DeeLoaf

Silver to Gold Ratio

2011-12-24T10:33:00.001-08:00

I've read in many places that historically the silver to gold ratio has been about 15 to 1 since at least the time of the Roman Empire. But new information comes my way from time to time, and according to ranting Andy the current rates are closer to 10 to 1 (discussion). Couple that with the fact that Silver is highly in demand for industrial and manufacturing related purposes and you can see there is a lot of pressure on silver compared to gold. I would expect then that when the paper markets finally collapse and we see true price discovery we'll see that 10 to 1 ratio show up in the pricing. Whether that means $2000 gold and $200 silver, or some other numbers due to the unknowable future actions of the central banks and the effects they have on overall money supply and thus the prices quoted for precious metals, I dont think it matters - Gold and Silver are your ticket to surviving a HARD powerdown/economic collapse situation. The 10 to 1 ratio as currently produced according to analysts like Andy Hoffman is new information to me, and helps me put things further into perspective. I'm also still long on Bitcoins and expect them to more than double in value over the next 12 months with heavy upward pressure towards the end of 2012 due to the upcoming halving of the block reward.

Fun Times with Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction

2011-12-16T10:41:00.000-08:00

Time to get your GIABO on. Bitcoins are still around $3. And the MFing Global shit is still making headlines. This one is a month old but I just laughed a lot at Davincij15's take. Don't forget, all major central banks are in collusion and Canada's banks are just as leveraged as anyone else. There is not enough collateral to satisfy the liabilities that are going bad and all the banks can do right now is pump money to wipe this shit off balance sheets. Or something like that. On a lighter note, Adam has once again challenged the man to put up or shut up, reminding us that the NDAA bill doesnt actually remove your rights -- because you dont have any to remove! And lastly, we remind ourselves that Canada no longer exists, if in fact it ever even did.

So what do I recommend? Lay low! Don't make yourself a target. Keep stacking physical assets that you can hold; Gold and Silver as well as barter items like toilet paper, whisky, and ammunition. I also still have a strong belief in the integrity of the Bitcoin system and I feel those tokens will be able to continue to represent un-hypothecatable value in digital form, so long as the core protocols and networks continue to prove their resilience. The beauty of Bitcoin in these coming troubled times is that digital private keys can be carried far more discreetly than physical silver or gold.

If you are planning to get out of town when things start getting "weird", do it sooner rather than later. At some point roads will become impassible and you'll be able to count on being robbed/shot by roving gangs, armed security personnel, or both. Remember, we are not protected against American agression here in "Canada" as we're all part of this G20 thing now and G20 security forces can roam freely and unchallenged anywhere in the G20 countries.

Stuff to not do.

2011-10-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

Please do not jam police radios with simple circuits printed off local 3d printers. Do not point laser pointers from multiple sources at the same officers face. Do not take their weapons off them. Do not cut through their security fences with bolt cutters. Do not wear body armor when you go protesting. Do not equip yourself with gas masks. Do not in any way attempt to be more fucking organized than THEM or in any way attempt to have your shit together more than they do. Because if you do any of that shit, you just might kick their asses.

LWP::UserAgent (and by extension WWW::Mechanize) proxying https requests

2011-08-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

IO::Socket::SSL vs Net::SSL the fatal showdown. Ripped into the internals of LWP::UserAgent to find out how it sets up proxying for https connections. All the info on the net says that you cannot do $ua->proxy('https','1.2.3.4:8080); because it just wont fucking work for https. Also you can go ahead and set up shit like $ENV{HTTPS_PROXY} but scratch you head as to why its not actually being used by the code. So then you call env_proxy and wonder why the fuck its all of a sudden again not working for https. ... anyway, at least on my system, turns out Net::HTTPS is doing some decision making about what socket module to use ... and if you want it to actually correctly make use of your HTTPS_PROXY environment variable, you need to find a way to tell it to use Net::SSL. ... I'm not quite sure on that part yet, but I wanted to share that which took me 7 (SEVEN) dang hours to figure out. I sometimes think I am in the wrong line of work when it takes me so long to figure something out like this. And this problem exists since like 2001 for some people too judging by the unresolved posts I found scattered throughout the web.

Anyway next I think I need to do some testing and more reading of code but finally seeing the proxy IP in my ssl log and ... AND --> __AND__ seeing the proper html from the response, makes me really manically (maniacally even) happy. ... hoping to update this with elegant workaround/solution/fix that doesnt involve making hacked versions of the LWP and related modules.

Ok, protip: put this in your BEGIN block:

$ENV{PERL_NET_HTTPS_SSL_SOCKET_CLASS}='Net::SSL';

and you just might achieve https proxying (via ENV settings) win. I seem to be. What this does is tells Net::HTTPS to use Net::SSL as the socket object. And Net::SSL (I havent looked inside) _seems_ to do stuff right so far (using ENV settings).

Struggle with gawking/rubbernecking the GIABO and world financial system meltdown.

2011-07-13T07:53:00.000-07:00

As the world financial system self-destructs like a train wreck in slow motion I find myself paralyzed to actually focus on my work tasks that I have to do in order to earn my money and pay my bills. This global show is so multi-faceted and interesting that there seems to be constantly updates on various intertwined situations and goings on in the world that I am finding myself so distracted I cannot bring myself away from paying attention to these things. I feel like keeping tabs on and in tune with what is going on in the human collective consciousness to be more important right now than money-earning activities. I'm sure my landlord would think otherwise however. So that is my struggle, so much culture to experience and so little time in which to experience it ... and needing to slot in money earning time as well.

The Frustration!

LOL! ... Hoping more people will stop paying their rents and create a backlog in the eviction squad so that I can soon safely begin to disregard such trivialities as work-for-money.

The Revolution is afoot

2011-06-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

Bitcoin makes the concept of the nation state an anachronism. Living anachronisms exist on borrowed time and eventually fade away into obscurity. We do not need central banks or their little bitch countries for anything any more. Welcome to the exciting future of unlimited human potential.

That's my gut feeling about all of this. That this is on the line of the important shifts that have to happen in society for our species to move forward and progress to our destiny among the stars. Spread ideas worth spreading and live the joy, live the love and bear witness to the discoveries of your own consciousness.

Fruit of the Loom delivers

2011-05-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

This company is really worth mentioning as having a true value for their customers' satisfaction.

I had bought a 4 pack of underwear at the WALMART and unfortunately one of the boxers had a stitching defect that I only noticed after wearing the pair for a day. Obviously I couldn't exactly return it to WALMART for an exchange (WALMART does not want to exchange opened underwear products anyways), so I wrote to Fruit of the Loom.

I sent Fruit of the Loom some pictures of the defect and asked them if they could do anything for me, and I was now a few weeks later just treated to a Canada Post parcel with a replacement 4 pack of underwear (with snazzy new styling too!) direct to my door. Talk about Customer Service! Wow, thank you Fruit of the Loom for making things very right!

Mind controlled prosthetics

2011-04-08T16:44:00.001-07:00

So you know the research into prosthetic limbs that you control with your mind? Well it just occurred to me that I might like to have an extra pair of hands available all the time. Imagine that, a wearable prosthetic exoskeleton that provided extra mind-controlled limbs. It would be cool to be able to control my 2 normal hands, plus 2 extra robot hands, all with my mind. And if I thought of this, you bet your ass some roboticist with access to this equipment in the lab has thought about it (or did so 20 minutes ago for the first time when I did lol)

Sad and lonely

2011-04-04T08:11:00.001-07:00

Hey nonreadership. I'm sad and lonely. Jeff and Alex moved to another building the other day, so now I'm the only member of this family left in this building. Angela is a shitty girlfriend. Not even can I really call her a girlfriend right now. There is almost literally nothing between us at this point with all the shit and all of her non-dealing with it. We used to have so much potential I thought. The final turning point I still feel is when she allowed Derek to dismantle my wireless network when he was over looking after his kid. And we used to try an do dinners but one too many blow-offs from her and I just stopped caring. I guess I still love her and I sure as hell enjoy making love with her but thats all we have and its few and far between now since she has allowed the Ministry to dictate her life. This 'relationship' is too painful, pointless and unfulfilling, and I don't know why I continue to take her infrequent and needy phone calls.

I gotta do something. I feel like I'm gonna fall a bit first. I'm feeling very lazy and slothful and not wanting to deal with anything. I am a bag full of excuses, I can always find something to blame my problems on but in the end I think it flows from my own inaction and indecisiveness about anything and everything. I dont feel like I'm being pushed and maybe thats what I need. Ah there it is excuses, see? I can't help myself lol.

I live here in Victoria BC, I rent an apartment and I'm all alone. I dont know anyone outside of the family members I moved here to be with and little circle of friends that Angela has and I dont know if I really connect with those people anyway. I feel a desire to be part of something but I dont know how or what I would fit into that would be worth doing. Something with mutual credit or local food or energy production might be cool. The thought occurred to me to go to the university just because. Maybe find out what it would take to be a student there and get access to their stuff, maybe find a scholarship or something. I have no idea but I feel without purpose and it pains be deeply. I have to do something but I'm not motivated? What the fuck is wrong with me and how do I pull myself out of it. Dare I say that I need help somehow? I wouldn't even know what to ask from whom and I sure as hell do not like asking for help at any rate.

Also I'm getting old (almost 32 now) and time is speeding up. The more it happens the less I feel equipped to deal with it. Time slips away and I accomplish nothing other than marvelling at the works of others and at my own ineffectiveness.

Capital One closed my account on me?!

2011-03-02T16:37:00.001-08:00

I pay my bill with Capital One regularly. I bet they dont like that. Today I got something in the mail that suggested I should call them for a better rate or to make me a happier customer. I thought I'd take advantage of the invitation and call them up and ask them to drop the annual fee. So I spoke to a guy that had some irrelevant stuff to offer so I asked to get the annual fee reversed instead. And he said he'd have to transfer me. So I talked to a nice lady that said she could reverse that fee and that I should just call once a year to get it reversed from now on. Sweet! Well I thought that was a pretty big win. Anyway little did I know .....

THEY CLOSED MY ACCOUNT!!!!!

Yeah I found out after multiple fails to put through a mobile phone topup. So I called up CapitalOne and got the surprise "That account is closed" from the IVR. Spoke to a rep who kept saying the account is closed. I kept asking who closed it. He just kept responding "yes it is closed" and that it was "ineligible for reactivation" and that I could reapply for a new account or whatever. I insisted to know who closed my account and now I've been put on hold for a long time. This gives me a bad feeling.

Anyway have now spoken to another guy (Mike?) in the accounts dept and he's at least said he's looking into it for me. And he fixed it. This was some kind of mistake. They apologized and I said hey no prob stuff happens thanks for fixing it.

The first guy telling me 'ineligible' freaked me out. But Mike got it sorted out and stayed on the line with me while I put a transaction through for my phone payment. Great stuff. Thanks again CapitalOne for getting things straightened out.

I grow weary of making decepticons

2011-02-21T11:30:00.001-08:00

I would love for some patronage to make autobots instead. .... Patrons out there hello my expenses are only about $2k CAD per month. Just now anyway I was thinking about a isohunt.com backup dealo to scrape all their torrent data and index by keyword etc for searching in case MPAA fuckers hurt them.

What I have been reduced to

2011-02-09T09:09:00.001-08:00

Loneliness sucks. Angela made a bunch of shitty decisions starting in December that ended up with me not willing to take her crap and her leaving me. Shitty. I'm still hurtin. Anyway I'm fucking lonely. Rather, I'm just lonely, there is no fucking. Fucking my hand. Whatever its not ideal anyway, also I'm really not sure what to do about work either. I mean I'm gainfully employed. And my work isnt exactly bomb-making or perfecting gas chamber control systems or anything truly evil. But my client is sure the fuck a spammer. The bots he has me writing are crazy multiheaded monsters. I wish I could be doing this towards some real life related work not just spamming but its kinda fun and it kinda pays the bills.

So there once again you have it, I am employed making central bank shit money by writing monster bots that run 50+ processes of statusnet/wikimedia site spamming mayhem with captcha relay as required and all kinds of failsafe awesomesaucery. I was challenged by the need to learn how to do IPC stuff, something that working at SPI _never_ really pushed me into. So good on this work in that it has broadened my horizons.

BUT I'M ALL ALONE!!!!!

I NEVER GOT TO MENTOR UNDER ANYONE PROPERLY

I NEVER GOT TO APPRENTICESHIP AND IT WASNT FOR LACK OF TRYING

This is the hand that life gave me and I have to go with it I suppose. I would love to work for Google but Google you are going to need to apply to me, not the other way around. Maybe when my clients SEO shit has thoroughly punched your pagerank in the face you would rather have me working with you than against you. And honestly thats where I'd rather be but like I said I'm not going to try to sell myself. Actions speak louder than words. I'm doing the do, and letting you know I'd rather do it for you.

Also .. ladies ... come on? Got my place to myself most days. Want someone to chill with, talk with and f*ck with. Victoria BC, Skype name blademccool

Please be wrong

2011-01-25T17:29:00.001-08:00

I hope I'm wrong but I'm afraid that this shit that is going down and spreading is going to keep speeding up and blow up very soon, like this year, before or around northern hemisphere fall harvest season.

I am getting the most terrified feeling that we have to be planting food forests now on a massive scale worldwide or we are going to have a terrible, terrible price to pay.

I am gravely concerned.

