Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Too much for the average person

I firmly believe that there is too much information out in society these days and with this constant barrage of information it is actually hurting society more than it helps.

In the past a person would know most of what was happening locally based on the local newspaper or papers and the local news station, they might here what was happening in their province/state and the odd story about what was happening in their country and perhaps the one right beside them. With the explosion of the Internet, personal computing and every Tom, Dick or Harry having a voice it has become a race to see who can hit you with the most information.

You get news companies travelling the world telling you about things happening in every nook and cranny in the entire world whether it affects you or not. You have companies like Wikileaks that are gathering secret/not so secret/ or down right embarrassing documents and posting them on the Internet for the entire world to see.

Now my question to the sane individual is do we really care or need to care about all of this. For centuries one politician has called another a name, one country became angry with another and sent a nasty letter but is it really news worthy? I personally don't think it is.

As a society we need to take steps to protect ourselves from this bombardment. Perhaps it's time to kill off the 24/7 news channels, tell companies it is not ok to publish every leaked document that comes to you. You wouldn't like it if your privacy was invaded and all your emails and correspondence was published to the world so why is it ok when someone does it to a government.

The government keeps secrets, it always has and it always will. Some secrets probably should be revealed so that they don't do dumb things, but others need to stay secret to protect them, us and our relationships with other countries.

So this holiday season, take a step back and really think. Do I give a rats ass about all this information and does it really benefit my over all life? You will be surprised at how much you really don't want to know.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Christmas season or silly season.

It is officially December and things are starting to get crazy. For those that celebrate Christmas whether it be a religious holiday or just the gift giving holiday for you it is time to get all your ducks in a row and get ready for December 25th.

The malls are already insane as everyone is out looking for the perfect present for friends and family. Here the snow is on the ground which means no one can see the parking spots, so they simply park where ever there car fits. Even if it means parking on the grassy hill.

Christmas cards are being purchased and mailed, the postal service is being overwhelmed with packages and letters.

I am a little slow this year, my lights are sort of up but not fully working (and of course I don't check them when it is warm out), my tree is not up yet, I think I may be done all my gift purchasing except for the few little things that I need to buy and ship out. My decorations are also still buried in the basement. I will have to pull them all out this weekend so the house looks a little more festive.

Company Christmas parties have also started. Now who doesn't love these awkward events. You get to hang out, eat, drink and dance with people that you spend 5 days a week or more with and that you probably have nothing other than you work in the same company in common with. Someone will inevitably get to drunk and do something stupid that will be talked about for the next year (one year at one of my parties a secretary got up on a table dancing and stripped).

So with this season be safe, kind and courteous because everyone is stressed out this time of year and we all need to take a step back and relax and enjoy life, friends and family.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Politics a taboo subject no more

With most places in Canada finishing off city elections and the US voting in a fairly major election today I thought this was a good time to post my thoughts on the political landscape.
When growing up, I never really heard my parents talk politics and I was always told you always avoid talking politics and religion in a gathering unless you were looking to start a fight.

With the Internet age happening now and everyone looking for an outlet for their thoughts as well as always looking to become more informed I find that taboo is not really around anymore. Everyone loves to talk politics and for the most part people are fairly civil even if they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. I personally feel a healthy discussion keeps everyone informed and makes you rethink why you are voting for one person over another and gives you a more informed decision.

Now with that being said you have to watch the people that are at the extreme ends of the political spectrum whether it be Left or Right. The people at the extremes will always feel they are right and will only push their agenda and do not want to hear yours. This is where you will get nothing but arguments and will frustrate yourself and them. I would suggest avoiding them.


I am going to precede my next thoughts with saying I think it is every persons duty to go and vote, we live in a free society where we are not pressured to accept one way of thinking or another and we have the ability to make a decision and should vote the person we feel will do the best for our City, Province/State, Country. The people that do not vote and then complain piss me off more than those at the extremes and are pushing an agenda. At least they are outspoken and they vote for what they believe in.

That being said, voting for one politician over another will very seldom ever change anything because although we think that if we change the Mayor, Governor, Premier, President, Prime Minister or which ever head you are voting for that it will indeed change anything we are sadly mistaken. In most political arena's the politicians, although the face of the government, don't actually do a whole lot. The bureaucrats that we never voted for, never see and would never know are the ones that actually carry out the day to day activities of the government and most times tell the elected official what is happening and what to say. If we truly want a change we need to elect a person that will take on these bureaucrats head on and heaven forbid be willing to fire them if they refuse to do things that will actually help make the changes that they are sent in to make.

