I saw this in Campbell River the other day. I was laughing so hard it was almost tough to drive. Well played, sir!
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As a reporter I covered 8 elections in 8 years. This May 2 election was the first where I didn’t have to take an unbiased neutral stance. It was actually fun.
I attended the rally when Prime Minister Stephen Harper came to town. It was a real eye-opening experience just being in the crowd. And it was fun.
I interviewed Harper when he was opposition leader. I have to say he was consistent with what he said then. Tight-lipped, on-message, totally controlled. That has also remained consistent.
I think that control helped his party finally form a strong government.
Now, right-wing Conservatives have a majority government in Canada. And the centre party, the Liberals, have been decimated. The left-wing NDP have formed opposition.
Have Canadian politics become polarized? Are our voting patterns and politics starting to reflect America?
Maybe. And is that a good or bad thing? I don’t know.
But it seems to show me that young people are no longer interested in separatism, since most of the NDP gains came at the expense of the separatist Bloc in Quebec. This also seems to show that young people are interested in justice and fairness.
Whether or not they will get that by voting NDP is debatable. And since I’m a grumpy old fart now I find I am more conservative.
But even if I disagree with their choices, I am glad youth are voting. That is the core of our democracy. An interested, involved voting public.
Me and my son went for a morning hike in the forest yesterday. It was great fun.
Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I am posting this from my Blackberry after updating to the latest WordPress version and installing WordPress for Blackberry. It’s pretty basic but it seems to work! I think I could get used to this.
An Atlantic salmon leaps in its pen.
I have made the jump from journalism to communications and I am loving it.
It’s not easy, that’s for sure. Multitasking is a must. And I have chosen to do communications for a company embroiled in controversy. A whole industry embroiled in controversy, actually.
I am now the communications officer for Mainstream Canada, based in Campbell River, the second-largest salmon farming company in British Columbia. And boy, is salmon farming ever unpopular these days.
But I think all the hate is unwarranted. I covered aquaculture for the Campbell River Mirror newspaper for eight years and I heard all sorts of awful things about the industry, but I just didn’t see it.
I looked. I tried to see what all the environmental groups hated about the farm industry. But I just didn’t see the evidence.
But I did see a lot of evidence of questionable behaviour by the environmental groups attacking the companies. I refer to inconsistencies, lies and even possible “greenwashing” on behalf of the Alaskan fishing industry. I also refer to a general mean-spiritedness and unwillingness to compromise.
Meanwhile, the industry has become more open, improved its practices and been consistent, ironically, thanks in part to the pressure from environmental groups.
When the communications position with Mainstream Canada came up, I jumped at the opportunity to work in an industry I believe has a bright future in B.C. and which has an important part to play in feeding the world’s exploding population, as well as contributing to a healthy economy on Vancouver Island.
I’ve left journalism and I’m not looking back. This is too much fun. I hope I can help people see what I see about the industry — an earnest effort to run a good business that feeds people, employs people, is environmentally sensitive and is profitable.
So this is it. My last day of time off. Except the weekend, that is. On Monday I start an exciting new career with Mainstream Canada, a fish farming company based here in Campbell River. I can’t wait.
Napping in the heat with my dog Sam.
Ugh.
It’s super hot and super gross. Thermometer on the window says it’s 34 degrees Celsius. I believe it. A haze from forest fires on the Mainland hangs over the Island, making for a diffused light and blood-red sunsets. Not 100 feet away, I can see the haze settling over the forest nearby.
It’s exhausting. All I have the energy to do is be a useless layabout. Good thing the dog agrees with me it’s a good way to spend the afternoon.
There’s a little red spider living in my keyboard.
Hang on a sec, I’ll see if I can get him. tydjm789dtghm xdfgnawer
Nope. Missed. He’s too fast. And there are too many places for him to hide. And lots of parasites to feed on. That’s the problem with Mac keyboards – they’re white, which looks great when they’re new, but makes it easy to see all the inevitable grime, crumbs, pencil lead, paper clips, hair, coffee stains, fried chicken (I kid you not) and that “gunk” of mysterious origin.
There he is – dfhbdnd3756
Nope. Missed again.
