a wealth of information out there with the community of developers.

Bush is a real piece of work...

The Complete Bushisms - Updated frequently. By Jacob Weisberg: "'See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.'—Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005 "

Buying of News by Bush's Aides Is Ruled Illegal - New York Times

October 1, 2005
Buying of News by Bush's Aides Is Ruled Illegal
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.

In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated "covert propaganda" in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.

The contract with Mr. Williams and the general contours of the public relations campaign had been known for months. The report Friday provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities.

Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to see if they carried the message, "The Bush administration/the G.O.P. is committed to education."

The auditors declared: "We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes. Engaging in a purely political activity such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds."

The report also sharply criticized the Education Department for telling Ketchum Inc., a public relations company, to pay Mr. Williams for newspaper columns and television appearances praising Mr. Bush's education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act.

When that arrangement became public, it set off widespread criticism. At a news conference in January, Mr. Bush said: "We will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet."

But the Education Department has since defended its payments to Mr. Williams, saying his commentaries were "no more than the legitimate dissemination of information to the public."

The G.A.O. said the Education Department had no money or authority to "procure favorable commentary in violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition" in federal law.

The ruling comes with no penalty, but under federal law the department is supposed to report the violations to the White House and Congress.

In the course of its work, the accountability office discovered a previously undisclosed instance in which the Education Department had commissioned a newspaper article. The article, on the "declining science literacy of students," was distributed by the North American Precis Syndicate and appeared in numerous small newspapers around the country. Readers were not informed of the government's role in the writing of the article, which praised the department's role in promoting science education.

The auditors denounced a prepackaged television story disseminated by the Education Department. The segment, a "video news release" narrated by a woman named Karen Ryan, said that President Bush's program for providing remedial instruction and tutoring to children "gets an A-plus."

Ms. Ryan also narrated two videos praising the new Medicare drug benefit last year. In those segments, as in the education video, the narrator ended by saying, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."

The television news segments on education and on Medicare did not state that they had been prepared and distributed by the government. The G.A.O. did not say how many stations carried the reports.

The public relations efforts came to light weeks before Margaret Spellings became education secretary in January. Susan Aspey, a spokeswoman for the secretary, said on Friday that Ms. Spellings regarded the efforts as "stupid, wrong and ill-advised." She said Ms. Spellings had taken steps "to ensure these types of missteps don't happen again."

The investigation by the accountability office was requested by Senators Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats. Mr. Lautenberg expressed concern about a section of the report in which investigators said they could not find records to confirm that Mr. Williams had performed all the activities for which he billed the government.

The Education Department said it had paid Ketchum $186,000 for services performed by Mr. Williams's company. But it could not provide transcripts of speeches, articles or records of other services invoiced by Mr. Williams, the report said.

In March, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel said that federal agencies did not have to acknowledge their role in producing television news segments if they were factual. The inspector general of the Education Department recently reiterated that position.

But the accountability office said on Friday: "The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual. The essential fact of attribution is missing."

The office said Mr. Williams's work for the government resulted from a written proposal that he submitted to the Education Department in March 2003. The department directed Ketchum to use Mr. Williams as a regular commentator on Mr. Bush's education policies. Ketchum had a federal contract to help publicize those policies, signed by Mr. Bush in 2002.

The Education Department flouted the law by telling Ketchum to use Mr. Williams to "convey a message to the public on behalf of the government, without disclosing to the public that the messengers were acting on the government's behalf and in return for the payment of public funds," the G.A.O. said.

The Education Department spent $38,421 for production and distribution of the video news release and $96,850 for the evaluation of newspaper articles and radio and television programs. Ketchum assigned a score to each article, indicating how often and favorably it mentioned features of the new education law.

Congress tried to clarify the ban on "covert propaganda" in a bill signed by Mr. Bush in May. The law says that no federal money may be used to produce or distribute a news story unless the government's role is openly acknowledged.

ClubTread.com - hiking bc and trail database for Canada - club tread

How foolish of me to just now find this site... there's like, what? 4 more sunny days before the rains come (yes, I'm being facetious... the hills get snow ;) ) At least I'll have all the knowledge I need for next year.
ClubTread.com - hiking bc and trail database for Canada - club tread

ClubTread.com

Gonna go hiking... how stupid am I to stumble onto this site and group in September with so few good days left ahead of us... Well, at least I'll be all up on the local knowledge come next season.

www.clubtread.com

Opsed - Opera Search.ini Editor

Edit the Opera Search settings... get off your Google sheepishness. Personally I dislike Google and what they are doing/becoming or suspected of doing/becoming (ie Microsoft's wet dream). I want Yahoo as my main search engine (Yes, I am giving a lot my personal data to the Japanese, I guess, but think of it more as spreading info around rather than collecting in one suppository... I mean depository... I digress). Opera Search.ini Editor can do all sorts of neat stuff for you (like have only ebay.ca or amazon.ca rather than the American .com)
Opsed - Opera Search.ini Editor

Switched to Opera 8.1

Finally upgraded to Opera 8.1 from 7.54. I was hesitant as 7.54 did nearly all I wanted and I had heavily customised it. Now that I've fully migrated over to 8.1 I just have to get used to the newsfeeds being handled differently... and the addition of BitTorrent... not sure how much I'll use BT as it seems to be a real resource hog and torrents aren't always the fastest nor the best p2p. Still... I'd take Opera over firefox and IE anyday. I do not understand anyone not using this software.