Relaxation

2011-01-22T21:19:00.001-08:00

Today I decided that when I was craving a certain daily crutch that usually arises around 11am I would meditate or elicit the relaxation response, whatever you want to call it, instead. I had just read another positive article on the practice about some study where the subjects who meditated all had observable changes in their brain structure after some period of time where the control group completely did not. So anyway I decided I'd give it a whirl as that would surely be more positive and productive that what I usually might do.

Everything went better than expected.

I started off as usual just calming self and closed eyes sitting on the couch relaxed and concentrating on breathing and then started to do the whole body awareness thing starting at the toes and going up. Well before I even got to my head i started feeling really relaxed and having weird rapid eye movement stuff that seemed pretty involuntary but I tried not to dwell on it, and just keep self cleared. I pulled myself out of it shortly after that to see how I would feel after just a short time of it and well, it really seemed to help, more than I would have expected.

1000m (1km) diameter geodesic dome for year round forest garden near Victoria BC.

2011-01-18T13:53:00.001-08:00

Construct a very large geodesic dome as a test project for a year round forest garden greenhouse near Victoria BC on Vancouver Island. The purpose of this is to provide a year round food production and retreat environment for community members.

I believe this can be accomplished by individuals with some fabrication skill producing a very large number of specific structural shapes (mostly triangles) of not more than 1m on any side. The exact math needs to be worked out but I am confident it is possible. The final design should be able to be constructed by unskilled individuals snapping the triangles together according to predetermined pattern, to form the tensegrity structure.

Perhaps the permaculture design of the forest garden can begin even before the site is chosen as the eventual enclosed/covered space will be able to be largely weather controlled.

I imagine this as a pilot project to demonstrate to the world what is possible in terms of year round forest gardening in temperate climates.

Global Financial System Default: The Peoples Pushback. Part II: Land Stewardship Final Showdown

2011-01-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

Direct action plan involves discussion and agreement on a date to put into place the effective cessation of rent and mortgage payments from private individuals to landlords and banks, in an synchronized, worldwide, multilingual, human action of solidarity.

Thats right, we're adjusting the property ownership model here on planet Earth. We outnumber you a million to one and we're starting to realize it. Any attempt at organized and/or systematic eviction will be met with overwhelming force. Any shots fired will be countered with extreme prejudice.

Message to enforcers: Trying to control our living space is not worth risking your life. Why fight us? Join us instead. Our network will provide you better opportunities for experiencing life and cooperating with humans.

Thank you and have a nice day.

This came out of me in a comment on cnn faith blog:

2011-01-02T12:15:00.000-08:00

Anyway I wrote this:

BladeMcCool:

I have faith that the bible was written and edited by many different humans in some languages that were NOT ENGLISH, over a period of thousands of years. It is my humble belief that to treat the book in any other way is foolish. That said the book has lots of fun stuff in it, but treat it with a grain of salt, especially if you are not reading the original hebrew/greek texts.

Now to solve real world problems. Nobody can command you to do anything. But Universe suggests quitting your jobs and going off to plant livable forest garden communities and join local exchange networks as a starting point to restructuring human society towards a sustainable path. Universe suggests that immediately starting on such a path, with the help of all your current friends, neighbors and associates, will pave the way for humans to live with one another peacefully here on this planet indefinitely.

Orienting your church and faith groups towards this type of mindset could also be very productive. Civilization is changing. Evolving, if you will.

Livable Food Forests - Forest Garden Communities

2011-01-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

Hello people of Earth. It was nice to make your acquaintance. I have been studying your macro issues for a while now. I find it curious that most of you still scurry around performing meaningless tasks in exchange for the tools of living granted to you by your token-masters. Why do you cede your very existence to other humans? Why do you allow this slavery to continue? You outnumber them a million to one and yet you continue to allow them to direct nearly every aspect of your lives. You must like it this way.

Unfortunately, we can no longer sit back idly and watch this play out. We suggest that all idle humans begin, henceforce and immediately, to start the work of planting food forests and forest gardens, and in such a way that communities can literally live inside these forests. Forest gardenification of existing urban spaces is not only completely possible, but is now required and mandated by us.

Feel free to rip up concrete and asphalt from non-right-of-way public spaces (please do not damage public roadways at this time) and plant food bearing seeds. Please post notice of intent around such plantings so that passers by can come to understand the livable food forest mandate we are setting forth here now.

Once again this is not a suggestion or just an idea. This is now a fundamental requirement of economics and human survival on this planet. Continuing under the current economic paradigm is no longer acceptible and will not be allowed to continue.

Thank you for your attention.

Notes: Key research terms are: "permaculture" "permaculture design" "urban permaculture" "food forests" "forest gardening". There are MANY excellent youtube videos on the topic. You are expected to watch and learn, or perhaps even go read up on the topic some using available resources

Lets see what happens ....

2010-12-28T10:01:00.000-08:00

Today on "Lets see what happens" we're going to interrupt the US military supply lines. No more MREs for the boyz (n'girlz). So. Now we've got a million hungry soliders roaming around with guns looking for food! ......

LETS SEE WHAT HAPPENS!

Micheal Linton this one is motivated by your writings:

2010-12-27T13:40:00.000-08:00

Use case for inter network trading in the simplest way I can imagine that could work

Bob is a member of The Warehouse Network (TWN)
Bob spends most of his days overseeing canning machinery at a local soup canning facility.
Bob prefers to be paid for his work in KJ currency offered by TWN.

Alice is a member of Farmers United (FU)
Alice spends most of her days overseeing fieldwork machinery at a local permaculture farm
Alice prefers to be paid in Human Hours of Work (HOW) currency offered by FU.

Alice needs some finished manufactured goods for personal needs. She goes down to the nearest BigBoxMart (storefronts operated by TWN). Everything in BigBoxMart is priced in TWH-KJ currency.
Fortunately for Alice there is a pre-existing relationship between FU and TWH.
Lets throw this out there: when 2 networks establish a relationship, or a link, the link should follow some standard protocol.
- each end of the link must specify the currency being used by the partner on that end
so for a link between TWN and FU lets say
TWN is going to be holding the inter-network account in KJ
FU is going to be holding the inter-network account in HOW.

Alice wants a can of soup from TWH. At the checkout, Alice needs only to have an account with a recognized trading network. If she does not have an account with a recognized network she can choose to open an account with TWH or link to her home network through GETS (_everyone_ is linked to GETS, and a few other different international clearing houses as well though GETS is the most popular and therefor the defacto), for the usual fee (GETS charges a small fee for taking on the liability when parties who dont know/trust each other use it to trade with each other).
So anyway Alice is a member of FU and TWH recognizes FU so the transaction goes like this:
The exchange rate* that will be used for this transaction is determined and must be agreed upon by parties of tx. (otherwise stop tx right now)
TWH will ask FU for Alice's public key.
TWH will ask Alice to sign a message stating the exchange of resources (can of soup to Alice in exchange for KJ value)
TWH will verify the signature Alice placed on the tx message.
TWH will communicate to FU using the standard protocol** that Alices account must be reduced by the agreed upon exchanged value. (computed in HOW for FU side entries)

On the TWH side, this transaction will move KJ out of the TWH<->FU account and into the BigBoxMart management account. (note all tx pushed through the till will either remove funds from particular TWH member account or from a inter-network account, and transferred to BigBoxMart management account)
On the FU side, this transaction will move HOW out of Alices FU account and into the FU<->TWH account.

* exhange rate is readily computable using a variety of means that will all yield some very similar result. My proposed method is to identify a basket of commodity type or comparable goods between two networks and compute their value on each side in each networks exchange currency. The difference in value of the two baskets will then determine a usable exchange rate.
**the OpenTransact protocol with a few small extensions to deal with real world problems, likely including the value of the tx in the agreed values of both inter-network exchange currencies

I _think_ this should address the problem of how networks inter trade. Really this is just an extension to OpenTransaction protocol which someone has already created.

Please identify flaws with this and propose your method of attack, so I can propose solutions to your imagined problems and countermeasures to your attacks!

Speaking of slapping corporations with flash mobs ...

2010-12-21T14:16:00.001-08:00

Interesting. I was just thinking about this kind of stuff earlier :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww7OUUfjoBQ

Money has worked until now but ....

2010-12-21T11:47:00.000-08:00

.... But we have entered a new era of information sharing that allows the possibility of a stable, self-directed global economy.

This has never before been possible without the very real risk of mass famine due to natural or man-made calamity.

Now with the power of instant long range information sharing available to all we can absolutely and with total certainty solve the complete logistical needs of all humanity. All production can be tailored to precisely meet demand with carefully calculated amounts of spare capacity available to bring online in case of production shortfall(s) in any region(s) that we might be able to ship to.

Surplus was once good. But now in a resource constrained globalised trade context, surplus will be our undoing. Unfortunately surplus is engineered into the current world economic system as a fundamental requirement through the requirement of interest on banking system loans.

Time for some new ideas.

Zero Interest System

2010-12-21T11:07:00.000-08:00

Price everything in terms of its stored energy value measured in Joules. Demur on hand inventory in relation to best-before dates. When best-before date is reached, product mustbe demurred to zero and donated for recycling (donated, allocated to become compost, or whatever is acceptable for the non-saleable commodity). Customer account is supplied with Joules from any number of sources that are participating in the warehouse network. Presumably customer is employed by some operation within the network and thus is able to earn the Joules they require for their living expenses. Land ownership has become land stewardship and therefore all Landlords are now permitted only to charge a break-even "rental rate" to tenants payable in Joules, which will generally only cover the cost of expenses related to operating and maintaning the propertie(s) in question. Corporations will switch into a break-even mode of operation and will not be permitted to make "profits". Shareholders must be content in knowing simply that they are helping to provide for the operations of some required or desired enterprise. All resource inputs and outputs for any produced resource by any individual or organization should (and will automatically be where possible) be reported publicly. Regional services provided to property stewards (water, electricity, sewage, garbage collection, etc) to be financed by operational fees that will directly replace the concept of property taxes.

With a system like this all information is available to everyone and there is no possibility for a parasite class :)

Best of all, if we could implement something like this, it could literally be dropped right over top of the current system. All the software could be written and tested and then on the day of unity action we pretty much just tell the banks and the corporations how its going to be. So in an instant the central banking system goes away. In an instant all your cards (debit, Visa, MC, paypal, amazon, gas station cards, store cards, etc) become switched over and linked to your Joules account. In an instant resource reporting begins to start flowing into the public databases. In an instant all your bank system debts will be forgiven. In an instant your monthly rent will drop perhaps as much as 90%. In an instant the price of food will stabilize. In an instant you'll always get the best price for whatever you are buying, wherever you buy it. And in an instant you'll start getting paid what your market value really is for the work you are doing. The only caveat is that if you are involved in an industry that adds little or nothing of value to humanity then you will likely need to find a new line of work.

Fortunately the warehouse network is happy to provide free high quality education to anyone who opens a Joules account.

Just in Time World = Stability and Prosperity for ALL of us

2010-12-21T10:54:00.000-08:00

If world resource production was designed (intentionally) to exactly meet demand without producing much or any surplus, we could take a stab at a mathematically correct economic system. There would no longer be that pressure and stress of having to appoint anyone to manage the surplus if there is no surplus to manage. All resource production in all regions should have some level of buffer capacity that can be brought online in case there is any reported output shortfall from any neighboring regions. The idea here is that if some natural disaster or whatever takes capacity offline in region X, that information can be communicated to regional neighbors who can bring some additional capacity online such that region X can have resources made available to it for import to meet its shortfalls.

I got mad and wrote this but didnt post it to reddit. Just posting it.

2010-12-20T11:58:00.000-08:00

Why shouldnt it make a profit? Because it doesnt need to make a profit. It needs to make exactly enough money to pay its employees. Fuck the shareholders desire for "profits" (surplus). My world doesnt need surplus it needs break even. My world is ready to STOP growing population and resource requirements OK. My world CANNOT TOLERATE the notion of ineterest/usury tied to the means of exchange. Ok your banking system shit is going to have to go away on this planet. You people call me naive but its you who are not seeing the way things are here on earth now in the year 2010 with 7 billion people NOT WORKING TOGETHER and causing a big load of problems for the earth, that if NOT REIGNED IN are going to lead to total destruction of all the life except the bloody cockroaches.

Stop paying for stuff you can do yourself or get for free

2010-12-20T11:10:00.000-08:00

I'm watching a youtube video on the dymanics of the game publisher vs game developer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBg6L4H7WdE) and it strikes me that this relationship really, REALLY does not need to exist any more for anyone. Honestly if you are in the anglosphere you have access to the internet as a FREE publishing and distribution medium. Its important for the conservation of resources and the greater good that publishing companies (such as Electronic Arts) be allowed to die.

Storing files in the publicly writable web.

2010-12-05T17:25:00.001-08:00

Take a file and chunk it out much like bittorrent. Except we are going to base64 the little chunks and upload them redundantly a bunch of public places on the web. Blog comment areas. StatusNet installs. Twitter. Facebook accounts. Gmail accounts. Forums. Anywhere that lets you store data. Scattered across the wild wild web and indexed into a single text file. But, you say, the index will be bigger than the original file with so many small pieces scattered redundantly. Interestingly we can have a layer of source list storage built in. Every addressable space can be given a 128bit address which can be mapped to a full wrapper/handler name and url fragment. These addressible space descriptors can be stored on the web and resolved by anyone participating in the network address resolver (kind of how people participate in DHT). So then the index file is composed of a smattering of 128bit numbers and the network will resolve those to locations where actual information is stored. Or something like that. I think its a really neat idea worth exploring if I had the patronage.