These are just my opinions and I know many people believe differently, that is what makes politics great, everyone can have an opinion and can share it to the world if they want. The one thing I ask though is that you take your opinion out to the polls and vote every time there is an election no matter what is going in your life because only the people that vote can truly make a difference.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Monsters... Or are they?

Last night I went to see a premier of the movie Monsters. It is an indie movie shot on a shoe string budget that I had never heard of but a friend won tickets and asked if I wanted to go. After doing some searching and finding a trailer I thought why not. From the trailer it looked like your typical SciFi alien invasion type movie.

I couldn't have been more wrong, the movie had me interested the whole time and was more a social commentary on how the world treats things it sees as bad whether they are or not and the movie was more a self discovery journey of the two main (and really only) actors. The aliens themselves actually had a very minor role and limited screen time in the movie but were an integral part of the story line.

This movie will not be for everyone, and it is really not so much a movie about Aliens as it is a story about mankind. If you like a movie that has some suspense, a little bit of action and an actual story line then you will enjoy this movie. If you are looking for a sci-fi shootem up movie I do not recommend this at all.

I really did like the movie and think it will do quite well once it gets a bigger release and will likely buy it when it comes out on DVD so I can re watch it and see what I missed.

There are more reviews on IMDB about this movie but I found them more comical than helpful and people just seemed to have a hate for the movie. I did find one of them humorous, it was where a poster suggested the movie be called Christmas Squids. Once you see the movie you will get it.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Slapshot for the Wii

Today I have decided to do a game review instead of being pissed off, after all it's not healthy to be angry all the time :).

I was out last night and decided to stop in at Best Buy and see what was new in the electronics world. To give you a bit of background I have been playing EA Sports NHL Hockey since it first came out for the computer and then ported it over to the PS/2. I have never made it to the point of getting an XBOX or PS3 though as I now have two kids and I don't have a lot of time to play games anymore so we have a Wii instead.

I came across EA Sports Slapshot and read a couple reviews on it to decide if I really wanted to get it. I was not impressed with NHL2K10 for the Wii so I didn't want to spend 70 dollars on a game that would just sit on the shelf. After reading the review I bought it and came home. After trying to get the stick together for about 10 minutes from the one picture they have of it and the written instructions in the manual I had it more or less together so I put the game in and turned it on. The first thing that comes up is an instructional video on how to put the stick together, D'oh.

I then went through the start up which goes through several training screens and lets you learn to check, play defense, shoot and hit targets.I did pretty good at this so I figured must be time to start the season. I went in and downloaded the latest rosters from EA (turns out they haven't updated them yet) and then selected the Habs as my team to start the season. I played two games, scoring a total of three goals and losing both games before I realized that perhaps I needed a little more practice before playing a full season.

EA has done a decent job with graphics, they aren't as good as what you find on the XBOX or PS3 but they are good for the Wii. The stick control is a little hard to get used to as you have to use the nunchuck stick to skate, which is at the top of your hockey stick, and then you move the stick around to shoot, poke check and body check. I have found it very hard to poke check which means I am body checking a lot, this isn't to bad but has shown a flaw in the game play. When Cammalleri and Gomez can take out Phaneuf and Komisarek with a body check something maybe a little off. I have also found it doesn't matter if you are Crosby or Laraque, you can do the exact same offensive moves and have the same chance of scoring.

All in all it's a good game, maybe not for the hardcore NHL fans that have an XBOX or PS3 but if you are looking for some fun and something a little unique I would recommend playing this game, but perhaps start with what I am doing now by going and starting in the peewee and build a character so you can get used to aiming and controlling the play before you jump into an NHL season. It gives you the practice you will need and you get to build yourself up to play in the NHL.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Stupid drivers have returned

So fall is sort of more or less here, schools are now in session all over Calgary and people that have no clue how to drive in rush hour are out in full force. I understand the odd lapse of focus when driving specially in the morning as we have all done it but at this point in life people should know simple rules of the road be able to follow them.