This guy’s hard to kill. He pops up, taunts me, declares a jihad on my corpulent, decadent Western fingers and disappears.
I think I’ll call him Osama bin Spider. There he is again, on the number pad! 32. -+. 0.2659999999999
Missed again. This spider is good. But tragedy – there was collateral damage this time. The number 9 was killed in the decisive air strike by my fingers. I will go on television and issue a carefully-worded apology to the rest of the residents of the number pad province. My fingers will be more compassionate and endeavour to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the keyboard keys, in the hopes that they will surrender Osama bin Spider to justice.
Meanwhile, we will rebuild. I have plucked another number 9 from a keyboard in the backroom technology graveyard. It’s as good as new, at least until the next airstrike.
Maybe it’s time to try another tactic. I just noticed something disturbing. All my pounding on the keyboard has disturbed Osama bin Spider’s eggs, which now appear to be hatching. Tiny little red spiders are crawling around – gross! I think I’ll call them the Spiderban. Or the Talib-nids. I can’t just get rid of them – the more I type, the more come out. The harder I type, the faster they move. This is terrible!
Time for a massive counter-insurgency offensive. Here it comes, you disgusting Talib-nids!
wsz’’;kjuy vgfrvbgthyki,l op.; .,mnbv 567p; 15688610,hjgfxm c5g41n6gf486dn4fgn
That kind of worked, but now they’re all holed up under the F-keys. I’m afraid to hit those because I might launch all sorts of applications at once and crash my computer. Maybe I’ll just leave them alone for now. But I can’t back off, because then they’ll take over my entire keyboard and cover all the vowels and consonants in a web of injustice.
I think I know how American General Stanley McChrystal feels. Now, how did he get out of running the war in Afghanistan? Oh yeah. Bad-mouth the president in a magazine no one takes too seriously, apologize and resign. It’s foolproof.
Here goes. APPLE SUCKS!
Can I get assigned to a different keyboard now?
Hmmm, didn’t work. Maybe I’ll just have to get up off my butt and go get the canned air to gently blow the junk out. No destruction required.
And maybe it’ll get that fried chicken out from under the space bar, too.
Originally published in the Campbell River Mirror, June 25, 2010
Apple’s iTunes is great – if you have an iPod.
Which I don’t anymore, since my preschooler daughter accidentally knocked it on to the tile floor. All it does now is show me the “sad iPod” icon which was cute the first time I saw it but now taunts me with its dead eyes.
Sad iPod is sad.
I even took the little guy apart. It wasn’t hard – it’s a 5th-generation iPod with a little hard drive, and I was able to pry it open with my fingernails. I tried to see if it could be fixed by resetting a cable, but no luck. I think the hard drive is toast.
Apple can fix it for $130, plus shipping. Forget it. Instead, I spent $60 on a Sandisk Sansa View. It’s not as elegant as the iPod, its menu system is OK but not what I’m used to and it’s got a lot less memory than the old iPod (eight GB compared to 30).
But it was on sale.
It’s smaller and uses flash memory instead of a little hard drive. And apparently it plays videos too, but I haven’t played around with that feature yet.
Best of all, it lets me put files on through drag-and-drop. Easy. The View automatically organizes files based on the information in the ID tags written into the file, letting me play albums, which is what I prefer.
This works with all the MP3s I’ve made myself, ripping my CDs with Exact Audio Copy. I gave up on iTunes’ built-in ripper ages ago when I found it was creating files with random popping errors. EAC is slower, but no errors. Plus, it tags files with standard ID tags.
Which, apparently, iTunes does not. When I tried to play some of the songs I’d bought with iTunes on my View, the songs showed up in the menu all out of order and the album art was missing. In fact, the art for a lot of my albums was missing, even though I had added it in iTunes.
I guess iTunes must not write the data into the tag, storing it on the computer and on the iPod or something. Whatever. It’s stupid. Stick to industry standards, please!
So, after a few hours with MediaMonkey, I have re-organized my music and everything is all tagged, embedded with artwork and working properly. I hope I never have to use iTunes again.
I might try to fix my iPod again, but this time I think I’m going to try this method. It just might work:
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