Samsung r351 link usb connectivity windows 7

2010-11-22T19:50:00.000-08:00

Ok this is how _I_ got the damn samsung r351 link sch-r351 whatever phone to talk to my pc on windows 7. I tried a bunch of stuff and searched around for a long time and got some leads. I ended up downloading and installing the New PC Studio (note the New in the name, this is something Newer than regular PC Studio I guess lol.). Anyway the install did a bunch of stuff then kind of blew up and failed but the files it left in the Program Files directory there was a folder called USB Drivers. I went into device manager and found the yellow busted driver icon for the phone and clicked update driver on it, then i pointed it to the USB driver folder from the failed New PC Studio isntall. Well bam it actually worked and installed a driver. But then there were 2 more yellow icons that appeared. No problem. do update driver on each of them and point to the same directory. So you end up with 3 devices. But after doing this BitPim BLOODY FOUND THE GODDAMNED PHONE!!! WHEEE LOL. Then I was finally able to follow the instructions on the link below

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1648597-Samsung-Link-r351-%28Virgin%29

to punch the "Allow this time" blah blah network access requests on apps in the face. And hopefully more coolness is also possible :) Anyway I just tested google maps and it hasnt said a peep since I told it to never ask me again :D :D XDXDXD!!!!

Cheers i'm gonna play with mobile street view and apps from that m.getjar.com site

More on Victoria Free Stuff

2010-11-19T10:21:00.000-08:00

I got the Freecycle bit working now on my Victoria Free Stuff site. Freecycle has a posting subject line protocol where when you offer something you are supposed to prefix the subject with OFFER. And then if someone takes the item you are supposed to post another message with the same subject but prefixed TAKEN instead. If everyone did this, and all did it the same way, it would be perfect :) But humans being the creative, deviant and/or lazy creatures that they are, tend not to always adhere to the rules perfectly. By and large, MOST people do post correctly, but often with variations on the theme. Below are part of my regexp I use to pick out whether it is an offered or a taken posting.

if ($link_text =~ s/^(offered|reoffer|offer|re(\-|\s)offer|on\s+offer|free|repost)\:?//) { $type = 'offer'; }
if ($link_text =~ s/^(taken|on hold|onhold|spoken for)\:?//) { $type = 'taken'; }

See what I have to deal with?? Lol. And that's after I've got things already cleaned up a bit ;)

I discard everything that I cannot classify as an offer or a taken post, so WANTED posts and general conversation on the freecycle board get dumped by my system.

The system will group the posts by author and then attempt to match up TAKEN posts with their original OFFER posts. It has about an 80% success rate on finding the OFFER with the last 3 months of messages on Victoria Freecycle. It tries to match by exact subject, and at present for the ones it is able to match up I think it matches about 2/3 of all the TAKENs to OFFERs by perfect subject match, and then it will attempt to do a token based matchup and if it matches 85% of the words in the TAKEN post subject with words from an OFFER it will accept that as a match up as well. This provides the other third of successful TAKEN matchups. And of course once the system believes an item is TAKEN it will de-list it from the combined results :).

Its not perfect, but its as good as I can make a computer deal with the imperfection with what limited resources I have right now. To do better I think I would have to dedicate some serious time and effort into finding a way to do a contextual analysis of the contents of the messages, etc. Stuff that I would need a patron to finance! LOL :) So I'll stick with this simple thing that works pretty well for now.

Of course this would all be MOOT if Freecycle would switch to a more modern way of doing things, something like a craigslist site but with a forum attached. FreeMesa.org is I think doing something like this. I encourage the switch. If Victoria people start using FreeMesa I'll scrape that site too. Its so much easier with the scraped sites (Usedvictoria.com, Craigslist.org, Kijiji.ca) to deal with de-listing items because quite simply when the item disappears from the scrape results we know we should de-list it in our own system.

Now that the freecycle aspect is working, and that I've tweaked the scraper script to my reasonable liking I can call this project complete. Like the chan thread post/bump lulz project. Like the craigslist and gmail account creation projects. Like the proxy-list scrape project. Like the captcha bypass sales/data entry (captchaquest.com/chws.ca combo) project. Its all done. Well rather if I had patronage to make captchaquest more of a fun game I have ideas for it but not time or money.

So I did my thing. I wrote a lot of code, and I had a lot of fun. But now I need to make some money. I had hoped this stuff could become made of money but it did not pan out or I would have to do immoral things that I'm not ok with in order to make it pan out. I still have some ideas on something lolgasmic to get CL PVAs but I'll discuss that another time.

Ta ta for now, time to work on Resume and spam that shit around via bots (lol, be annoying till you hire me? haha. it might work. probably not. might be funny. might get myself blacklisted. but then i wouldnt want to work for _those_ people anyway. lol)

Free stuff in victoria

2010-11-15T20:58:00.000-08:00

I made a site for free stuff in Victoria (BC). I havent got the freecycle bit working yet. dunno if i will bother. LOTS of posts from other places. Gathering from Usedvictoria, Craigslist and Kijiji right now. The list might be a little stale until I get things finalized and the cron job set up to run.

Check it out here http://victoria-free-stuff.chws.ca

2010-11-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

Around the beginning of October I started a project for a captcha bypass system. It was based on this old idea I'd had that you could literally just pay people in 3rd world countries (india, china, etc) to enter captchas on the cheap and then send as much spam posts as you want. It was a neat idea. Too bad it was like 3 years ago and I never did anything about it. Meantime several businesses also thought of this and made money with it. So I had this thing that I made and its a kind of a game where the idea is that I would get people to play it for fun, meanwhile they are really entering captchas that customers of the captcha solving business would have paid to be able to submit to the site.

Anyway I didnt know how to find poeple to pay me to solve captchas. So I thought I need a way to jump start that, so I figured I'll write a gmail signup bot that uses the game system to solve the captcha. That was cool and all right up until I hit the phone verification (never knew about that before lol). Anyway long story short, there are several different ways of getting a PSTN routable phone number for free online and collect voicemails with codes or receive SIP VoiP calls and receive code from it that way, or of course the original way I'd imagined -- use the captcha solving game to also ask people to receive a phone call and enter a code. I did that, and it totally works its just that the numbers can only be used a couple times first, so I needed these other sources of phone numbers. Anyway thats a solved problem now, I can make gmail accounts at the push of a button any time.

Next challenge. I was thinking Reddit but its a big fish to fry, so I put my thoughts towards the chan. 4chan specifically. I thought about a bot that would create and bump a thread. Then I made this bot. Then I tested it. 60 posts in a single megathread later I had a boatload of lulz and decided it was time to write about all this sillyness. (should mention the image that it posted is a self generated AWESOME troll image that changes every time it posts)

Anyway its been a lot of fun. Trying to monetize it. Using linkbucks links in the 4chan posts to link back to the game. "Earned" 24 cents so far that way today. LOL. What a joke I know right? Well thats just from me trying to keep a frontpage post on the chan with 8 to 12 threads running and relaying captchas and 0 to 1 other "players" in the game besides lonely old me.

So yeah once again, money. I'm having a lot of fun writing this lulzcode. I need to make it make money because I sooooo do not want to work for someone else again.

a small JPEG

2010-10-25T11:04:00.001-07:00

Here is a 384 byte JPEG image that I made in photoshop. It is the letters ROFL hand drawn by me and then saved with max compression settings while still being sort of readable.

Hex sequences:

my @image_hex = qw{
FF D8 FF E0 00 10 4A 46 49 46 00 01 02 00 00 64
00 64 00 00 FF EC 00 11 44 75 63 6B 79 00 01 00
04 00 00 00 00 00 00 FF EE 00 0E 41 64 6F 62 65
00 64 C0 00 00 00 01 FF DB 00 84 00 1B 1A 1A 29
1D 29 41 26 26 41 42 2F 2F 2F 42 47 3F 3E 3E 3F
47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47
47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47
47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 01 1D 29 29
34 26 34 3F 28 28 3F 47 3F 35 3F 47 47 47 47 47
47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47
47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47
47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 FF C0 00
11 08 00 08 00 19 03 01 22 00 02 11 01 03 11 01
FF C4 00 61 00 01 01 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 04 02 05 01 01 01 01 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 04 10 00 02
02 02 02 03 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 02
11 03 00 41 21 12 F0 13 04 31 11 00 01 04 03 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 21 31 61 71
B1 12 22 FF DA 00 0C 03 01 00 02 11 03 11 00 3F
00 A1 7E 6B AD 4E B6 4B 30 EA E0 19 82 39 91 3A
6E 63 5F 99 8A 68 B6 E3 EA 70 08 A8 00 55 98 EE
48 22 37 1C 63 19 AF A5 68 B8 05 24 9A 7E 99 F5
B3 22 20 55 EA 27 CD 8C EB 4E 31 91 9D 41 FF D9
}; #this is a very tiny jpeg. it is a image representaion of the letters "ROFL" hand drawn by me in photoshop and then saved at the lowest possible quality settings where the letters could still be made out :)

my $image_data = pack('H2' x scalar(@image_hex), @image_hex);
my $url_escaped_image = uri_escape( $image_data );

I was going to include the output of this code right here but blogger keeps stripping out the NULL (hex code 00) bytes for some reason. So ... This text file contains the output, all 384 bytes URI escaped and ready to go.

google adsense

2010-10-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

hmm my adsense is giving ads for shortbread cookies and other cookies. and IT stuff.

something tells me google's bot is getting stuck on my cookie redirect test. better open up the first screen to not need cookies lol.

western digital hard drive RMA fun

2010-10-20T09:39:00.001-07:00

About 3 years ago I bought a 500GB western digital hard disk. It worked fine for about 8 months I think then it started causing my World of Warcraft to crash from random disk read errors. I pulled the disk and was going to do RMA but around that time is when I needed to move from Ontario to BC and dealing with hard drive stuff was not a top priority. I bought a replacement drive just to have another working 500gb disk, with the intention of some time after moving to actually complete the RMA for the dead drive.

But I'm a lazy bastard and as I had a lot of extra disk space still I didnt make doing the RMA a priority, especially since I'd checked sometime in 2009 to see how much time I had for warranty and it showed I had until October 2010.

Fast forward to October 2010 when another of my disks started acting up (a 750GB seagate one). Ok so I figure if i need to do a RMA on the seagate (which I did need to do) I may as well get this old WD RMA dealt with. So I do the WD RMA first and actually find out that I have warranty left on the WD drive for another 5 days or so. LOL. So I complete the RMA and have now just gotten an email saying they've shipped my replacement part. And guess what, my replacement part is a 750GB disk :D ... I guess they ran out of 500GB.

Lesson here is that procrastination is perfectly fine and can lead to unexpected coolness.

Fun times with seagate tools, usb stick booting, no cdrom drive and grub4dos

2010-10-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

So I have a mirroring RAID set up with 2x seagate 750GB disks and one of them has gone bad. I badly wanted to run the seagate diagnostic tools but was getting blocked at every chance. First of all the msi for the windows version refused to install on my xp system. Log file stuff I could find didnt show any errors :(. So I gave up on msi and tried to do the DOS version. Trouble its its a ISO for a CD ROM but I dont have a CD ROM installed in this computer right now. I wanted to boot from USB stick. Good luck. After a bunch of searching around I finally found a tool called multibootisos that will format a usb sick and make it bootable with grub4dos and also allow you to have several of its list of bootable isos installed on it. Trouble was that of course seagates iso is not on the list. In the end I left the seagate iso on my hard disk and just used the grub4dos that the multibootisos put on my usb stick to boot it. and it fuckin worked!

I had a bunch of stupid hangups and weird stuff before grub4dos would even boot anything for me off the usb stick. then once it did finally start seeing the usb stick files i realized i could probably just load it from the hard disk.

Heres what seemed to work in the end:
- format the usb stick as regular FAT (not FAT32). it will then hopefully have a better chance of getting formatted right by multibootisos
- connect usb stick, wait for it to pop up any windows then close them.
- run multibootisos. pick your stick drive letter (get it right!). choose memtest ISO (mainly because the grub commands that get set up for it will be a good reference for what we want to do) and have it download it. click next.
- when it tells you to disconnect and reconnect, after reconnecting make sure any windows that pop up from your usb stick are closed.
- click ok and finish up.

Ok now hopefully as long as your BIOS supports booting from USB-HDD you can reboot and have it boot into grub4dos off the stick.

Next step was loading the bloody seatools. Lol. Well I'd never used grub4dos before so I poked around at the help and did a little reading and looked at the example commands used to load the memtest ISO. Basically we do the same thing. Hit c to drop to the command prompt and type all this and then bam seatools came up on the screen. [My notes are in these square brackets. dont type those in.]

find
[this will list your hard drives]

ls (hd0,0)/
[show contents of this disk, is that the one with seatools? yeah? woot. then do...]

root (hd0,0)
[now the hd with seatools is the root device for grub4dos]

map --mem /thepath/totheISOfile.iso (hd32)
[something about telling it to load it in memory into virtual cdrom 1]

map --hook
root (hd32)
chainloader (hd32)
boot
[the rest of the stuff required to get it booted]

Link: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-multiple-iso-from-usb-multiboot-usb/

Oh yeah, and I did confirm the seagate 750GB drive is bad, got a seatools error code now and everything. Lol.

perl (mod_perl/apache/mysql, etc. 8+ years.) developer open to offers.