We will start with last night, I was driving home from the football game it was almost 8 o'clock by the time I got up to my area of living and due to construction they have closed one side of the road and the other side is turned from two lane to one lane two way traffic. Once you get through that you have to turn into a community and follow a detour through the community and back into the main road. So as I am driving up the main road a red van is following just behind and to the right of me (I was in the left lane they were in the right lane, both lanes end as you have to move over and everyone that lives up here knows that as it has been like this for almost a month). I get to the area where it has turns to a two way traffic and move over, the red van swerves very badly (no turn signal) and pops in behind me. He uses no turn signals all the way through the detour even though you need to turn left, right, right and left. I came to a stop sign where you have to stop as vehicles can go straight from the other side or turn left or right to go around the construction zone plus dump trucks also come out of there. The red van speeds up and goes around me blowing through the stop sign and then takes a wide left turn cutting me off so I laid on my horn. I then follow him and he turns right on to the road that I turn on to as well. He slows down and rolls down his window and yells at me, I just drove past him but he speeds up to catch me and starts yelling again so I opened my window and he yells "What is your problem". I told him it was a stop sign and you are supposed to stop. He then says "What you want to teach me how to drive". I proceeded to leave the situation as I did not want to get into it with this guy. He followed me all the way to my house and then turned into the condos beside my home. I was a little disturbed that he now knows where I live and is obviously hot headed and can't drive but I will wait and see if anything happens with that.

Then we get to this morning. I am driving the kids to school and for the most part it goes pretty good, except for when I am on Bow trail at Sarcee, Bow trail is 3 lanes but after you cross Sarcee it turns into two lanes (shitty development by the City of Calgary). The problem is so many people don't want to wait in the two lanes so they flip to the third lane and then speed up and cut people off in the second lane as they have to get over in hurry. This causes traffic to slow down even more and comes close to causing accidents.
Once I drop the kids off at school I have to turn right on to 17th ave, I was stopped at a stop sign waiting for traffic to clear and then I see a person on a bike come up to the controlled cross walk, I think awesome he will hit lights and I can go. He hits the lights and a car blows through the cross walk just as he is about to enter. I think to myself well that was rude, he then enters and I am about to go then I see the fear on his face as a car slams on their breaks and almost hits them because they obviously don't see the large flashing yellow lights either. Once I am sure they have stopped I then go shaking my head at how dumb people are. I proceeded down 17th ave slowly as there is a lot of traffic and finally get to another controlled cross walk and a person is crossing, my side is moving so slowly not a big deal everyone is stopping as a person has hit the lights and is crossing, but on the other side no less than three cars blow right through the intersection while the person is crossing one almost hitting them. Again I am sure they just missed the large yellow blinking lights.

Finally I get downtown and I am crossing a road where cars turn left as it is from a one way to a one way. A guy just in front of me almost gets hit as a van not realizing people are crossing (even though several people are crossing) figures they can beat us. Luckily they stopped and no one got hit today.

I am just simply amazed how bad drivers are these days, no turn signals, not letting people cross the street even though pedestrians have the right of way and doing everything they can to cut other people off as they are way more important than the rest of us and have to get everywhere first.

If you are reading this please don't be one of these people, drive responsibly and maybe we will all get home and to work in one piece.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Just because it is on the internet doesn't make it so

In the past the only way people were subjected to "news" or opinions were through the TV, newspaper or the water cooler at work. The nice thing about these mediums were you could turn off, ignore or avoid them if you didn't agree or didn't care about it.

In today's society the Internet is the ruling form of media for almost everyone. The problem with this is any idiot can put forth their opinion and push it out everywhere and there is little to no recourse if they are wrong or just plain ignorant of the facts (yes I see the irony of posting about this on the internet). With blogs, Facebook, Twitter and open forums on every website it has come down to the point where anyone with a computer and access to the Internet can put their opinion out there and can even call it fact if they want to. Society is at the point now where there is very little, if any, intelligent conversations that happen over the Internet when it comes to open forums such as Twitter or Facebook or even if you go to your favourite sports site and see all the comments below a story. People hide behind the anonimity of the Internet and say things that they would never say to you in person or if they did would probably end up getting in to a fist fight and then it would be over. The problem with this is there is no ending to it. People continue to squabble over things making rude comments back and forth to each other and the conversation becomes more heated and more useless.

So how do we change this? There are two ways in reality, remove open forums (not going to happen) or people need to grow up and either not post inflamatory things or if you see it don't engage the person.

Arguing with people on the internet will not enhance your life in any way and in fact will probably end up causing you more stress than it needs to. I constantly go on sport sites, forums, Twitter and Facebook and all the while I try not to engage people. Sometimes I get sucked into it but as I get older I realize that it just isn't worth it and I refrain from posting and just bite my tougue.

I will end it off with something I heard years ago when the Internet was first starting (this will probably make some people angry) "Fighting on the Internet and winning is like being the smartest kid in the dumb class, you are still in the dumb class, you have nothing to be proud of."

Monday, August 2, 2010

Technology and security

Time for something completely different.

I am an IT guy and have been for almost 20 years now. I started before the internet, before colour monitors and before Windows. I have seen a huge change in everything technology and I have managed to keep up with it.

