reflection
Weekends in Appin often result in a plethora of photos. The trick now, is to capture moments that are new. Ones that i haven't already done to death. I'm surprised that this mirror has evaded me. Until now.
When Canadians Act Like Americans...
Four Canadians dead in Afghan suicideNOOR KHANAssociated PressKANDAHAR — A suicide bomber on a bicycle attacked Canadian troops handing out candy to children in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing four and wounding many others, NATO officials said. The Taliban said it was behind the blast.The attack in Kandahar province's Panjwai district came a day after NATO declared an end to a two-week offensive aimed at driving Taliban militants out of safe havens in the same area. More than 500 insurgents were reported killed in the Canadian-led operation, which NATO described as a success despite continuing violence in the south.
globeandmail.com : Four Canadians dead in Afghan suicide
We will invariably be treated like Americans. No offense american folks...
As if we needed another reason to get out....We don't need any more reasons to NOT be in this stupid war.
The Art of Packing...
… I’ve been procrastinating for the past few days. Packing. Rimouski. Flying. Driving. All those other activities have been mulling around my head, I’ve not had a chance to concentrate on the packing part. Other than to throw 3 Eddie Bauer non-wrinkle shirts in the wash.
So now I’m thinking, 6 hours till take off, i should pack something. It’s cold in the woods of Rimouski. I better bring boots.
Web 2.0 Directory - Go2Web20.net
Thanks to Mark Evans for this link - the directory of amazing web2.0 appications. It's intensive, and exhaustive, not to mention attractive.
Holy moley. You could spend hours fiddling around here. The trick question is, how many apps would you COME BACK to?
technorati tags:web 2.0 applications, Mark Evans
Spammers Shut Down? Or Just Delayed?
Four e-mail spamming ops shut down(15 Sep 2006)The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has shut down four illegal e-mail spamming operations, including one that offered the opportunity to "date lonely wives," the agency said....
ITWorld Canada - The online resource for Canadian Information Technology professionals.
Funny, that the FCC has to get involved to shut down spammers. In my past experience, if you were a spammer in Canada, as soon as you sent out more than 100,000 emails, you were breaking a gazillion terms of use policies with the ISP, even if you were a wholesale hosting customer. I would have thought the same rules would have applied. And if there weren't rules to that effect, some light bulb would start creating them as part of the terms of service in the contracts. Silly loopholes. Nothing feels better than shutting down someone who's in breach of the terms of service.
It's the little things that can make your day.
Canadian Telecom Hall of Fame?
The Canadian Telecom Hall of Fame will induct six new members next month: Rogers Communications CEO Ted Rogers; radio entrepeneur Edward Rogers Sr.; walkie-talkie inventor Donald Hings; rural telephone pioneer Leila Wightman; lawyer Ernie Saunders and public phone advocate Francis Dagger.I thought for sure Mark was joking, but sure enough, there *really* is a Telecom Hall of Fame. In Canada, no less. With awards, and a website and everything. Now I really have seen everything. Wow. I think I'm going to be speechless now.
technorati tags:Canadian Telecom Hall of Fame
Bloggin' Pressures
Funny, how if I am negligent on posting, especially in my telco section of the blog, the subscribers drop off like flies..... it's a fickle blog world.
At some point, life will just start getting completely in the way. Already I am feeling the tingly guilt of not contributing enough. Silly me.
technorati tags:blog pressures
Switching VoIP providers/Switching Broadband Providers
Well folks, tomorrow is the big day. After 3 weeks, we are swapping out Sympatico High Speed (no link needed) for Aurora Cable Internet
3 weeks of not being able to run 2 VPNs and a VoIP phone. Silliness. So out it goes. So much for install fees. After struggling again today, for the last time, i breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that it's only temporary. I give. The towel has been thrown down.
Up next, replacing the Primus VoIP for Vonage VoIP. I know not to bite the hand that may one day feed me ;-)
Technorati Spam
I feel dirty.
I looked. I looked at the whole technorati results page, and it didn't hit me till the end, when I was wondering where all the real results were.. and it hit me. It was ALL spam.
I was looking to see what people were saying about using VoIP on their cell phones.... and all i ended up with was garbage. Mind you, I have a good lead on a vintage wedding dress, and a supplier for Zoloft. Ask your doctor if Zoloft is right for you?
How do we get around this sort of nonesense? Can Technorati do something to filter the bad from the good?
Yeesh. Disappointing.
technorati tags:Technorati, spam
Creepy Disney Fruit
Disney-branded fruit and veggiesDisney has partnered with Imagination Farms, a produce distributor that sells cartoon-branded fruits and veggies, to fill the produce aisle with Disney-brand fruit. Other companies' characters -- SpongeBob, Taz and others -- will also appear on fruit this year.
Boing Boing: Disney-branded fruit and veggies
This development freaks me out.
Can there be any other more shameful way to exploit kids and parents and pander to their basest, commercial urges? Sure! Wrap a banana in SpongeBob Squarepants parephenalia... then kids will eat it!!!
Good God. The little baby jesus is crying.
What happened to to the good old days, when parents were parents, and kids were kids, and family life was not a negotiating-sitcom inspired democracy?
Eat yer damn plain banana and stop whining.
(Note: expressive curse words have been deleted)
technorati tags:Disney Fruit, Fruit of the Devil, Parenting
Alead of the Curve with Pandora?
Wow, it's rare that i'm ahead of the curve on neat techno bits....but in this case, it's true!