2010-10-17T16:14:00.000-07:00

If you have an interesting perl based web project that you need back-end coding assistance with, I'm officially available for short and medium term contracts. My fee is USD$45/hour. Contact me with a description of your project and I'll be happy to take it under consideration. Bonus points if you are in Victoria BC as well.

Lol. A year!

2010-10-14T10:33:00.001-07:00

Well, almost a year since a post. Thats pretty lame. But what can I say. I started dating a lady named Angela. Thats been a hell of a roller coaster. We're still together, although its still quite bumpy.

I quit (err, got laid off? LOL.) my job because I was hating it and I'd saved up some money. Well, even with EI, I've burned through almost all of it and now I'm starting to think very seriously about work again.

I still like perl, I still like web stuff. So I've given myself a little project to get back into things. Its got me working with familiar stuff like my old (awesome!) code that runs as ModPerl::Registry, AJAX and captchas, as well as some new stuff like Amazon EC2 instance setup and getting a bunch of stuff going on a fresh Ubuntu 10.04. I'm sort of hoping that I can find a way for my little project to make some money but even if it doesnt at least I'm having a fun time while getting my head back into coding, problem solving, and server related shit.

Dear Steve Comrie

2009-11-05T15:08:00.000-08:00

Dear Steve,

Its been a while. How have you been? I hope you found something worthwhile to do after you left this company.

I've been doing your old job now for about 7 years, and I think its been about that long since we last spoke. Indeed we never got a chance to speak much, as I can tell you were as I am now, ready to get the fuck out. I think I understand now perhaps what you were feeling, as I myself, am ready to get the fuck out.

I hope things have worked out for you, as I hope they will work out for me. My problem is I lack your courage. I can't bring myself to up and quit. The money is, sadly, just too good. I wish I didnt need the damn money. I wish I could find something to do that was actally worth doing. This stuff sure as hell aint :(

All the best.

Your friend,

BladeMcCool

RBC sucks at data

2009-10-22T13:13:00.000-07:00

So I have to write some code that will bring a data file into the system. The data file is provided by RBC. Oh update no its not never mind this rant is about some company called "RBC Dexia" that may or may not have anything the fuck to do with RBC.

It is a piece of shit. It is the best thing they can give us, but it is a piece of shit. The file starts off with a bunch of header crap that is irrelevant to data processing. Then we get some blank lines, then the column headings start. Except that they are on multiple lines. And they have retarded spaces added onto their left and right for no reason. Then the data itself begins. There are numeric data fields and they all have commas shoved in the fucking numbers as a thousands separator, because you know, computers give a fuck about thousands separators. And the date format is non iso. And many of the field values have inexplicable extra space on the end. No, clearly this fucking output from RBC Dexia that I have to deal with was clearly NOT meant for machine processing, but probably meant to get printed out and shoved in front of some pointy headed fuckwit manager. And yet this is what they give us to deal with for integrating our system with their data. Shame on you RBC Dexia for sucking so much.

Gateway drug policy

2009-08-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

Prohibition is a drugs gateway policy and puts people directly in contact with products they didnt necessarily want to buy.

Case in point:

Yesterday I went to one of my pot guys. One of the guys that I have to go to to buy cannabis, because the shopkeepers are all to scared to sell it. So I went to him, and he told me he did not have any Cannabis! He complained that his suppliers were all charging too much, upwards of $800 for a quarter pound. So he has stopped buying it for now and is going to wait to see if either the price comes down or the quality goes up. He complained that the good quality stuff is all going to the USA.

But then he went on to tell me how he now had mushrooms and lsd.

I thanked him for his time and proceeded to call one of my other guys, who had the same story about his suppliers charging him too much - fortunately he bought some anyway and was able to hook me up.

And so I slept well last night.

On chopping, weights and measures

2009-08-11T15:13:00.000-07:00

Once you have obtained a cannabis supplier, it is time to chop. Chopping, or separating the product out into smaller portions, is how you will make your money.

This goes for whatever amount you purchased. Lets use one ounce as an example. If you are buying only one ounce, you are a front line street level dealer and you should be dividing the ounce up into gram bags, or dime bags.

There is an important distinction between a "gram" and a "dime". A gram is exactly what it claims to be, one gram by weight. However a "dime" means effectively the amount of cannabis you can get for ten dollars. Similarly, a "nickel" bag is the amount you can expect to get for five dollars.

For maximum profit you should not sell grams but sell dimes. What you choose to put in a dime bag is entirely up to you, however you will earn a good reputation and repeat business by providing what is known as a "good count", which is an amount equal to or exceeding what the buyer may have been expecting.

Lets talk about numbers. Now right off the bat I will tell you, you need a scale. You cannot do this business well without one as the various varieties of cannabis on the black market make it impossible to accurately eyeball an amount of cannabis. A scale is also very important to your being able to verify that you indeed received from your supplier the amount you believed you bought. If your supplier made a mistake and gave you a significant under-count or over-count it is your responsibility to gracefully point out the discrepency and seek remediation. You do not want to offend your supplier however, and sometimes it may simply be wise to overlook small discrepencies. This depends entirely on your relationship with your supplier.

An ounce weighs 28.4 grams. On the street you will be hard pressed to get that .4 grams over 28 so dont worry about it, 28.0 is close enough. This ounce should cost no more than about $220 canadian dollars, and at that price it should be some grade triple A or better. This 28 grams can be chopped into about 40 dime bags if you put 0.7 grams in each dime bag. That is a net of $400 sold at ten dollars each and a gross profit of $180.

Its best not to linger at low level for any significant period of time. Through this business and your suppliers you will encounter other people and the opportunity to split the cost of a larger quantity may come along. Take that opportunity so long as you can reasonably trust that you will not be ripped off as part of the transaction. Move up to buying quarter pounds and chopping down to 1/8th oz (3.5grams) as a minimum quantity, and go from there.

There is a lot of money to be made in the prohibited plants retailing business and we can only hope that our product remains in our domain indefinitely. So get out there and get chopping, and making a nice tax-free income.

Humans.

2009-07-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

So I was faced with a predicament today. I had given D. some money to get me some pot but D. sorta vanished yesterday evening without hooking it up. I think he's hiding from his wife. But at any rate that left me in the spot of having no medicine to get to sleep tonight (not a fun situation, last night was bad enough thank you with what little tailings I had left over). D.'s wife is being a spaz and not saying where he is or anything so I basically give up on D. today and have to fend for myself (worry about the money of mine D. has later, its the herbs I really want).

So, being the social noob that I am I decided I'd make a sign "WTB Cannabis (medicinal of course)" and sit in the lobby with it until someone who wanted to make some money finally came up to me. But shit as I was on my way to the lobby to do this something really cool happened.

A couple young dudez were also on their way to the lobby and one asked if I smoked, I told him not tobacco only cannabis and that I was currently on a mission to find some. Guy asks his buddy and then another guy from the building who he knew who also just happened to walk into the lobby. This 3rd person E., without hesitation (which was really trusting and I dont understand that but I totally appreciate it) brought me up to a guy, O., on another floor of this building who totally hooked it up.

And its a really nice looking indica really tight well manicured and cured buds. Gave me 4.6 grams for $40.

I'm getting ready to work up an appetite and get a good night sleep tonight. I thanked E. for arranging it and told him a bit about myself and offered to help E. with anything that I can.

Thus concludes my sad little story about getting off my ass and talking to people.

Report on Victoria BC April 20 2009 Cannabis 420 Event

2009-04-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

Today I attended the 12th annual cannabis 420 celebration of the herb here in Victoria. It was held in centennial square and the weather could not have been nicer. Ted Smith of Hempology 101 fame was MC'ing the event, and was there with his associates including Herb the cannabis leaf. I would estimate a turnout easily exceeding four hundred people and I saw no police presence and everyone was freely smoking pot and generally having a nice time with a social atmosphere. I brought my own little pipe and was ready to toke along for the actual 4:20pm ritual and then vote in the costume contest held afterwards. A guy with a I (heart) Bongs T-shirt won over a few others by crowd cheer volume selection. I cheered for him too heh.

Video on youtube as well now (link pending)

From seeds and dirt

2009-04-10T09:36:00.001-07:00

So I was thinking. People. And Resources. Plus some toil. Equals Civilization?

This civilization is stupid. Lets kill it.

And move on.

So is it possible for, say, thirty thousand people, to like, fuck off to the hinterlands with some seeds and hand tools ... and build a new civilization?

Perhaps start with basic food and shelter needs, and then begin work on industrialization. We will be armed with the information and science of this old civilization, so its not like we wont have a huge leg up on prior civilizations. We can even hook into their "internet" until we build its replacement.

But we can do it without all the greed, corruption and lies.

We could totally redefine what money means, how one gains access to use a piece of land, education oppportunities and all that stuff.

Pakistani government implicitly invovled in conspiracy to murder Roohi Tabassum.

2009-04-07T11:36:00.000-07:00

Pakistani government is currently, right now, an accomplice in conspiracy to murder Roohi Tabassum. You see they are aware that local Pakistani asshole and ex-husband Faisal Javed has publicly made death threats towards Roohi and yet Faisal is not in jail for this. So one must only conclude that the Pakistani government is to be an accomplice in this killing.

Now that we can recognize this oppression being sponsored by a foreign government, we can grant her asylum. Lets go ahead do that, I support it.

Article I read was here.

Work

2009-03-24T16:26:00.000-07:00

Oh I just remembered the point I came here for was to bitch about work not to give a general update but I felt that it wasnt my place to bitch about work until a general update had been made. First of all its the same job, it came with me from Ontario, or it tethered me to Ontario virtually, or whatever. I'm not happy. When I get to work on interesting stuff (stuff that is interesting to me) then I am happier. When I have to work on annoying stuff I am angry, frustrated all day long, and I am constantly swearing at my computer screen, usually making songs composed of entirely the words shit fuck ass cunt pussy bitch and most of all motherfucker. Put together to some melody these few words can help pass the time by and maintain sanity. Although I do find myself doing this rather subconciously and sometimes have to stop myself when I get too loud screaming stuff like "and the bitches bitch motherfucker sucka trucker this shit make me want to fuck a ducker and then YES BITCH you got to RESPECT bitch suck that css bitch your html is non compliant and your a bit defiant and you know you live to code crappy shit suck a dick" etc on and on without end ok. Its getting to be a bit much.

Moved to BC. On an island. WTF is that shit all about.

2009-03-24T16:12:00.001-07:00

Its been a while. So I moved to BC. I sold my stuff and moved to BC in my car with my cat and a load of personal stuff. Renting a stupid apartment on a stupid island. No offense. IMO I dont want to be on this island. I came too far west. Anyway I am here now and Harmony lives one floor down with her mom in this same building so whatever.

I need to get my car registered in BC and insured. I need to get a safety to do that. I need to find a reputable auto shop to do that, which means work. So that car shit is being procrastinated on. And I have to get it done b/c I want to go visit my friend Justin who also lives on this island and maybe I wont hate it so much after I get a chance to meet his friends.

What else. World of Warcraft sucks. I have 3 level 80s and a level 70 and I am not to happy with any of them and loath the idea of levelling yet another character, and for what, since the whole thing is pointless anyway. The only time its not stupidly boring is when I'm playing with my friends on there, like my REAL LIFE friends, no offense to anyone I met in game but its not a real relationship. Hell, even my relationships with my real friends now seem fucked up since I can't see them in REAL LIFE anymore since I am like 4000 km away from them mostly. Fuck.

I want to go live in Solcan valley or something. I was also thinking maybe buy a house in Hope BC or something, since i can get a nice 1k square foot rancher on like 1/5 to 1/3 acre for like $150k ... might be nice to have that monthly payment going towards something other than just that month's shelter. The idea that one day there is no more monthly payment is really appealing.

Still gettin ready to move

2008-10-09T15:30:00.001-07:00

So the big ticket items are all sold now.

I've been getting into the freecycling now.

Still, at the end of it all I'm gonna have a cart/dolly, stereo, and vacuum cleaner that are still gonna be worth some money. Will I get any for them? ... Doubting much if any. Might have to freecycle to get em gone.

I really gotta keep at this and get this place cleared out. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm really nervous about the drive though. Very long drive. Going to need to sleep more than once.

Moving

2008-09-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

Moving sale. In Burlington near Brant+Ghent. Now until October 15. Please visit my Burlington Ontario Moving Sale website for available items.

Some big ticket things that still need to go are:
- Car stereo stuff (everything needed for boom-boom and crisp high freq. response)
- Twin sized mattress
- 5200 btu window Air conditioner w/2years warranty left

Thanks for your interest!

Some movies I saw

2008-08-20T14:20:00.001-07:00

K yeah oil is way down lately. The recession that is happening right now contributes to lowered demand. Its not a bad thing.

Also I saw some movies. Kudos to the casts and crews for making their art. I suggest you buy their retail boxes. Free previews here:

ACTION/DRAMA
Apocalypto (jungle tribe gets wrecked by mayans, action/drama ensues. hardsubbed, good stuff)

Diary of the Dead (romero - zombies - similar style to cloverfield)

I am Legend (cure to cancer found but quickly morphs into horrible fatal/undead-making virus)

Children of Men (freaky infertility dystopia)

Into the Wild (guy bails on society and goes to alaska)

COMEDY
Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (stoner humor. If you liked first movie you'll probably like this one. some hilarious shit with NPR in this one too. I liked it)

Superbad (high school party kind of comedy, lots of laughs)

-----------------------------

What else besides movies. Well I have been playing a lot of World of Warcraft still. But tiring of it. I have 3 level 70's, a Warrior, a Paladin, and a Hunter. I've got them all decently geared out now and I want to play a Mage or Druid or Shaman or Warlock at 70 but I really dont want to level them! Ha.

