Ratsofrass

Man, I never should have eaten that package of Kraft Dinner, about a month ago. It’s like getting back on drugs man, I’ve eaten two more boxes of the stuff since then! (Okay, not like drugs, but why would I want KD three times in one month after not having it for 5 odd years?)

Perhaps it’s just that KD has been in the news. Today, I see that Kraft Canada has been “cease and desisting” a local teacher trying to teach students how to eat less crap - ie there are alternatives to KD. He called his program “Kick the KD”, with a logo that is certainly evocative of the KD brand. While I have no problem with the company protecting it’s brand, I do have a problem with the media trying to make a story out of nothing. Kraft asks teacher to stop using their brand marks in advertising his course. Teacher complies. This is not a story.
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The government wants to make the long form part of the census optional - an important enough issue that I sat down and wrote a letter to my MP, despite being at work late again. I’ll let the letter speak for itself:

Dear Mr. Obhrai,

As a voter in the riding of Calgary East, I wanted to drop you a line regarding the current government’s plan to make the long form census optional. I do not support the optional aspect. I work as a data analyst, working with statistics and having a good knowledge of general statistical theory. I agree with those statisticians who have come out saying that results from the proposed census changes would result in bias data. The results coming from this proposal would not be as accurate - in fact I believe that the results would for the most part be ignored by most groups outside the government - leaving the government using flawed data to make important decisions about where to allocate our money. I feel this is an important decision - I rarely have offered anyone in any government my opinion on anything, yet I do so today because I feel the government is about to make a mistake that will affect pretty much every program the government rolls out to help its citizens.

I don’t buy the government’s argument that there have been many complaints - if so, please provide evidence to back this up.

What I would like to see is a review of the questions being asked on the long form census - if we need to remove some questions deemed objectionable by the public, removal is a better option than making the whole long form optional. I feel an open debate where statisticians, policy makers and politicians among others can argue the merits of the questions against the privacy of the citizens of this country would be more productive by far than what seems like an arbitrary move by the government to change the requirements for answering the long form census.

Thank you for your time,

Past Conservative voter, Calgary East.

So let’s pretend I was King of the World. One day, the people’s representative comes to me with a problem
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Highly recommended reading:

When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide.

I am not a huge music fan. I used to buy the occasional CD, occasional becoming even less so due to my frustration with a)Finding any music I liked b)Price of said music found. A good part of my old music collection is stuff that I recorded on radio or copied off of friends because I wasn’t going to pay for collections that were steaming piles of crap wrapped around one good song. It didn’t help that the only way I was going to find out about the crap was to buy the album, because I don’t listen to the radio - they are not going to play most of what I buy anyways. The last two CD’s I bought were from artists who directly burned their own stuff and collected all the profit as a result. Previous CD’s were from MP3.com - which was an early victim of the music industry’s heavy handed tactics to maintain control. (more…)

Another predicable boring election is over in Calgary - other than Helene Larocque being voted out of my former Ward, the rest of the results I mostly don’t care about. But there were some good signs - voter turnout up to 33%, still dismal but not the pathetic last election turnout of 20%.

The story of this election is that 19 year old Jeremy Zhao spending a total of $1853 gets 8007 votes (unofficial City of Calgary numbers) - good enough for 5th out of 9 candidates while Alnoor Kassam spends around $1.2mil and gets 35443 votes. Bronco still won by a large margin, at 128111 votes, 61% of the vote.

The big deal is, when you do the math, Alnoor spent a whopping $33.85 per vote received, Jeremy spend 23 cents per vote. Bronco comes in at $7.81 per vote - I am assuming here that he spent about a $mil for his campaign, and Alnoor was at $1.2mil for his campaign. Jeremy, as per his website is at $1853 - the only website I could quickly find his donator list and spending easily. It would seem Jeremy is the only one that gets that open accountability promises start with how you run your campaign.