Opera Watch: The Unofficial Opera Blog: Opera 8.1 Technical Preview released

Drag'n'drop buttons for Opera

Yeah! Blog This Button for Opera 8.1.
Drag'n'drop buttons for Opera

Breaking the bonds the banks have on our lives.

I think I'm out of here. Royal Bank is gonna lose a customer. I mean, what the heck am I paying them any money for? They're taking nearly $10 a month off of me for ATM charges and online access. Finally I've broken down and ventured into the previously untried... pcfinancial. Let's see... no fees, can use CIBC machines for free... and no fees... I hate banks. For those who have spoken with me on this they know that I see no reason to have a traditional bank account whatsoever. I don't have any heavy gold to store and I don't need any bank notes saying I've stored my non-existent heavy gold. I give them money and they use that money to make more money... then when I want to take some of my money back they have the gall to charge me? For what? Did they dust it? Did they polish it? Did they iron all my bills? I use a machine or go online to do it mostly. Even my trading is all online... why do I pay RBC securities so much for that? I've been a fool caught in his own cancerous traditional upbringing. The world is changing and I have been so slow to change with it. RBC is this close to being out of my life... now to find a cheaper trading platform... etrade maybe?
President's Choice Financial | home ���

What a load....

I don't usually blog about politics... too dirty and I just washed these pants... but this one is pretty funny. From the CBC:

"Prime Minister Paul Martin said he was 'personally offended' by last week's damaging testimony at the sponsorship inquiry, insisting that he believes he still has the moral authority to govern. 'I was offended as any other Canadian,' Martin said about Brault's allegations. 'Even if that testimony is contested, I was personally offended by what I heard.'

'That is not the way that politics is done in Quebec. It is not the way that politics should be done in Canada and it is certainly not the way I believe politics should be done,' he said."

Does he have the "moral authority to govern"? I don't know about moral but he does have the minority elected voice. That's not the way politics is done in Quebec or should be done (love the use of should) in Canada? That's exactly how politics in Quebec, Canada, The World is done. Why is this news and why is it front page on the CBC? Would anything change if we were to elect a Conservative or, dare I say it, NDP majority? I don't think so. We are stuck with fools to lead us and the only thing I can hope to do is join them... then maybe I'd get some of my money back. Time to form a new Cabal. The NWO. The New Will Order (the 'Will' is in reference to the Will of the people... wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Anyone want to join?

The reception spot.

Foggy Vancouver - looks like we've been througha war.

Finding a church is sooooo difficult.

Where do you find people for this kind of job? And how much do you think they get paid? I caught this guy hanging out doing the windows of a still vacant Concorde Pacific building.

Here we are hanging out on Big White above the clouds. We had to drive over 5 hours through some pretty rotten stuff to get back to Vancouver but it was totally worth it. Now if only we would get some snow at Whistler. On a side note the pineapple express has been a boom for the interior resorts which are getting all the Vancouverites and Washingtonians.

Get Picasa 2

Get this now. For those who may be wondering how I get all these pics up and the websnapshots with links up... well it ain't no secret and it's real easy to do. Picasa and Hello from Google. Not only is Picasa my fav photo album program but it's free to boot. I don't often recommend software but this one rocks.
Picasa 2

Imhome.ca My business site for those who haven't seen it. Yeah, I gotta change the text and some of the pics but I've been too busy with other things to get that going. I'll get on it though soon enough.

Owned! I knew there was something fishy about the press here in BC. All three major dailies (The National Post, The Province, and The Vancouver Sun) are owned by Canwest. So for alternative views I have The Globe and Mail, The Georgia Straight, and The Westender... At least there is the Globe and Mail... but it would be nice to have an alternative daily BC focused paper.

Recommended Listening: ninjatune.net

Gotta love these guys. They throw down an awesome mix. I've caught them live a couple of times, both in Osaka, and will be sure to go again if they ever come to Vancouver. Be sure to check out the Solid Steel radio show.
ninjatune.net.home

One of the numerous glacier-fed, emerald-hued lakes up near Whistler.

Yukiko captured this amazing sky when we were skiing at Cypress Mountain. How awesome is it to be able to go skiing at a 2010 Olympic site only 30 minutes from your front door?

The Lynn Valley. We've had so much rain recently that I wanted to go see how raging the rapids would be... that same day we had the big mudslide. I wish the rain would stop and the snow would come back.

Steveston Port on a beautiful day in December. This was where the Japanese first settled in Canada and it is currently twinned with Wakayama. I go there for the fresh seafood (shrimp) and some of the best fish and chips ever.

Seagulls are everywhere. I think I captured this one from Steveston but it may have been from my balcony where they like to roost.

Yes it does snow in Vancouver. Here's a scene from 2 weeks ago along a path in Stanley Park near Lost Lake. Sadly all that has passed and we've been experiencing rain for nearly a week non-stop.

Here's the PT Cruiser Dream Series II hanging out in Banff.