I've thought about the notion of gliding to 70. But I dont wanna get caught/banned. However, after Warhammer Online comes out, I may care slightly less about my WoW account ;)

Been getting some good pot lately. And some even better pot too. Work's been ok. Family is mostly in BC now and I am going to be selling my stuff and moving out there in a mere matter of months. Scared but I get to keep my job so its gonna be cake - find and rent a furnished suite for cash and then get settled. I am missing my daughter. They've been gone since June 4. So I am gonna have to do it soon.

But for now, it is time to go watch educational films; cyaz.

$139 oil

2008-06-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

Yup. $139 oil and it keeps going up. Hoping this recent runup is the speculation that its rumored to be and that it crashes back to $100 before the winter. I hope.

And I'm rolling a Mage! 2 70's and a 65 and a mage making her way up. I like blood elfs.

Oh also funny story Jessica decided that after her marriage blew up that she'd rather live in BC with her Dad so off they went, Jessica and the girls. One of the girls being my girl. My kid is now on the other side of the country. If I want to see her I get to pay excessive airfares. Or move to BC. I think I'm gonna move to BC. Something I wanted to do eventually but I guess its gonna happen sooner rather than later.

Fortunately I can keep my work-for-money job and still do it out there.

Yeah that work-for-money deal I've had going for the last 5 years is still on. Yay me and rest of the team at our company who have managed to keep this boat floating. I honestly never expected it to last this long :)

Addicted

2008-03-10T11:31:00.001-07:00

Craig, I know you tried to warn me. I might need help lol. But I'm having a lot of fun still. Hotawakun played time is 54 days. 24 of them at level 70. Its a little crazy. My new alt paladin named Lawladyn is about 6days played time, he's only level 56 tho, and this is with the post-2.3-patch levels 20-60 XP nerfing.

I'm not completely tuned out tho. For example I'm watching my The Daily Show and Colbert Report pretty regularly again. I'm also reading globaleconomicanalysis and theoildrum more often. I'm laughing (in a maniacal kind of way) at the $107 per barrel spot price I just noticed as I think thats yet another new record.

Life At The End of Empire (What a Way to Go)

2007-12-16T09:58:00.000-08:00

Its about the current planetary human situation we are in, that situation of our own making and that if we dont, you know, do something about, will be the making of our demise.

Can't really describe it. A lot of meat in there. Just download it (bittorrent link) and watch it (vlc download page for player if you haven't one).

Level Seventy

2007-12-16T09:29:00.000-08:00

They say that level 70 is just the beginning. Its the beginning of an amorphous game with no goals and no end. Its not like levels 1-69 at all. There is no more experience to get. You instead get to choose what you want to do and .... farm? Grind rep for factions so you can talk to special NPCs or buy special items from other special NPCs? This is supposed to be fun? I dunno. I'm still playing the game because my friends still are. I'm trying to get my character epic gear. I was going to get ready for Kara (level 70 dungeon instance that you can't get into until you do a line of quests) in hopes of raiding it for epic gear and reward badges but I've stalled out after finally getting the 2nd piece of the key. Trying to get into the related dungeons to get the quests completed is tough for me because I'm a warrior who hates to tank. I'm specced Arms/Fury but always people want me to tank shit. I sort of can tank, but I have trouble holding aggro. And its real stressful when you can't SEE the healer because of the swarm of mobs and everything moving around so fast and trying to target the right mob to taunt it off the healer and shit. Ya tanking sucks unless you like to do it. So I try to get into groups as DPS. Yay. Anyhow, that was sucking so I decided to play in battlegrounds for a while, thats another way of getting some high level epic gear. And that is semi-fun ... its fun when you are winning and sucklicious when you're not. Oh well. And ya I know I'm burying my head in the sand with this WoW shit. I'm already falling out of it due to having hit level 70 by myself. A couple other people in our guild got to level 70 but they left to join, you know, raiding guilds. Our guild currently has zero focus as people's levels are all over the places from 7 to 70. Should I join a raiding guild? I've thought about it, I've also heard that they are obsessive pricks too. I _like_ the people in my current guild. Anyway ya I'm falling out of it tho. At the height of my obsession I was watching zero hours of television and spending zero hours catching up on the news. A second 9/11 false flag terror attack could have been orchestrated and I probably wouldnt have known about it. These days I am spending probably equal amounts of WoW, TV shows, and news-reading. I expect the level of WoW to fall further however a sudden rise in the level of my buddies characters might find me more interested in playing long hours into the night with them. Who knows. All I know is that the weather today was really really shitty. I barely got my car up the ramp out of the underground parking for my trip to Crappy tire to buy a heater to augment the too-low heat that my building is providing. I decided to just park in visitors parking upon returning intsead of risking sliding down the ramp uncontrolled and damage my or other peoples property and risk being stuck down there again. I'm back in my cave-like rented flat on the 4th storey of this poured concrete and rebar structure who's initial and ongoing energy requirement boggles the mind. Gas is 1.04 per litre. The oil futures market is still flirting with $100 /bbl ... I give it 2 weeks to crest over that and 3 to touch $105 before falling back and trading between 95-99 for another week before permanently going higher than $100. But what _is_ $100 anyway? For a little while there the USD was going down all by itself. Then our bitch central bank seems to have decided it was time to go down with USD and our sad CAD is back below theirs. Lame. So what to do with all this cash? Could be good kindling for a fire if the lights go out. Hahaha. So wow that was a crazy all over-the-place scatterbrained blog entry -- no proof reading either. Gonna submit. Hopefully makes sense. I think about 2 or 3 people might read it anyway, besides me. Oh ya, merry Christmas, err, catholic-church-augmented-pagan-YULE I should say. A fucking tree in the living room with paper-enwrapped-presents shoved under it? Ya ... thats not a pagan YULE celebration. Hahaha. Go YULE celebration, sounds a lot less lame than "Christ Mass" anyway. But I'm gonna skip the gifts crap. No need to spend the money, and nobody else needs to spend the money on me, I'm just fine thanks. There is nothing that I want that I can't afford to buy for myself right now (consumer consumer consumer buy it with the tokens from working stupid job helping hedge fund parasites communicate with their equally parasitic investors via stupid web applications for producing fund performance charts and shit in nice commentary pdfs). But do I buy the things I want that I can afford? No. Why? I dont know. I just dont like to spend money for some reason. I want to buy some land in BC after the real estate bubble fully runs its course. I want to dig a really deep hole to where the rocks get hot and make geothermal energy ... and maybe rule the world with it? Or help the people of the world rule their own world sustainably? Or something. I dont want to work "job" no more. I want to do something here on this planet that is actually worth doing. I dont know how I can do something thats worth doing without a great struggle to survive and then theres that oh so minor detail of having a kid to help support. I feel stuck. So I play WoW and pretend to live in another realm when I can. When I can't or get sick of that I mull the reality that I'm stuck in. I feel alone a lot. I like that a lot too, but sometimes I long for something greater. To be part of something thats important and worth doing. Join the right cult maybe, hahaha. Or start the ultimate one. But I dont seek personal power, just personal autonomy. Rambly rambly rambly. I think I'm done.

WoW OIL

2007-10-15T13:14:00.000-07:00

Zomg. So while I'm off in happy-happy land of Orcs and Humans and other happy fun races escaping from the bullshit of real life, real life is going on. Just checked out futures for energy and currency for a lark and see CAD is still up, trading higher than shitty USD taint and also Oil futures trading over $86. Sorry last I checked it just broke over the last $78.xx record and so today I was a little shocked. Hrmm ... time to go bury head in the sands of Outlands some more. My Hotawakun warrior character on the Laughing Skull realm is level 58 now and I'm working on a Hunter alt named Bindinka. I am putting a lot of hours into this. Yeah, in the end its a pointless waste of time, other than being fun and entertaining. Its also keeping my mind off problems that I feel helpless to solve. I mean, I know what the problem is in the world and I know what the answer is, but I dont know how to get myself or other people moving in that direction without a major fucking currency crisis and so until that happens fuck it I'm playing WoW.

World of Warcraft

2007-09-18T06:58:00.001-07:00

Has taken over my life. I dont know if that is good or bad. It is definitely keeping my mind off all the badness in the real world. I am enjoying the social aspects of the game, and leveling my character up to be able to use better equipment and fight in the more difficult dungeons. I have hardly watched any tv, read any news, or done much anything other than play WoW since I got the game about 3 weeks ago. My friend Dave can be blamed for all this of course lol.

If you are into this sort of thing ....

My Character is currently a level 40 tauren warrior on the Laughing Skull realm which is a PvP (player vs player) realm - I only chose this realm because my guild (my friend Dave and other friends) are on this realm and leveling a character up on a PvP realm can be both challenging and frustrating at times (high level alliance players sometimes just kill you on sight while you are questing!). Since I hit 40, I've got my character all loaded up with the new stuff that you can do at level 40 which includes a Kodo (big lizard) mount to ride on (and make travel around the world 60% faster) and plate armor. I am also now beginning to get into the PvP thing and learn how to take down other players. Payback time hehe :)

What about oil? Meh what about it. It's going up. Is civilisation still going to collapse? Probably. Tomorrow? Could do. In the meantime, since I am burned out on trying to destroy the money system and solve humanity's accounting problems at the moment, I think I will play some more WoW and keep working for my life-enabling real world central bank tokens as well.

Hott Fuzz - Fun flick

2007-08-09T21:09:00.000-07:00

Acquire it and enjoy ;)

Sad use of excessive force / police misconduct in Vernon

2007-08-08T19:46:00.000-07:00

This kind of shit makes me sick. Where have we gone wrong that this bullshit crap passes for policing? Our society is so weak now that we delegate the monopoly of the use of force to fuckers like this. It makes me want to just go berserk and do something really crazy to put an end to it. But then I'd be just as bad as them. Instead I think I'll keep working on shutting down the systems that guarantee them a paycheck.

NOT Moving to TO.

2007-08-03T17:41:00.000-07:00

Forgot to update my millions of readers - yeah no ... Toronto not happening. Got declined at the one place I saw that was acceptable, affordable and in the right area (saw a bunch of other shit too, saw sooo many micro-sized-overpriced-condos and got over that shit after wasting a month on it). So ... fuck Greenwin Property Managment, and fuck Toronto. I was ready to commit over $17,000 to them, and should have had no problem with my employment history. But my 2005 bankruptcy was enough for them to say no thanks. Maybe it was just not meant to be. I mean seriously if I'd been accepted I'd have moved to TO already and everything would be totally different for me. I wouldnt be stockpiling cash because my raise would have been going directly into the greater rent. My schedule with junior would be all fucked up, and I'd be working in the office daily. And well, none of that is going to happen.

For now, at least, I'm just gonna try and stay here in my Burlington flat. I have to resolve a parking-fee-bait-and-switch dispute with the landlord. I'll probably just bend over, lube up, and accept what I have coming for that. Then once that is out of the way I can hopefully negotiate with them on some rental terms that are closer to what they are advertising for joe-buttfuck-off-the-street $950 including utes and a parking space (parking for a year anyway). Also I am currently subscribed to a seemingly grandfathered unlimited bell DSL plan at this address that I abuse the hell out of which doesn't seem to be available to new customers so if I move I will be paying for bandwidth out the wazoo. And the wazoo is just too beaten up already lollerz.

OpenID

2007-08-03T17:35:00.000-07:00

Go to myopenid.com and sign up for one, right now. Thank you.

Now you will have a single-sign-on and universal ID, and you can go log into this cool website jyte.com .

Also, I think I am never writing a normal user registration system again, ever. I think that I will tell you that you can log in with your openid, and if you dont have an openid to go to myopenid or any other trusted openID provider and freakin get one.

And the first app I want to make is a trust network where you establish trust and relationships with people by actually doing something for them. I can make websites and code db applications and fun stuff like that. I hate to cook. Lets find a way to work together so your website gets made and I get some nice meals. Examplebam.

Anyhoo, check out that jyte thing anyway. I think you can do it without openid, but seriously, openid is cool.

Oil hits record intraday high

2007-08-01T08:12:00.000-07:00

And the day is just getting started, but the old $78.40/bbl is toast, and we're working with $78.56 now, up on news (supposedly anyway) of oil stockpile drawdowns. Lets see how things pan out over the rest of August.

Explosive 9/11 Analysis

2007-07-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

Torin Wolf, decorated Iraq war vet and demolitions expert, tells it how it is in Austin last month. The article gives an overview of his presentation. Also linked in there is a photoset that clearly illustrates how the core-supported antennae on top of tower 1 starts to move before the rest of the tower begins visibly falling (compare frames 6 and 8 in photoshop!). Subtle but significant.

Original Artworks

2007-07-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

If anyone of an artistic pursuasion reads this, I am asking for a small contribution in the form of some small artsy graphic image. It can be of anything tasteful, probably should be 256x256 pixels or thereabouts and the purpose of it will be to be used in a small software project I want to make. The software will overlay a serial number onto the image, and then digitally sign it. Then people can join a website and be granted title to hold one of these digital collectibles. Not sure yet what would get you bestowed with one, but it would probably be something silly and fun. And then the digital collectible can be transferred to any other user of the system by its current title-holder.