I've been using and raving about Pandora for about a year now, and just over the weekend, the cool kids wrote about what could arguably be the niftiest music learning and discovery application ever.
technorati tags:Pandora
August 31, 1997
9 years ago....Princess Diana died.
technorati tags:Princess Diana, Jack the Ripper, August 31 1997
Head Feels Tingly All The Time
…. just one of the searches that was performed by the great unwashed internet masses, that managed to show up at this site….
Odd.
Nice, but odd. Sort of makes me feel all tingly.
technorati tags:tingly
Strange Referrers
Ok, I give.
How is it possible that I am getting referred visitors from this site: www.carmda.org/affordable-progressive-insurance.html
I don’t get it. It’s freaking me out.
really.
technorati tags:Strange Referrers
Where All the Cool Kids Hang Out - The Cool Hunter
A huge thanks to Nick Fothergill for pointing me to this site. The Cool Hunter is actually full of coolness. In fact, I could go so far as to say it's the neatest site for new stuff. Ahem, yes, better than tech crunch :-(
You want to see the goods. I know you do.
the cool hunter - home
technorati tags:the cool hunter, tech crunch
Google 3D
Holy cats! Imagine if this little device was hooked into all the neat shopping and comparison websites, and you could point and shoot your way to finding the best deals on what you wanted. This device acts like a camera, and with full wi-fi support, can talk with the google backend to find out information on what you are looking for.
I just wasted 4 days of my life looking for the best deal on patio furniture, and ended up going back to the first place I went into. Sheesh!
technorati tags:Google Point and Aim, Comparison Shopping Tool
Katrina Who?
With the passing of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the news media has blown a bit of a breeze into the sagging public interest sails of Katrina. Over the weekend, the Globe and Mail had a great covering of what had changed, and the fact that the majority of the folks hadn’t returned, and the staggering percentages that have risen with respects to poverty, housing, healthcare and education. Only 18% of the schools have re-opened. Although, it’s not perhaps as staggering as it sounds, as only a pittance of people have returned. So few in fact, that the percapita income has risen 19%.
The Discovery Channel had a few good exposes this week as well, and so little has been accomplished in the past year, and some much has been exposed in terms of government bungling, I’d be surprised if it didn’t still looked like a wartorn country in another 5 years. One journalist compared New Orleans to Beiruit. Geeze, how crappy can that make people from Beirut feel? :-(
technorati tags:Katrina, Hurricanes
An Interesting Observation of the Health Care Industry
Funny story for you.
The Wiz is on the phone right now with the receptionist from the Neurosurgeon's office, she's on him to come back and get the results of a few tests - and he has to "come into the office", he can't set up a conference call with the doctor to get the results. He's got to drive 3 hours for the dr to tell him he's fine. It's "policy" that the patient has to be FACE to FACE with the doctor.
Now this brings me to an interesting question about the healthcare industry, technology, and billing practices. Is it possible that doctors can't "bill" for patient visits unless the patient is actually sitting in the doctor's office? Is it possible that a "conference call" doesn't count as a billable service? Is it possible that there is so little adoption of technology, and so little regard for people's time, and such a high self-opinion of the folks in the mdedical community, that they can simply just make policies that suit themselves?
Wouldn't it be neat, if instead of having to drive for 3 hours in rush hour traffic to get medical results, that you could fire up IM, and plug in your trusty web cam, and get your results from the comfort of your home?
That's just crazy talk.
technorati tags:Canadian Healthcare
Hullo, Hullo?
With a little luck, viral adoption, and good marketing, hullo could easily surpass Skype and Gizmo in North American usage. Call quality is better, you can use any handset you like, there are no restrictions on free usage, and you get a bunch of very appealing new features.
Alec Saunders .LOG — An explosive mix of VoIP, Technology, Wine, and Politics
On Alec’s recommendation, I downloaded and installed Hullo last week, but as of yet, I haven’t actually got it to work…. I have a feeling that the whole jig is based on Hullo calling your phone, and then it calls the phone of the person you want to talk to, and Voila. My problem: my home phone is a voip phone already, and Hullo couldn’t ever “find” my home phone, to ring it. And you would have thought THAT part of it would have been dead easy ;-)
Alas, my gut says that if I get off my duff and go out nad buy a headset, like i’ve been thinking about for the past few weeks, Hullo would rock my world as it rocks Alec’s.
Problems with VoIP and Primus and Sympatico and Motorola
Wow - that sounds like alot of problems. Well, it IS.
Over the past few days, our Primus VoIP service started misbehaving with the new sympatico service, and swapping out old Vtech phones for new Motorola phones just made the problem worse.... now, incoming Voip calls cause the DSL to spontaneously combust, and I lose sympatico. And then the loss of the DSL also causes the Primus VoIP box to crumble... the whole event seems to take about 2 minutes. It's simply lovely.
On Thursday we thought it was simply a problem with chrappy sympatico service, as both the Wiz and I had VPN tunnels, and i was trying to make VoIP calls. Calls were dropping every 5 minutes. Now I find that there was a Primus problem that was causing the dropped calls, but even after that was fixed, any VPN tunnel would make my calls sound like Martian Speak.
So - I've ordered ACI internet, to see if it can make a difference from the crap Sympatico.
We still can't get a good VoIP call going.... I suppose I will have to unravel that mess again. To make it more interesting, I don't know the username/password to my Primus ATA VoIP box - if anyone is reading this - and you happen to know what the default username and password is - please email it to me! I would like to see what the default settings are, and if I have the most recent firmware.
jules-in-voip-hell