Occasionally, a politician does something so monumentally stupid that with a single act, they kill any hope of their being elected. Sometimes they just do something to honk me off and permanently loose any chance of getting my vote. I don’t know quite where this falls yet.

I first heard of Alnoor from his attention grabbing posters at LRT stations talking about building west LRT now, not years from now. Smart move, promising LRT improvements and talking about it in the exact location where people would be sympathetic.

So I check out his web site Seems pretty reasonable, not too much detail at the time, but this was early in the campaign. Perhaps some reasonable alternative to vote for come election day.

Then I start hearing about his previous business dealings in Kenya - not exactly a shining “Business Leader”. Furthermore, his line on his site “A city is no different than a business: it has an annual operating budget of $2 billion, 12 thousand employees and 1 million customers.” doesn’t exactly strike me as very compassionate - so as a “business” should Calgary kick out anyone that is not paying there way in this city?

The final straw is he’s just honked me off by leaving a phone spam message on my answering machine, showing a total lack of respect for my private phone line, which I don’t care to have turn into an auditory spam repository like, say, email these days. If that’s how Alnoor runs things when he’s trying show how great he is, I don’t want to even contemplate how he’d be if he was running the city. As far as how big a mistake this is, well, then depends on how many phones he’s left his message on - anyone out there get one of these on their cell phone?

Yet another post on the C Trains. Here I am yet again on a packed train and lo, what happens as we hit the zoo stop - another train problem. This is like the third time - I’m beginning to suspect some bad train karma coming from that station. It’s the usual - door that won’t stay closed. You never heard about the last one because the operator got it closed in short order.

This time it’s a little different again. Trains were running late today - not like it happens all the time, but it is becoming more frequent these days. I didn’t even try to get on the first train downtown as it was packed already without me trying to squeeze on. The next train was possible to get on, but was packed by the time we got to the end of downtown, with all the people who had not been able to get on the previous train.

We get to the (cursed?) zoo stop and the train sits there. The usual “please stand clear of the open doors” announcement heralds the beginning of the problems. The usual play commences - operator comes down to see what is happening. I can’t really see what’s going on this time, but since I’ve seen it twice now I can only assume its some variant of door goes open / door goes closed. The operator goes back to his cab in front.

I expect the usual - cycle the door open lights, perhaps the power on the train again, but no - this guy has to subscribe to a different fixit camp. You know that standard technique to fix all things, if you be without tools, time or energy? Just give the item at hand a good wack and hope it fixes things. Well, this guy suddenly wrenches the train forward, and brings it to an equally quick halt, tossing us about inside like a Caesar salad. He didn’t even turn the light off on the doors first, which for veteran riders means get ready for the jolt that comes when the newer model of trains get going.

So I’m standing there pissed off - moving my sore shoulder about to assess the damage (no lawsuit this time) when the operator comes on and asks the people in the back by the possessed door to try it again. After a short pause, door lights go off and the train lurches forward.

I guess that old ‘whack the CD-ROM drive’ to get it reading again trick works on trains in some form too.

Last post here, I was witness to a C-train malfunction causing mayhem with the system. This time it was people breaking that leads to posting. Perhaps this will be a trend - every time I have a C-train story I post. I’m just glad not to be posting on that poor person that was pushed in front of a train - not something I ever need to see.
It was a late arrival at the station with a co-worker - just missed the previous train, but wasn’t in a particular big hurry at that point. When the next train arrives (not mine) some guy is blocking the door preventing it from closing. At first I think there is something wrong with the door (understandable considering my previous experience) then the C-Train operator comes over and goes in the train, ignoring the door entirely. Then I realize there is a guy seated just inside having a seizure of some sort. He didn’t seem in any immediate danger of dieing, but it was call the ambulance time and have him checked out. Awaiting the ambulance provided some side amusement. Watching people come madly sprinting up to the train and cram into whatever door was open at the time, then realize that they were going nowhere fast was amusing.
The paramedics arrive and check the guy out, then a couple go and get a stretcher as pictured. They carry the guy off the train onto the stretcher. He seemed okay, other than looking confused as to what was happening. What was interesting is that people were actually being courteous, trying to make room for the paramedics and get out of the way of their comings and goings. Nice to see some shreds of decency still exist in these parts. What else was interesting is that it only took 20 minutes from train stop to train resumption of service. Too bad it took the controllers over 15 minutes to get around to announcing that there was a delay.