So yeah, little pretty original works of art, funny, silly, whatever tasteful. I'll be happy to post any submissions. Software will be open source. :)

Cdn dollar up vs US

2007-07-06T10:13:00.002-07:00

First of all, yes, I am a bad blogger. I dont post often enough, with links often enough. I can't really offer a good excuse .... off the top of my head, just been busy thinking about other things than writing here. Will try to get out of that funk and post my zany ideas and musings.

At any rate, the Canadian dollar is up over USD$0.95 which is apparently a 30 year high. I just like the round numbers. And yeah, I know, I bought my gold at the wrong time, at least for having bought it with CAD$. The price is pretty much the same in terms of USD but the CAD has increased in value in comparison by about 10% since then so the oz I bought for about $800 can be bought for about $720 now. D'oh. I'm long. Real long. haha.

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

2007-05-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

So, all you defer-to-authority types can just shut the f@#$ up now and go have a read from your preferred horses-mouths.

Neato wifi thinger

2007-05-30T04:53:00.000-07:00

I think I need to get hardcore. Hardcore like the guys who bring us this toy
Hardcore making use of resources that are just sitting around.

The plan is still a go

2007-05-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

I dont know why I put that "Burn the cities to the ground" tag when I'm going to be in one. I must have been in a weird mood. Really, I'll be living in the heart of the city -- so dont burn it just yet. My 60 days notice was given on the 1st.

Looking at condos is frustrating because you are dealing with real estate agents. The best thing to do is pick an agent and go see a whole bunch of places. Unfortunately, you will waste a lot of time because you dont know you hate a place until you are standing inside it, unless you have a floorplan to use your imagination with. Unlike with apartment hunting, getting floorplans for condos can be impossible. If the building is still selling units, then they'll have floorplans on their websites. But as soon as the developer is done selling one building they'll pull those floorplans. And the agents dont have them either. So you end up going to places and walking in, and walking right back out sometimes. Everyones time gets wasted, but this is how the real estate system works. I've seen probably about 10 places so far and only a couple I would consider acceptable. The rest were unsatisfactory for various reasons. I have a sort of exacting criteria at this point. I'm also focussing on cityplace since it seems to have different units coming up periodically for rental, its walking distance from the office, and the amenities are nice including 100mbps (supposedly) internet access included with the suites.

And I still have the Topaz. Its still busticated, and its still for sale. I placed an ad on kijiji for it. Maybe someone will buy it. Also my Dad says he'll give me his old car. Hard to pass up a deal like that. We'll see if he really means it soon enough. But first I need to get specific model info and get an insurance quote. Not sure if I'll even want to own a car in Toronto, though most of these condo rentals come complete with a parking space.

Will update again maybe a little sooner next time!

Work, crazy busy

2007-04-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

It's been too long, but a little update here. I've been crazy-busy with work, bossman even asking me to work extra despite the fact that secretly I'm already working extra without them knowing. D'oh. Well, I'll be getting a $500 (yes, money sucks, welcome to Canada though, you need money to live here) per month raise, NET (after tax) because I havent asked for a raise in a long time and now I want to move to TO and rent a luxury condo for a year and be within walking distance of the office and also be close to all the activity that happens in the city. The burbs is a suckfest and I think I'll like the city better. Ideally I'd have my own plot of land out in the middle of nowhere yet somehow have high speed internet access out there. Until I can figure that out, I think I'm going to go the other way, get right into the thick of it. Anyway so I'll roll that raise right into the condo rental, pay a sick amount in "rent" but get a lot of benefit out of it, and my net money situation shouldnt change much. Then later if I move somewhere cheaper all of a sudden I'll have more money yay. But right now, what would I do with the extra money anyway? May as well try to live in the lap of luxury for a little while before it all falls apart. Seems to be a lot of condo rentals in new buildings, methinks despearate flippers trying to hold onto their shirt with some rental income. Oh also, my car is in a bad way after I slipped on ice and hit the curb. Not going to pay the repair bill. Will just try to sell it as is or drive it until that wheel falls off. Ha. Ramblerant concludes.

OuiSouk and jQuery

2007-03-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

My Sister needed a website, to sell her dreadlocks. Being the nice brother that I am, I set her up a site pro-bono, and put about bunch of time into it. Of course a good chunk of that time was me getting the photoshop stuff right, learning the API for jQuery, and figuring out the paypal integration, but the rest was all sweat and coding. And now, you can choose colors in a very jQuery'ian way w00t. Check it out

Bacon fat.

2007-02-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

I made a bacon fat Candle. I just did it on an impulse because after I had poured my filtered bacon fat into my filtered bacon fat bowl in the fridge, I noticed there was still a few drips in my filtering cup. So I made a little thing out of alumnium foil to hold some fat and a wick of a small bit of paper towel rolled up and then I lit it and it burned for a surprisingly long time for some drippings that were left in the cup!

Of course I took a video.

Overview of USD situation

2007-02-16T10:57:00.000-08:00

A reasonable synopsis I'd say.

Defensibility of a fortified city state

2007-02-16T05:39:00.000-08:00

One might argue that the fortified city state was obsoleted with the invention of gunpowder. But I say nay, for if the projectile weapons cannot reach their targets, they are of little danger.

Enter the MTHEL - Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser. It keeps a laser painted on incoming targets and destroys them. Just what I've been looking for.

I suspect I'll be building my own, using the vast resources (*cough*) of the Global Mayhem Institute, and having proof of concept is lovely. With it we can take down incoming artillery shells, mortar shells, ballistic missiles, aircraft, ground based vehicles, and more.

The next biggest threat will be nano-weapons. We'll need countermeasures for those as well. Something to think about.

Buying Gold

2007-02-07T12:23:00.000-08:00

I bought some gold. I have never bought gold for myself before. I did not buy some shitty jewelery, no, I bought a 1 oz RCM gold wafer.

:D

The price was CAD$797.50 at The Coin & Currency Exchange in mississauga which is a slight premium over the futures market spot price. Given that the spot price is in USD ($653), today the direct converstion price (todays CAD forex rate was 0.8449) would have been about $772. However, given that I bought a single (troy) ounce in CAD, from a dealer that was keeping it in stock, I guess I can understand paying a 3.3% premium. It was a much better price than either TD or RBC banks would sell it for (they have extra fees and shit, idiots), and the same as bordergold.com's price for the same thing (their current gold retail prices here: http://www.bordergold.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=29).

So .... why buy gold? I had some cash lying around and was afraid it'd depreciate against itself too fast. Or that I would spend the money on something I didnt need. I have to face it, theres no toy that I _need_ to buy right now. I'd like a big LCD TV, and a torch welding setup, and a big pouding stereo, and an air compressor, and ... and ... annnndddd ... But I dont need any of that stuff. So instead of letting the cash sit around devaluing, I figured I'd buy somethign that is likely to increase in value, and very, very unlikely to decrease. I guess its a little bit of speculation on my part, and a bit of inflation hedging. I guess I could have opened an ING savings account, but golly that wouldnt be any fun. I never thought I'd spend $800 on a little chunk of metal hahaha but here I am. ;)

Ed Brown in New Hampshire

2007-02-05T17:52:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I didnt find out about this Ed Brown story until a couple days ago, but I didn't. Its been going on since the end of his trial sometime in January I think. He is a tax-protester and refuses to pay the income tax based on his assertion (and seeming fact) that there is no actual law compelling the payment of income tax. Ed is holed up with supporters in his compound. He expects it to end Waco Style but the authorities are just going to wait him out. Dunno how that will go. Theres also a blog following it too.

The film "America From Freedom to Fascism" by Aaron Russo discusses these tax issues and some other interesting things. Great film worth watching. Buy or download it today!

Global Mayhem Institute

2007-02-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

Here at the Global Mayhem Institute, we aim to give every-day people the tools they need to pursue total world domination. 2007 Classes offered by the Global Mayhem Institute are listed below:

9/11 Studies
Capital Flow Dynamics
False Flag Protocols
Introduction to Propaganda
Advanced Propaganda Techniques
The Art of Central Banking
Systemic Control via Central Banking
Food Supply Dominance
Infrastucture Sabotage Methodologies
Population Pacification Techniques
Approaches to Controlled Environmental Degredation
Problem, Reaction, Solution
Energy Resource Hoarding
Engineering Monetary Deflation

Contact us today to find out how we will put your CAD$1Million+ donation to good use. Or Enroll now, and start your career in mayhem.

Interesting comment buried under a post on Mish's blog

2007-01-29T09:55:00.000-08:00

Joe (Bubblemaniac), in a comment under a post on Mish's blog writes something very interesting. If you've read the Archive you know I am myself confused over what is coming. There are just so many factors. I've taken it as my underlying assumption that all these people who have been shoehorned into houses must simply be made to lose any equity they've gained in them and be forced to default on the loans so that they no longer own them. I dont think banks really want to own houses though, but I presume many corporations could spring up in the aftermath that specialize in finding ways for people to stay living in the home they are in, albiet by paying rent or some other scheme. Its important to remember that during the GD the currency was still backed by gold. Now we are globally pure fiat. Joe:

An Inflationary Depression era is what I see for the K-Winter Cycle in the U.S.

The Emerging Markets will experience better times economically as they shift alot of their markets slowly away from the U.S. Market especially as the U.S. consumer led economy fails to deliver like it has in the past.

As this occurs over time, there will be a greater need and focus by the Average American "consumers" to save and limit their excesses (of course coupled with higher interests rates). Limiting their excesses will occur due to the inflationary aspects from higher costs of living related to stagnant incomes, languishing assets prices (jhomes than no longer just go up), weakening currency, and the debt load withdrawl syndrome.

I do believe that interest rates could and would remain low for the Average American Consumers if they could continue to suck up more debt, but I think that the U.S. Consumer Credit Bubble is nearing an end and the shift will occur Overseas as new consumers from the various Emerging Markets come on stream to replace the tired American Consumers.

Once the nail is driven into the coffin (so to speak) on the American Consumer, then there will be no reason for us to have low interest rates here in the U.S. and they will simply go away. These higher rates in and of themselves will compound the effect longer term and the shift will become more dramatic over time.

These Credit Bubbles are like living creatures that need to survive and morph and mend to their environments accordingly to ensure their survival however or whereever that may be.

Basically I read this to suggest that the USA will be third-world-ified through continued (hyper?) inflation of the money supply such that rising costs of living take up a growing proportion of relatively stagnant take-home wages. House prices may very well continue to rise but this time not due to lowered interest rates, credit standards and exotic mortgages creating more demand for housing; but instead they'd be rising as a direct result of inflation. This way there will be very few individuals that can actually own homes, instead they'll all be renting (forever) from the companies that will have the means to take title to the homes.

Now the next question is this: If there is going to be hyperinflation in the USA, what role will the proposed North American Union and "Amero" currency have to play, if any? Is hyperinflation of USD and CAD the means by which the "Amero" would become appealing to the people? Sure why not. I think that'd push me over the edge though. I dont think I would accept Amero. Maybe join a secession movement or something and go underground. I dont know. I dont like the way things seem to be going in the world. I'm reading too much about Iran/month-of-March. Of course _last_ year there was a lot of Iran/end-of-March talk too.

The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter

2007-01-26T11:32:00.000-08:00

This is fun ... Over 16 lenders kaput ... this is just getting started (I began tuning in earlier this week when it was at 12)

Quick Update

2007-01-23T10:37:00.000-08:00

Since I havent written in a while, I felt compelled to just make a note of what all has gone on. Will try to keep it non-rambly and concise. Lets see, I've been reading a lot of Mish's blog and its comments over the past couple weeks. Interesting stuff there. Mish still thinks that a big deflation is coming. I am not sure what to think, though I believe the loose credit is going away along with people's ability to pay it down. If credit dries up, then logically there should be monetary supply contraction. We'll see ... My own local reasearch consists solely of keeping tabs on the real-estate section of the paper that comes on Saturday.

What else, I helped my friend get her car back from the impound. Some state agent had taken issue with her regulatory compliance and ordered the vehicle seized. She got it sorted and I drove her over there :)

I went to Costco the other day too, no hassles this time. Of course this time I was with someone that had a current membership and wasnt going around taking pictures of pricing.

Jeff and Alex are moving out to Victoria BC tomorrow. Yeah tomorrow. Well we're all going to be going over the next few years. Jeff just wanted to get over there and get some work, he wasnt happy with what he was finding over here. We had a nice dinner at Swiss Chalet on Saturday and then Alex, myself and Andrew went and played laser-tag at this lazermania place in Hamilton (unfortunately quite ghetto-tastic), but it was a nice sendoff anyway. I hope they do ok out there.

I'm really looking forward to getting out of Ontario and out west myself. Not sure if I'll make it all the way to the coast though -- I might get stuck in Nelson or similar. I do after all need to begin scouting for the location of my future autonomous region slash fortified city state.

Car is still running. Put some oil into the engine the other day. Bought a sewing machine. Boiled eggs today for lunch. Mmm. Yeah I know like this is soooo interesting. Hehe. Well laterz.

History of Interest (Usury)

2007-01-07T13:11:00.000-08:00

Because some people forget that money does not beget more money all by itself.

The article fails to discuss the role of the currency source issuer, typically the central bank, however it still serves useful to understand why the charging of interest on loans of money is unfounded where the charging of interest on loans of cattle or seed can be logically supported.

