More Rhetoric... |
|
|
Various and sundry trains of thought - hopefully without too many being derailed! Expect neither epiphany nor revelation. Instead, hope for legibility and pithy commentary on the wiggly world as I see it... 
|
Tuesday, October 3, 2000
Train of thought... City of Edmonton wants to spend about $30K to put the words "Alberta's Capital" on the nine signs posted at the main roads entering Edmonton. They also plan to spend almost $130K renaming a street from Calgary Trail North to Gateway Boulevard. The city forgot to mention that they were planning to change the street name to a number of businesses along the route. Some people are seriously pissed over this. I don't blame them. They weren't asked how they felt about the whole idea. Now they have to bear the cost of changing all of their collateral. Nice. Israelis and Palestinians continue to kill each other in the Middle East. Twelve year old boys are killed in the street. There is so much hate, so little will to compromise - on both sides - that thousands more may die before they all learn to get along. I am so grateful I live in Canada. My biggest worries are incompetent government, high taxes, Quebec separation (yeah, right) and the cold. Big deal! CTV political news reporter Mike Duffy made a complete and utter ass of himself yesterday, while interviewing the former wife of the late Pierre Trudeau: overflowing with class and tact, Mr. Duffy asked Mrs. Trudeau how she felt about her ex-husband's death and lying-in-state given that it was the anniversary of the birthday of their youngest son, Michel, who died within the last year. In addition to Mrs. Trudeau's grief from the passing of her former husband, Mike Duffy reopened the wound that resulted from the loss of her son. The impact literally brought her to her knees. Do they learn to do that or are reporters naturally blessed with that kind of sensitivity? Friday, September 29, 2000
Pierre Trudeau passed away yesterday (September 28, 2000). Most Canadians will always remember the man, for what he did and how he did it. Regardless of whether or not one believed in the dreams and visions of Trudeau, one developed a sense of respect and admiration (freely given or grudging) for the manner in which he governed this country. No Prime Minister of Canada who has served since Trudeau left politics has be the leader that Trudeau was. No other PM since him has been able to govern with a vision, good or bad. Trudeau did a lot wrong in his tenure as Canada's PM (NEP, official bilingualism, creation of a huge debt burden, establishment of the culture of "acceptable" unemployment and welfare, etc.), but he at least did what he did with a passion, with a sense of the bigger picture in mind, and with the true belief he could create a better Canada. He fought the Quebec separatists (although he also helped drive them to power), he brought Canada it's own Charter of Rights and Freedoms (don't get me started...), he tried to broaden the cultural mosaic of Canada, he attempted to broker a more peaceful world. He tried. Unlike Clark, Turner, Mulroney, and Chretien, Pierre Trudeau was not concerned only with maintaining power. He said what he meant, and he meant what he said. He had style, character, intellect, passion, intensity, leadership. Love him or hate him, we may not see another like him for a long, long time. Wednesday, September 27, 2000
Wonderful! Canada's become the nuclear garbage pail for Russia. Damn Canadian government said, "Sure! We'll take your weapons-grade plutonium and see if we can do anything useful with it." I love this government! Crazy folks are always getting into mischief. Taking the world's waste to dispose of instead of helping the people who made it dispose of it themselves, taxing the hell out of us, "misplacing" $1 billion in alleged Human Resources Development grants, building up a $570 billion debt and making plans to pay it off - in 191 years! Silly little stuff like that. What a bunch of fun-lovin', nudge-nudge, wink-wink types. With a little luck the next plutonium shipment will accidentally fall out of the secretly-contracted helicopter into the House of Commons and we can get a new government... the general population seems to accept the federal Liberal's schtick as just fine, thank you very much. I'm holding out hope that they can be awakened to the facts before the next general election.
I tried to update my Blog from my system at home - finally - and lo & behold CRASH! This is the first time I've encountered this particular behaviour: I logged in to Blogger.com. I opened this Blog to edit. I started typing into the editing window and poof! Spontaneous reboot. That's what I call a fatal error :-) I've never had that happen before on that system. It's the most stable Windows computer I've ever run. I can count the number of times it's crashed on me in the past four years on one hand. I'm not bullshittin'. It's that stable. Until now. It hates Blogger. Serious disdain. Intense loathing. I'll have to troubleshoot this a little bit and figure out what the heck is going on. I also can't get the damn thing to publish to my live site. It says it transmits the page(s) and gives no errors. It does not, however, actually get anything on the server. Sigh. Ah well, gives me something to do... Tuesday, September 26, 2000
Just when you thought it was safe... This story in Salon should add fuel to the fire between musicians and the dot-com'ers, at least those in San Francisco. It's a wiggly world indeed. Monday, September 25, 2000
Back at work... ...sigh... Another birthday too. Hmm, just a few more and I can officially stop counting. At least that's what I've been told. Friday, September 22, 2000
I drift in and out... ...of connectivity, that is. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to stay connected. I mean really connected, you know? In tune, in sync (God no, not those poseurs, synchronized), at one... alas, t'was not meant to be. We're apparently here to try and achieve that, or at least dream about achieving that. Maybe not. Maybe we're just here to watch others make such an attempt while we're munching our Doritos in front of the TV. Don't ask me... I'll just be happy when this computer I'm using (not the one I built, of course, the one I use at work) stops crashing. What's that? Yes, I've got to use Windows. No, it's not Windows 9x. Yes, it's a clean install of Windows 2000 Professional. All signs point to a memory problem. Not mine, I'm talking about the DIMM. I know you might think I'm dim for using Windows, but it's really what we have to use here. C'est la vie! Blogged!It's finally happened. The once and future Blog is here, live and in real time... or at least low-latency delay. I thought I'd take the time to try this out. Why not? This is a very good idea. I'm better able to simply add my thoughts (such as they are) to the site when the urge strikes. Sometimes it strikes rather hard and I'm forced to dash to my computer and pound those urges into submission. It usually works, but I do need to have the appropriate app at hand — and to be at the right computer. It doesn't do me much good to have a sudden brainstorm when I'm not able to access my hosting server. I can always use good ol' Notepad or Notice the fundamental flaw in the logic of the last two sentences. If I don't have a system with Internet access, even Blogger won't help me. That sudden crashing sound you heard was my first train of thought being de-railed. At least I don't waste any time. :-) |