I’ve been watching on the web cam at Glenmore and 14th on and off today as they build the last bit of road to switch the traffic over to the new lanes:

Should’ve taken more captures. Oh well. It is interesting to watch them build the road in a day. And they can’t sluff either being viewable on a web cam for everyone to see.

Okay, this isn’t exactly about two “cities”, Fort Saskatchewan (hens forth, “The Fort” as the locals like to abbreviate) is not exactly a city, but close enough when talking about “small cities” (15K as of 2006) compared to Sarnia, of around 75K.

We are talking about two places: one that acts as the regional focal point in south west Ontario, the other a suburban annex of Edmonton Alberta. The differences, me thinks, are more due to the suburbia effect.

To illustrate with pictures, here are what I feel are the four best pictures I took in each city:

the four best of Sarnia

the four best I took at The Fort

For Sarnia, I had a hard time picking four pictures. For The Fort, I had a hard time taking four pictures. The old part of the town seems to be dieing out , with what little charm there is mostly being around the river, and downtown, such as it is. The new developments are exactly what you would see in any new Calgary suburb: a wasteland of parking space with trademark stores and big box retailers to drive between. It is sad that in ten minutes of walking I passed four liquor stores, three fast food places and not a single restaurant. Then again, I had no business walking in that parking lot in the first place. The only thing I found of interest was this:

Calgary needs some of these rather than the flashing hand so you have an idea how many seconds before death cometh forth in the form of rumbling steel chariots to smote you down. But it certainly ain’t a pretty picture - just shows the same suburban character that you would see anywhere on the outskirts of any city here.

Sarnia had more places to eat than I could try within walking distance of my motel. The Fort had a bunch of franchise places, with a few restaurants in the downtown core. The one place I tried that looked at least somewhat promising was okay, but nothing I would want to eat at more than once in a while. In Sarnia, I found a nice classy place to eat (attached to a Super 8 motel - go figure) and a great pub with good food, good beer, good price. Try finding that in Calgary these days.

Sarnia had some nice old buildings in it’s downtown core. I’m not sure what The Fort ever had. The mall (currently deserted, to be renovated) gobbled up a fair bit of the old town area, along with some new buildings of bland design. Speaking of deserted, I decided to try the Smitty’s for dinner (being the best and only restaurant choice within 20 minutes walk) and found it to be closed due to lack of staff. When I end up hitting the McD’s for lack of better choice, I know things are grim.

Now, I’m not ragging on Ft. Sask. here in particular, Airdrie, or any suburb community in Calgary is no better - they all have these mega-shopping areas that are suited only to driving your car to, from, and between stores, with no charm, or unique character that would tell you where you are. I have no idea why people shop at these things. At least in a mall, you’re inside from the elements - here you need to shop, walk to your car, drive through snarled traffic to the next store 2 minutes away, and walk to your next store, repeat. Hell, I’m sure Sarnia has one of these shopping places tucked away somewhere I didn’t get to, thankfully.

I can forgive the lack of character and walkability for the Fort, I can forgive the liquor store on every corner (this is Alberta), but I cannot forgive the total lack of anything approaching an interesting restaurant. It just seems insane that the only way to go and have an interesting dining experience is to go into Edmonton. But perhaps that is exactly what the Fort is tailored to - literally a bedroom community where any quality time is spent back in the big city. Doesn’t do much to foster a sense of small town living, which is what these ‘burbs are supposed to be about.