I am not entirely opposed to the notion of charging interest on money loans that are lent by private individuals. It is the loaning of money at interest by the central bank who is the source of all currency that creates the big systemic problem. Of course to the usurers, this is not a problem, just a way of life.

9/11 Truth

2006-12-26T14:14:00.000-08:00

I try not to participate in September-the-eleventh related conversations for a few reasons, number one is that they are upsetting and number two is that I've spent way too much time on it and have yet to find any reason to change my opinion. I kinda wish I could find something but I can't. Anyway I jumped into the fray late on this thread over on SoS, though I probably should have not bothered. Then of course, having it on my mind again has found me spending hours today reading more stuff and looking at videos and things. Argh. Also I think I'm going to rewatch this episode of south park, since it talks a lot about this stuff and put some of the truth-seeker's questions out there to expose a lot of people to another side of the 9/11 story that does not see the light of day much in the MSM. Regardless of the comedic conclusion of the episode, the ongoing plug for 911truth.org via one of the characters T-shirts is important.

Vivid dream I amctually rememberd in some detail.

2006-12-14T06:44:00.000-08:00

This felt like the most vivid dream I can ever recall having in my life. I was not lucid, it was a dream i was not aware was a dream until I woke, and then I cried because I felt like I had been falling in love. I know the fact that I remember my dreams has everything to do with not smoking pot. Strange that. But fuck I take soooo long to fall asleep. Tradeoff. Hrm. Anyway there is no proof-reading of the following, it was typed as fast as I could. I'll reread it later and fix anything that is totally brutal.

-------

Strange dream house. there was the 3circles floor-plan, dome house with no real walls, open concept, with rooms divided by sheets etc. character in dream semed to be "girlfriends parents" for tht house. but that wasnt the house they normally lived in. kitcehn was so real. i touched the counter top. the old style dial-operated microwave (oddly in adjacent room, i think at a mini-bar or something) was so real

"girlfriend" lived with parents in her own room of ther house. house itself was promintently weird in dream with abasement that you could not get out of unless you followed the two different staricases out of it in the right pattern or something. I dunno I was rescured out of it by "girlfriend". girl was really into me, we were both hitting it off really well. she was pretty. she just got her dgree in anesthesiology. that was part of the dream, her actual degree documentation arriving. she was so proud and i was proud of her.

we hugged in the dream at a point when we were outisde the house near the drivewyay or curb. we were in her room which was heavily ornamented with pretty nicknacks.

in one corner was what she refreered (later) to as old british tv characters (some kind of toy action figure things/model things on a table in the corner by the window). in her room we talked about getting togethr on "tuesday" morning. but I said evening b/c we both had to work. she agrreed that me coming to her work might not look good. i suggested that on "tuesday" we could watch a movie. I think we both said "watch a movie" or something. i told her I had acouple i hadnt watched, like art school confidential and click.

later we went to some club where we were sitting at a table. after some of the people at the bench/table beside us were kicked out for not having id (and being obviously like 12!) (and the female, long brown hair manager who was asking them to leave picked up and looked at my cellphone (which was the crappy blue bellone) she wanted to make sure i didnt have a picture phone which for some reason i had the memory of having been kicked out of the place or something once before for just such a transgression. at any rate the 'girlfireld' and isettled down onto the bench behind us and then she sent a photo (acutally a 2x2 composite image or 4 images) to my virgin phone .. i whispered the last 4 digits into her ear. then we looked at the pictureas on my phone. one was of ornaments in her room (topleft) (i was using buttons on the phone to zoom in and move to each picture in the composite image), i cant rememebr what the others were though one looked like a toilet cam from overhead kind of pic. Thats all i remember.

Costco Window Shopping Nightmare

2006-12-12T08:37:00.000-08:00

I decided to check out Costco to see if I want to renew my old membership. Guy at the door lets me in with both my backpack and my expired membership. Cool. Anyway, I plan to take short videos of my adventure, mostly to note the prices of some things I might actually buy to see if it is worthwhile. I observe many things. At 0:33 you hear the end of my coversation with a guy who had questions about DVD-R vs DVD+R. Then a lot of product and pricing. At 3:06 in the video there is a lady who wants to see what the spoons look like (disposable plastic spoons I believe) and so she proceeded to open the box. Shortly after that I was asked buy some guy (who seemed to work there) not to take pictures. Then a little while later some other lady (also who worked there) came up and asked me not to take pictures and wanted to see my old membership card. She told me that I'd have to have my backpack inspected on the way out. I said I understand, no problem. When I go to leave my bag is quite thoroughly searched. I am followed out into the parking lot by a guy who I had seen in the store. I think he was following me in the store. Him and another guy tried to approach me as I was getting to my car but I just got in and drove off. It was an overall suck-ass experience, being hassled and shit. I do (did?) plan to buy a bunch of stuff there. Anyways, you dont get to see much of the exciting stuff because I'm retarded and not recording at those times mostly. You do see the last few seconds (sort of cuz its too jerky) of my bag search on the way out. She asking me about the shit in my bag too. Why do you have flyers from canadian tire. Do you have like a walkman in here? And I'm just like I dunno .. theres stuff in there. Whatever she can look through it all. Its basiclaly a manpurse. How do you like having your manpurse sifted thru buy some dink at a Costco? Yeah I'm stealing your precious bulk merchanidise in my little backpack .. grumble. Anyway, look at that advil liquigels.

Havent felt like writing

2006-11-25T06:02:00.000-08:00

Just writing to say I havent felt much like writing as of late. Sorry. Not like anyone reads this anyway haha.

I disconnected Cogeco internet service. They suck. See my thread on DSLreports.

Surround sound not working out

2006-11-06T15:00:00.000-08:00

Forget it. I dont like the way the music sounds. I'm returning it. I can put the stereo off until I can afford to do it right.

Success .. oh but a dream.

2006-11-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

I got the Federal resever system abolished, and delegated the production of money and the interest charged on it if any to the marketplace. Oh right no I forgot, that was my "I'm not a slave any more" dream.

Surround sound

2006-11-05T10:46:00.000-08:00

So I'm a total lamewad .. i never had a surround system before, but today I decided that I wanted one -- plus I want a powered sub on my little home stereo setup for the PC and for my music. Well, so I decided to get a Logitech z-5500 Sub and satellites set. I got it all set up, and then realized I'm going to need a new soundcard to watch movies in surround. But I can run it in a streo mode where it can have 3 stereo devices hooked up. Well I just need one, but whatever. So I get that going, then I realize, OMFG this setup has LOUSY mid-range response. I mean freakin lousy, attenuated, wheres the fuckin guitar, or the midriff, oh yeah I can hear it if I listed fecking real closely like! Ok, so I'm a little disapointed since I laid down over $320+tax for this. Well, I was _VERY_ happy with it watching a movie like "Monster House", but what can I do about music ... So I tried using the stereo X 2 mode where it uses both front and rear speakers to do L+R, so 2xL and 2XR ... and I decided to hook up my older, larger than the bundled satellites, two way speakers from my old panasonic set. Those speakers are ok, I just could never get enough bass out of them. But now I just want them to handle midrange ... and they do OK :) So things are decent now. The only one problem is once I have a nice surround sound card to run the 6 channel setup, I'm going to want to actually use the bundled rear-satellite speakers. At that time I'll probably have to rig up a switch to change the rear channel speakers between the old-good-mid-range-response speakers that I have up front and the rear satellites that I will mount above the sofa for watching movies. But I think that will get the most out of this thing, as best as I can do without having spent the real big bucks on a fully separate system. Also with this slight bit of cheese that I'm doing here I dont have any control over the frequency ranges being send to my mid-range speakers, and I'm sure I could get them to handle some more slightly lower frequencies than what the built-in satellite speaker crossever will send out. Ah well. Silly impulse buy I guess but at least now I have some bass and distortion-free loudness here. Really worth the money? I dont really feel like it, plus having to engineer the living room to accomodate the giant sub was non-trivial. Bah, its in and it works and it DOES (now with the mids) sound better than the old panasonic unit I was using before.

Oh PS the Cogeco BT issue persists. I dont know what more can come of trying to get them to admit to it. I am thinking of just upgrading to business service, then chewing them out when it doesnt work for my business needs and tell them they can fix it or I am cancelling.

BBR Crossposted response in new Torrent Throttling thread!

2006-11-01T09:10:00.000-08:00

Over on DSLr/BBr, in response to averagecdn who writes:

I realize that this topic has been discussed to the point of sickness. However I am actually looking for a way to test the theory. I have been on MNSI(local DSL Provider) and have worked with Bell and neither have been as slow as cogeco for uploads. Now I realize that there are some differences in service and technology but it was pretty blatant that there was a difference in speeds. There must be a conclusive way to tell if traffic shaping is being done on the cogeco network.

Do you think there is any chance that cogeco will admit to traffic shaping and if they do not is there anything the CRTC can do. Like does cogeco not have to disclose that information to there users?

I've posted:

When putting in my 3rd network tech support ticket I asked them to have the tech call me. He did and we had an interesting conversation.

The crux of it is that cogeco will do what cogeco needs to do in order to deliver reliable service to its customers, in terms of what most customers expect. Certain network usages of a minority of users can not be allowed to disrupt the online experience of other users. He said he could not go into detail about it. He did mention shaping, but when I asked more on that he backtracked and said it wasnt for him to discuss. He would not, however, deny that traffic shaping is happening within cogecos network. That, so far, is the best confirmation that I've been able to get. He said that whatever is going on is going to go on for a long time.

You want an easy test? You'll need a remote computer with a good internet connection that you can control and send things to. For this I rented a VPS from one of the many inexpensive VPS providers, sub $20 per month for one with the co I pay. PM me for more details if you like. The test I run is simple and pretty fool-proof as far as I'm concerned. Upload a 18MB .avi file via FTP to that computer. Then upload it with BT to that computer. Locally, BT upload tests are conducted using Azureus to seed the .avi file and Azureus's built-in tracker to keep it nice and controlled and private. Remotely, to receive the file for the BT test, I use rtorrent which is based on lib_torrent and ncurses. You can interactively control it via SSH. During testing, the only peer to connect to the Azureus tracker and join the 'swarm' is the remote VPS. At the moment the remote peer connects, the local seed should max its upload.

The consistent result of this testing has shown that on Cogeco, FTP works (70kb/s), and BT is broken (10kb/s), while on DSL, FTP and BT both work fine (both do 70kb/s). One note is that rtorrent does not support BT protocol encryption, but we shouldnt have to encrypt things for them to work anyways.

Everything about my cogeco connection works fine except for BT (and possibly other p2p stuff that is upload-heavy, but thats not my focus), and yet, like magic, if I plug my router into the DSL line and then stop/start torrents BT starts uploading properly right away.

You are not the only one experiencing this issue with Cogeco. I know of at least two other registered users on this BBR who are experiencing the same ACUTE inability to upload using certain protocols (like BT, encrypted or not) on top of TCP. So there are at _least_ 4 of us here. And meanwhile, many others (such as urbanriot), the vast majority it would seem, have no apparent problem to upload on BT.

There is only one line of devices that I am aware of that are marketed as being able to specifically target and disrupt BT traffic encrypted or not, and that is the NetEnforcer from Allot Communications. If Cogeco is NOT using this, then they've managed to roll their own solution to accomplish the same thing. On you. And on me.

Cogeco needs to come clean on this.

Compare Cogeco to DSL, and watch the lameness fly.

2006-10-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

Click to Enlarge !

I wanted to test seeding a video file from my home PC to my VPS, using DSL for part of it, and Cogeco for part of it. Cogeco is still crippled. I called support and got a ticket put in. I will call back on Tues or Wednesday to get the results of the ticket. I predict that the ticket will have disappeared with no new notes, and the tech support people will continue to tell me they dont support bittorrent. I dont want "support", I want reliable end-to-end TCP streams regardless of what type of data they carry. Once again, FTP works fine to this FTP on Cogeco. Only BT uploading is broken. Click the graphic above to see the result of this most recent test.

The saga continues mothertrucker. Cogeco vs Bell -- the final Upload. The bytestream champion. The TCP ninja foo.

2006-10-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

Yeah its definitely cogeco. Hands down, no doubt in my mind any more. Or something cogeco specific if cogeco isnt doing it maliciously, then its out of incompetence. I swear to God.

Today, I downloaded some torrents, tv shows like I usuaully do. Doing em in the morning now because of the suck-factor I've seen lately. Anyways, uploads are pathetic. Maybe I can upload at 20kbps if I'm lucky. And I'm just seeding at this point because the downloads have finished.

Hrmm ... I think I'll try sympatico DSL ... put an order in for the service the other day ... activate date is the 24th ... but I do happen to have this old speedstream 5260 DSL modem that Bell never asked for it back when I had DSL in TO a couple years ago ... plugged it into the phone jack -- lights came on green. thats a good thing ... got my pppoe info from their call center, entered it into the WRT .... activated the service .... loaded up Azureus again with all those seeding torrents that just couldnt upload on cogeco.

And .... I'm uploading at 71kbps constantly, and it took about 20 seconds from starting the torrents to jumping up to this upload speed. That is what _SHOULD_ happen. That is what DOES NOT happen on Cogeco for me.

So are COGECO going to recognize that THEY have a problem now? I doubt it. And in the end if they dont, I'll just have to cancel that broken internet service. But I'd really like to not. I think it might actually be cool to multi-home and double(ish) my bandwidth and have two broadband ISPs!