With all the new technology and how everyone stays connected I always get the question, "How can I make sure no one is hacking into my home computer?".

It's quite simple 99% of people will never ever be hacked unless they piss someone off. Hackers do not attack home users. What people fail to realize is they aren't really that important in the over all aspect of the computing world. Someone is not going to hack you to get your bank card information or your pictures of your pet/kid/spouse. They also make the mistake that if they get a virus that they have been hacked. If you get a trojan or a virus you have not been hacked, you went to a bad website and got infected. Buy a virus scanner clean your computer and move on.

The next question they ask is how do I make myself more secure. Well that's an easy one, put passwords on everything use different passwords for everything and make sure you have secured your wireless network. Will this prevent you from being hacked. Absolutely not. If you pissed off a hacker and he really wants to get your information or screw with your computer, he will.
The Pentagon spends billions of dollars on IT security every year and they get hacked about 10,000 times a day. Now before you say that is BS, people hack in but they don't get anywhere because the Pentagon also has watches on every part of their network and they shut people down as they get through security walls. So with that in mind do you really think you can spend any amount of money that will prevent people from hacking you if they want to? The answer of course is no.

The best security you can do is to watch where you surf, where you bank, and constantly check online to make sure no one has hacked your information. It's more about being aware of when something goes wrong then to prevent it from ever happening.

For those that say it is never safe to shop online or enter any personal information online I will ask you one simple question. Have you ever handed your credit card to a waiter or waitress and have them walk away from you? If you have how do you know they didn't just replicate your card and selling it or using it right now?

The internet is no more or less secure than everyday life, the thing is people are just more aware of things now.


So to end be safe where you surf and have fun on the internet.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

NHL saves itself....

I normaly rant about some very random stuff. Today it is about the NHL.

Yesterday Ilya Kovalchuk signed a whopping 17 year contract with the New Jersey devils. This contract would have him playing til he was 44 and the last 5 years of the contract were basically at league minimum.

The NHL stepped in and rejected the contract due to "Salary Cap circumvention". Thus the NHL is stepping in and trying to save itself from well itself.

I have no problem with players going out and trying to get the most money for the most number of years that they possibly can but the GM's, Owners and the NHL really need to set up better rules to save themselves from being stupid. The salary cap was put in place to prevent GM's from signing tons of players for stupid salaries and thus forcing small market teams to fold as they wouldn't be able to compete. The GM's however have found a way around this by signing players to ridiculous long term contracts with the final years at extremely low salaries in order to drop the cap hit down and fit them in to the team.

My theory if the NHL really wants to save itself from these GM's it has to setup a couple new clauses in the CBA (the players would probably reject this).

1) No contract can be longer than 5-7 years and the cap hit is averaged over the largest 3 years of the contract.
2) No player can make more than 12% of the salary cap. This would prevent teams from over paying for players.
3) Put in that agents make a flat rate paid by the teams for every player they sign, not a precentage. agents will then try and get as many clients as possible signed not focusing on getting the biggest contract to get paid the most.

It should be a pretty simple break down for GM's in todays NHL. 3rd and 4th line players should not be making more than 2-3 million a year, 2nd line players should be making max 5 mill a season and your top 3 should be making no more than 7 million a season. The problem is GM's are tasked at making their team the best and have to answer to the owner and the fans that are screaming for top players. With this pressure GM's will always try to sign them and pay bigger bucks to get the coveted free agents. The NHL must step in to prevent the players from holding the GM's over the barrell and prevent the GM's from hurting the system.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Remember when movies were affordable?

Tonight I took my son to see The Last Airbender. He was very excited to see it and although I did not really care if I saw it or not I went to the brand new CrossIron Mills theater, which is Cineplex's newest and fanciest theater. They were only showing it in Real3D which means an extra 3 dollars per ticket. So with one Adult and one Child movie ticket, 1 Large combo for me and 1 kids combo for him the grand total comes out to 49.82.

I remember when a family of four used to go to the movie (not that many years ago) and it came to 50 or 60 dollars for four tickets and four combos. Cineplex and the movie industry as a whole is complaining of poor box office numbers for movies. Well here's a thought, LOWER PRICES. When it costs a family of four over a hundred dollars to go to a movie do you really think they are going to go out even once a month, specially considering half the movies that are released are recycled crap that the parents saw when they were kids.

Don't blame piracy and the Internet for your low ticket sales, lets start by lowering ticket prices so the average person can go to the movies a few times a month and once that is solved maybe you can start producing original movies again.