In the wake of Foxconn, let’s not forget Edward Burtynsky

April 5th, 2012

Manufacturing

In the southern province of Guangdong, one can drive for hours along numerous highways that reveal a virtually unbroken landscape of factories and workers’ dormitories. These new ‘manufacturing landscapes’ in the southern and eastern parts of China produce more and more of the world’s goods and have become the habitat for a diverse group of companies and millions of busy workers.

To see the rest, click here and then select “China -> Manufacturing”.

Lotus Notes can’t edit or extend a meeting reoccurance

March 30th, 2012

You have exactly one chance to get the meeting repeat details right, otherwise you have to delete the meeting and start again.
Or lets say you’re trying to extend a periodic meeting. Sorry. Can’t. IBM suggests you create a second meeting.

Notes is functioning as designed. An enhancement request for this added functionality was submitted to Quality Engineering as SPR #DGAY5NEGS5. There are no current plans to address this request.

I guess it was rejected due to the

Doug Hawkes, May 17, 1916 – February 2, 2012

February 27th, 2012

Doug died peacefully on February 2, 2012 at the age of 95 years.

Doug was a proud Calgarian, born in Calgary and grew up swimming and skating on the Elbow River. He went to Rideau Park School and Western Canada High School.

During the Depression years, he travelled throughout B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan as a salesman selling yeast. Doug joined the Air Force in 1941 and after his initial training service he volunteered to go overseas for active duty. He was assigned to the 419 Moose Squadron and his final trip with his crew was in the Battle of Berlin, when he was shot down. He and two of his crew survived and became prisoners of war, in Stalag IVB Germany. After liberation, Doug returned to Calgary on the last day of the Stampede!

Shortly after enjoying some months of real freedom, Doug met and soon married his sister’s close friend, Dorothy Gish in 1947. Doug became and enjoyed his years as a realtor. He was president of the Real Estate Board and received a sixty years of service award in 2010. He was also an active member of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce and was always very community minded. Doug helped form the Glendale Kiwanis Club and eventually served as Lieutenant Governor for Southern Alberta.

Doug worked with colleagues to host an international POW reunion in 1985 that helped inspire the formation of an Air Crew Association in Calgary. With the help of like-minded colleagues, Doug established the Memorial for the British Commonwealth Training Plan at the Aerospace Museum in 1995. It was in 1955, that the Calgary Foundation was founded by visionary community leaders like Doug and he vowed to return the favour of the generosity of the Red Cross during his years as a POW during WWII. Doug was recognized as an honorary life director of the Calgary Foundation in 1996, and was also given a lifetime membership to the Talisman Centre, and claimed to be the oldest aqua-size participant.

He is survived by Dorothy, his wife of sixty-five years; his five sons, Gerry (Glenys), David (Shelagh), John (Vonnie), Robert (Patricia), and Peter (Heather); fifteen grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and an older brother Murray in Vancouver. Doug was predeceased by his brother Paul and sister Hazel.

A Celebration of Doug’s life will be held at McDougall United Church (8516 Athabasca Street S.E.) on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. Valentine’s Day is appropriate as Doug’s favourite colour was red! Forward condolences through McInnis and Holloway . If friends so desire, memorial tributes may be made in memory of Doug to the Calgary Foundation, Aerospace Museum Association of Calgary Fund, No. 700, 999 – 8 Street S.W., Calgary, AB T2R 1J5 or to a charity of personal choice.

The family wishes to thank Dr. Debra Sasges and the staff on Unit 83 at the Rockyview Hospital for all of their care and support. In living memory of Doug Hawkes, a tree will be planted at Fish Creek Provincial Park.

Obituary page.

Papa Doug was my gandfather, and he my grandmother would visit us in Adelaide every 2-3 years when we lived there.

He was a very larger than life man to me, and I’ll always remember him for his favourite sayings:

  • Pull Your Weight
  • B.Y.O.B.G.G. (Bring your own booze, gas and groceries)
  • They’re only there for the general public (when confronted with a KEEP OUT or PRIVATE PROPERTY or NO TRESPASSING sign)
  • I delegate!

R.I.P Papa Doug.

Arrears

February 22nd, 2012

If the Money Owed to Me Was a Credit Card

The case of the never-closing support ticket

February 7th, 2012

Usually, they are too quick to close issues that have not been solved.
This time, for fun, they will not close an issue that was successfully resolved in July last year.
Hilarity ensues.

I posted this not too long ago. Huh. I should probably find something else to whinge about.