Cogeco fuck suck and blow

2006-10-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

The BT upload problem persists. Fuck Cogeco. I'm getting DSL, and will run them side by side. And if it turns out that cogeco is the mighty suck-force in the universe, then I might disconnect them. The fuckin stupid thing is, cogeco is really working wonderful for anything that isnt P2P uploading. I can download on p2p fine, in proportion to my ability to upload. I assume that if I could actually upload faster, my downloads would be faster, which is why I'm not concerned about downloading until I know that uploading is working right first. Fuck. Another bill.

Hey maybe I should get one of those linksys RV042 things and load-balance my mulitple broadband connections. Meh its CAD$200 I can afford not to spend.

Experimenting with a throttled BitTorrent on Cogeco

2006-10-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

Note: This is cross-posted from a thread I had started on broadbandreports.com

Fiddle dee dee. Or some such. And I'm sorry to drag this back up, but just wanted to post the result of a couple little experiments.

First off, that one, happy, WORKING torrent situation I posted about on the 2nd is inexplicable. I've since NOT seen any kind of consistency, wtih uTorrent or other clients, although I have witnessed the occasional short lived burst of uploadability on some other torrents. It was really great to have uploading working for that one file, which happend to be a newly relesed episode of a popular live saturday night television show. I really was uploading at 60KB+/sec with one or two peers getting 25KB/sec+ from me consistently until the torrent finished.

But alas, somehow it was just this one torrent. The others I tried subsequently all crawled along with very sad upload speeds. I totally dont understand how once in a while it will talk to a peer properly and yet most of the time it (seems to) tries to go fast and it gets kicked back down by some 'mystery force'. The statistics graphs in Azureus or uTorrent both generally look like the Himalayas, peaks and valleys in a pattern, centered around 10 kbps. They get up to 15-20, and then back to 0 briefly. Up and down. Unless I limit my total outbound to anything under 10kbps, then it is like a flat line.

For my first experiment, I am using a VPS box that I rent from openhosting and have installed the rtorrent client there, so that I can hop on the same torrent on another computer on another ISP at the same time I'm getting it (trying to at least) on my cogeco connected computer. Last night, I downloaded a torrent of a popular animated tv show (featuring a fat kid and a jew among other characters) both from my peecee at home and on my VPS. The vps had no problem jumping nearly instantly to max out the soft-throttled upload I'd set, first 50kbps, then 100kbps, then 150kbps. Oh those peers were clamoring for all the data I could send it would seem. From my VPS. Same torrent from cogeco, well, seemed like the peers just didnt want to suck anything off me faster than say 3.2 kbps on average (this with 71kbps soft upload limit set in Azureus or uTorrent). It was really weak and I wanted those shows so when the VPS finsished getting them I aborted the one I was running locally and just sucked it down via FTP at 500kbps, but having to do that was lame.

Anyhow, today as another experiment, I tried to seed a torrent from my cogeco PC, just my cogeco PC seeding to my VPS. It should have been maxing the upload, but it crawled along at 3.2kbps upload. For good measure, I tried uploading the same freakin file via FTP to another directory on my VPS. Upload maxed at 75kbps or so, no problem. So I tried a different client again, BitComet this time. It seemed to slowly creep the upload bandwidth up, and it held stable around 9.5kbps, which is at least an improvement over the other clients. Interestingly, BitComet has a "minimum upload speed" option on a per torrent basis as well as the standard max upload speed. I set min upload speed to 60kbps on this torrent, and well, it didnt have much of an effect at all. The receiving end (my VPS) still only got 9.5kbps from the BitComet seed. I tried FTP again at that time and it had no problem eating up the available 65kbps of upstream that BitComent for some reason wouldnt/couldnt use. The VPS should have sucked up all my upstream, but that did not happen. (just using the VPS to download torrents, it has no trouble adhering to any bandwidth limits I set up, up to about 300kbps in both directions, so there are no VPS connectivity issues to come into play here.)

A third experiment run just from my local machine using Azureus and adjusting max upload speeds produces this very interesting graph when seeding:

Graph analysis and observations (lower portion is all I am concerned with since I'm just seeding here):

(click to enlarge to a imageshack hosted copy)

1) at 5kbps, uploading is uber-stable. Good.
2) with an increase to 20kbps we see an immediate spike, then mystery-effect "throttling" it down. We see the himalayas until the next change
3) change to 10kbps introduces stability. good.
4) reduce to 8kbps increases stability. good.
5) lets try 15kbps. similar pattern to 20kbps attempt, spiking, then throttling.
6) reduce to 12kbps, no change in peak-valley behavior.
7) reduce to 11kbps, again no change in peak-valley behavior
8) reduce to 10kbps, stability returns.
From this I must conclude that something is going on which is kicking upload speeds back down when they try to increase beyond a certain point. I can also conclude that the effect is much more pronounced when I set an upload limit higher than 10kbps.

It would appear that some mystical effect is affecting JUST BT (and almost but not quite 100% of the time, oddly, as evidenced by the abilty to upload for that saturday night tv show torrent), the effect happening for JUST ME, and a select few other subscribers it would seem, people who were running fine, then this started happening to them, and then it just doesnt-get-better-(TM). Also the problem just randomly happens to start up for ME after I decided to download (with corresponding maxed contantly 71kbps uploading for days on end) a few whole-season popular teevee shows and one or two whole-series teevee shows in a one month period. And to top it off the effect kicking in after a month of heavy up/downloading is supposed to be just a coincidence, and Cogeco is supposedly NOT responsible for this very, very odd behavior.

Its frustrating. I Will update with new future observations if there are any. And thanks to others for sharing theirs.

Art of Mark Bryan

2006-10-02T06:04:00.000-07:00

I really dig the artwork. Check it out. These are a few of my favs [images used without permission]:

Rummy
Dick
And the whole gang

Really you should visit the main site and go through all the galleries on the left, then go read about the artist

Combine Sharing

2006-10-02T05:56:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about the way we do things in our civilisation. It costs farmers a lot of money to finance equipment that sits idle most of the year. Big Agribiz makes sure they're planters and combines get used as much as possible, starting in the south and moving northward for planting and harvesting as the seasons for them start later as you move north. I was thinking, gee I wonder if independant farmers are able to do this so I googled "combine sharing" and it turns out that there is a whole new organization called MachineryLink that sprung up a few years ago centered around that idea. I think its a great idea, and I hope it continues to succeed.

Chicken Wings - I was so wrong.

2006-09-17T10:58:00.000-07:00

A while back with some friends I wondered out loud why you get served drumsticks with your chicken wings. I mean why do they call them "wings" when they include drumsticks? I didnt understand. I was convinced that the little drumsticks were part of the chicken leg. Well la dee da I'm a buffoon. See theres a single-boned part that connects between the shoulder and the elbow called the humerus. Thats the mini drumstick. Then next part, between the elbow and the wrist is the one with the two bones called radius and ulna. That two boned part was what I was thinking of when I ask for wings. Well, now I have no problem because they are both part of the wing! And so to Ken, Geoff, Ryan and Mike, I humbly concede my silly incorrectness.

Drivers shit

2006-09-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

I guess I should mention that I finally did all my drivers shit to get my sticker on my car so I dont get pulled over any more. $110 for that stupid ticket. $66 for an ancient Toronto bullshit parking ticket. $35 (and a waste of my time b/c I didnt know first time around to the office that I needed it) for an emissions test. $74 for a stupid sticker. Whats that run up to? $285 or so. Youch. Well now I'm ... I dont know what I am .. tired of living in fear.

Safe and efficient way to motorcycle? I like it.

2006-09-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

[Image used w/o permission from gizmag]
"Motorcycle with two front wheels and speed-variable wheeltrack"

This is cool http://www.gizmag.com/go/5943/:

August 3, 2006 This vehicle concept combines attributes of both two and four wheels together to enable a two wheeler that changes its wheel track according to its speed – at low speeds the two front wheels have a wide track which reduces with increased speed until the wheels are together. The idea behind the radical wheel arrangement is that it enables a motorcycle and rider to be fully enclosed and capable of supporting itself at standstill in order to create a low risk category vehicle. “Motorcycles are economic in terms of energy consumption, road usage and parking space,” says designer Haim Haleva from the College for Teachers of Technology in Tel Aviv. “The problem is that they are dangerous, because a small bump can become a severe accident. Every year throughout the world, thousands of two wheels riders pay a heavy price, sometimes losing their life because they have chosen an economical, fast and environmentally sound form of transport.” “If we could make two wheelers acceptably safe for the masses, we could solve many of the urban transport problems.” Extensive image library.

Paintballin

2006-09-04T09:25:00.000-07:00

My friend Mike was in town from Edmonton where he moved out to. Ken and Ryan and Mike and I got together last night to go paintballing and have a few drinks. Ken's house is in Guelph and "The Paintball Arena" is in Kitchener, the next town over. So a little bit of driving for me, no big deal. Well, ... usually. Anyhow we have a blast at paintball. I get butchered. I have about 8 or 9 nice welts ... feckin 4 of them in one 4x6inch area on my backside. Ouch. We played for about and hour and a half, reloaded ammo once courtesy of Mike and then when we were all out we called it quits and headed home.

And so we're driving along, puffing a little on the pipe, medical marijuana for the pain you know ;) and I'm driving and then we're stuck behind a cop. Yay. No big deal. I remark that it sucks being behind a cop, and its pointed out that its much better than being in front of one. Well ... haha .. what about being sandwiched? Turns out the vehicle behind me was also a cop, and thats not great with my expired '04 tags. Blah. So I'm stopped, pulled over and ... well, trying not to freak out as usual. Trying to remember all the stuff in that "BUSTED - The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters" film. I mean, I guess I'm getting used to police encounters. I've had enough of them that it's almost becoming routine. My heart is pumping at a more relaxed than usual for police encouters rate, just a little excited now. I just wish the state would get the fuck out of my life. Anyways, I _do_ give them reason to pull me over every time so I guess I can't complain -- I like to drive my car and so I should not give them excuses like expired tags, but I was doing so well at not getting pulled over for these really long stretches of time just by driving well. Anyways, suffice it to say this cop was questionably a nice cop. I say questionably because he at first said he pulled me over because my license plate was registered to a sunfire. I mean what the fuck. I've never had a sunfire. Fucking dyslexic cop maybe. Then he tried to say my insurance slip was expired. No it was not. Then he pointed out the epxired tag. Yay, you "GOT" me dude. Well, it was a $110 fine. So I saved money, like $80 I think by not doing it for a few years.

We get back to Ken's house, watch a little bit of Shatner getting roasted, then head to the bar for wings and a beer or two. Geoff met up with us at the bar, and we had a nice time, lots of laughs at my expense and all that, you know. ;) Leaving the bar to head back to Ken's house again, Geoff peels out of the parking lot, and I do my best to catch up to him. Well, that attracted the attention of another cop who just happened to be hanging out in the parking lot unbeknownst to me. Goddam it, I'm suddenly getting hassled again for the same stupid expired tag. Well, once this cop was satisfied that I'd already been fined once that same day for that same offence, he let me go about my stinkin business. Goddam it. And he forgot to give me back my insurance papers. Good thing I told him where I was going. Good thing I had to go out to the car to grab some herbs just as the cop was stopping by my parked car. He gave me my papers back, so I would regain my legitimate person status. Yay me.

I think I'm gonna go out on Tuesday and buy that sticker.

3 years old

2006-09-04T09:21:00.000-07:00

Well, she's 3 this week. Its amazing how the time just blends together as it rolls on. She is so much more capable now than ever before and its wonderful to see her doing more and more things and becoming a real person. She had a lovely party on Saturday at her Mom's house and isn't she just so pretty?

Gun safety

2006-08-19T09:59:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this tidbit on gun safety. This guy got lucky. The author suspects he accidentally put twice as much powder into the round that caused this. Oops.

At this point I gather up the pieces and attempt to make sense of this catastrophe. It's not good. My second shot violently exploded, splitting the cylinder into three pieces and causing chambers one, two and three to be blown wide open. The shock caused a chain reaction, immediately setting off rounds three and four. The bullet from round three was recovered on the floor near my feet. It was severely mangled because it's exit path was partially blocked by the frame of the gun. Unsupported by the cylinder, the brass case blew open as if it were made of paper. Luckily, both bullet and case didn't fragment too badly and perforate surrounding humans, including me. Round four went off cleanly down range, though not through the barrel. Round five was somewhat damaged - the bullet was pressed into the case by about one-eight of an inch. A little more and it may have detonated as well. Round six was in perfect condition.

The rest of the gun was equally distorted. The top strap was nearly separated from the frame. Seams between the various metal parts were wide and uneven. I thought "Damn, it's completely destroyed".

Excerted from http://iris.nyit.edu/~bithead/anaconda/story.html

Pictures from original site (lots more and higher res): http://iris.nyit.edu/~bithead/anaconda/

I havent been posting much lately. Will try to do something about that.

Taxes Bullshit

2006-07-17T18:25:00.000-07:00

GST Rate went down by 1% ... thats a good thing right? Not so fast. Income tax went up. Motherfuckers. I take home about $10 less per month now. To get that back in GST savings means I'd have to piss out $1000 on GSTaxable chinese merchandise or whatever per month, which I dont. I bet I dont even spent $200 per month on GST taxable crap.

I think I'm going to tell my boss that he needs to just do whatever he needs to do to put my net pay back exactly where it was. Pay cut my shiny metal ass.