In case you’re wondering, the attachment referred to in the entry for July 22 is here.

A baby’s consciousness

October 30th, 2011

Alison Gopnik, “What do babies know?”

What’s it like be have the consciousness of a baby?
It’s like being in love, I’m Paris, for the first time, after you’ve had three doubles espressos.
Which is a fantastic way to be, but it does tend to leave you crying at three o’clock in the morning.

Ducted Sunlight

October 14th, 2011

I blogged about this a while ago, and while cleaning up broken links, came across their new website, and a video.

Research shows that natural light increases productivity by 16%.

If Parans type of technology replaced 10% of electric lights in every building in Europe, US and China, we could reduce CO2 emissions by up to 220 millions tonnes every year.

The Never Closing Support Ticket

October 13th, 2011

Usually, support tickets are closed before you’ve had a chance to tell them that the “fix” they’ve applied hasn’t worked.

Currently, I have ticket open that they wont close, or more accurately, don’t realise it is still open.    Every once in a while I will add another comment to the ticket, to see if that will jiggle something loose.  so far it hasn’t and it is six months and counting.

Smart Meters will eat your Children!

September 22nd, 2011

Some guy named Jerry Day, has posted a bunch of youtube vidoes about Smart Meters.  They have been picked up such reputable sites such End of the American Dream and others.

The profess to teach everyone about the dangers of Smart Meters.

Here is some choice excertps:

“The meters are watching you.”

No, they are only monitoring the electricity consumption.

“They see how many watts your electric toothbrush uses”

No, they have no way of knowing what is consuming the power.

“They send information about [when you use your toothbrush] over wireless networks”

No, they send a continuous feed of the current amount of electricity consumed. They do not record when appliances are turned on or off.

“They send the information to the power company, where they keep record of all your power consumption, volumes and patterns, and store it forever on computers that you have no access to”

Utility companies already store this information, and have done for many years. It is how they bill you. Data cannot be stored forever, it will be archived, just like your credit card information and your driving record.

“The data shows when you were at home, when you were sleeping, when you’re on vacation, when you have visitors, when you turned on a lamp, a power tool, some extra computers, and if you look like you are running a business out of your home.”

Usage patterns can be used to infer alot of things. The meters will not record exactly when you go to bed or turn on a lamp, but the usage over time creates a pattern that can be recognised. Power companies already have illegal usage detection to prevent grow ops in your neighborhood.

“It even senses when you ‘bootleg’ energy off the grid”.

For shame! They should turn a blind eye to that!

“This is not electrical metering. This is personal surveillence. It is a search without a warrent every day.”

“The smart meters are radio transmitters which can easily be intercepted by a hacker to gain intimate personal knowledge of your life”.

No. The information is encrypted. Just like every time you use your debit card at the store, your banking information “shoots through the air to some institution somewhere.”

“Your power company can give or sell your personal information to whoever it wants.”

Then pick a better power company with a privacy policy you agree to.

“Any abnormal use is considered just cause … for a raid … to bust you for illegal activities in the privacy of your own home that they otherwise wouldn’t have known about.”

Getting away with a crime does not make it legal. It makes it hidden. If the power company used meter data to bust a grow-op in my neighbourhood that attracted dangerous criminals, I’m ok with that.

“Smart meters are no different than wire tapping devices.”

They are very different. Wire tapping devices intercept your communications and allow the attacker to know exactly what was said. Smart meters only watch electricity consumption.

Grandfather tech support

June 8th, 2011

After a bit of a marathon effort, I have finally restored my Grandfather’s email system to a working state.  What a mess!

First thing I battled with was a corrupted PST file.  scanpst.exe is a little hidden gem that helped with that.

Then, after someone “helped” 1, and messed up the mail delivery, I had to fix his outlook profile. Trouble was, I could not find the “show profiles” tab in the mail control applet. This was maddening, because it was turning up nothing in my Googling.

Turns out that somehow, outlook had been switched into “Internet Mail Only” mode, and I suppose this somehow removes the profile editing stuff. However, the profile that was left was so broken that it had to be fixed. 10 GOTO 10.

Lukily, I found this link which informed me about IMO mode, and how to switch it back.  So a lesson for everyone is that in order to use profiles in Outlook, which you need in order to have multiple PST datafiles, and to control how and where mail is delivered, your Outlook must be in Corporate Workgroup mode.

May I also add that TeamViewer is a very good remote control solution, which I used to great effect today for about 3 hours, including 2 reboots.


[1] By “helped” I mean completely screw everything up.