After a bunch of changes I am back.

I cancelled all my web sites.  Too much work to keep them up and it has been years since I did any work on them.  As part of my digging I found the link back to my old blog spot.  Completely forgot about it.  So going to recover it as a part of my ramblings.

To update... a lot of changes have happened.  In Cowichan Bay I tossed my old Manufactured Home and with my at the time partner put a new one in its place.  We got married there and were living happily, until the park degenerated.  Problems with the water, and the new owners.  So to make a long story short we moved to Salmon Arm to be closer to Brian and Sharon.  Have a nice home in a nice MHP.  Got rid of all my old cars over the years and now lease a new Toyota RAV4.  AWD as it does snow up here.  Sold all of my ham radio stuff, but still am sort of active.  Now concentrating on getting the new place adjusted to our life style. 

So will be using this spot to update my friends, family and enemies.  As always, your comments are welcome.

Tom and Judy

Just what is a minority?

Big issue on the news up here in Canada is the bill to legalize gay and lesbian marriage. The proponents of the issue are saying that the right is entrenched in our charter based upon the rights of minorities.

Well, I am going to get flamed for this one. Just what is a minority! In my opinion minorities are born as such. The mexican population in America got to be a minority by birth. If your parents were mexican in America it was a pretty good chance you would also be a minority. Same here in Canada with the aboriginal folk. Until the arrival of the white man they were the majority. Population balance eventually made them the minority as more white men (and women) arrived on the scene. Now, if you are born aboriginal circumstances of birth make you so. There is no bloody way an aboriginal group is going to let me call myself a native Canadian without proof of who my parents are/were!.

So, if they were born gay or lesbian they would indeed be a minority. My brief high school study of biology and sexuality tells me that this is impossible. A same sex couple cannot possibly reproduce! So cut out the minority crap, they are a social group at best. There is nothing in the charter of rights entrenching rights to the Kiwanis club (an acknowledged social group) so what is their point?

I see no reason why they cannot be given rights to benefits. What I am complaining about is the fact they want to change common accepted religious and social definitions of marriage. I am being very careful not to call them a perversion, as the bible would quite frankly call them. You might gather which side of the fence I am sittiing on for this one...



TW

Stop pounding the octothorpe

Stop! Please! Stop pounding the Octothorpe...

That poor # sign at the bottom of your telephone does not deserve the disrespect it is getting. Since when did it become a "pound" sign? Perhaps it never was given the right name. But, fact is the majority of us involved in service, or engineering of the telephone know that the real name of that little sign is OCTOTHORPE. It may have been used to represent an abbreviation of pound weight. It may even have been called HASH. But, those of us in the know refuse to call it anything else.

Now history relates that the Bell Telephone system actually developed the touch tone system we now use today. The old rotary dial system was being phased out in favour of the new technology. They did the design of the touch tone dial rather abitrarily. No consideration of translation to any language was ever considered.

You will note that the dial layout sort of resembles an adding machine. Well, only a slight attempt was made to make it the same. Very few folks used adding machines at the time, so the design was chosen more for convenience than immitation.

In the early 60's engineers were looking to connect phones to computers. So, two more symbols were added. The Asterisk and Octothorpe were intended purely for future computer applications. A lot of folk don't know that there are 4 more keys that we never see. They are A, B, C, D and are located just to the right of the 12 other ones. As they were only used for control they were never carried over to the conventional telephone.

OK, back to the story... The naming of the octothorpe is rumoured to a Bell Systems supervisor named Don MacPerson. He needed to explain the keyboard, so naturally needed a destinctive name for all the keys. Ralph Carlsen in his excellent article on the subject relates that Don started naming it because of the 8 points. That derived the OCTO. "Don MacPherson at this point in his life was active in a group that was trying to get JIM THORPE's Olympic medals returned from Sweden", so he used the last name to fatten out the name so to speak.

Word spread around the labs about the name, and it was pretty well officially accepted and used in manuals for the new and subsequent phone systems. Just where the cross over to the new name happened was certainly outside the actual Bell Telephone community.

So we should be using the name it was given. After all, Don could have named it after himself. We would all be using "MacPherson" 1, 2, 3 to access services!

Let's get this gigantic error corrected! Spread the word, "stop pounding the Octothorpe"

TW

Privacy forms... ask what you are signing!

Had to go to the credit union today to renew some insurance. They stuffed a form in front of me to sign, so as they usually sneak one in on me regularly, I asked just what I was signing.

Well, like negative billing, by signing the form I was not agreeing to secure my privacy but giving them permission to use my information. Well, what for? Just a few innocent things like special promotions and the like. In sort, I was not being asked to secure my privacy but releasing it. What crock of crap!

If I was a normal trusting person I would assume that I was securing my rights, not giving them up. Now, I do agree that the new privacy laws offer some protection (much like a prophylactic does). But the way it is being presented in my local credit union leads me to think my rights were being secured, not relinquished.

But, then again, this is the same bunch that told me they do a credit check on all account applications to assure that the clientel is the best quality. They were the first to get out the forms, supposedly to protect themselves. Personally I think it is a bit like passing gas in a crowded elevator. The first person to sniff the air is usually the most guilty one!

The conspiracy in commercial television

Needed a title for this one...

Spent more than a normal amount of time watching the tube. Now, I recently ranted about the fact that they have to make 1 hour shows to get some story content across. Seems that is now eroded! At least in Canada (my next rant will be about the CRTC) it seems. The producers of our so called entertainment have such a subtle way of eroding the entertainment content that if you watch it regularly you never see it.

OK, cut to the chase! Since when did all the programs quit 5 minutes before the hour and start commercials? I thought my clock was wrong the first time, but now I see it all the time. First it was the little icon in the bottom corner telling us constantly what channel we were watching. Then the sticking of the credits off in a corner while they tell us about the next shows. Now it's the actual shortening of a show by 5 solid minutes.

Now we all know the real purpose of TV is to sell us crap. The fact that they chose to let us watch some pretend drama is only a side effect! In my delusional state I actually believe that the next phase will be when commercial time actually exceeds the actual story time. Hey, I predicted the home computer thing in the 70's! It scares me to think this time I will be right. But then again, I never believed that we would see commercials in movie theatres. But I had to be told that as I never go to movies. I do spend far to much time alone don't I ....

SUV manufacturers to make "rollover proof" vehicles

Ah, come on now! This is just a little to off the wall. Rather than make the vehicles properly (or teach drivers) they are going to let a computer take over. If the vehicle starts to become unstable and start to roll over the computer will take over and straighten it up.

Now, image the scene, you are loosing control on a curve and your choice is make the vehicle unstable (and possibly roll over) or smuck right into a cliff. Your computer takes over, straightens you up and {crash tinkle...}.

Hey, there are some things I want to be able to control!

tw

Bloggers are ignorant?

A librarian in Alaska writing in the local paper slammed bloggers as ignorant. Who the hell does he think he is in some safe local paper slamming something he obviously knows nothing about?

I agree some, perhaps most, blogs are just trivial rants. But, that was the true purpose of the internet when it was given to the educational institutes of the world. It was to be a place where we could exchange information and thoughts. Not a place to sell us a product like the commercial entertainment network (read television). Now granted, some blogs might be ignorant. But, ignorance is an objective view. And a lot of literature that was condemned as ignorant has gone on to be classical. Personally I would much rather read someone's "ignorant rant" than watch 60 minutes of crass commercialism mixed with some fantasy pretending to be reality on the tube!

And on that subject, all programs that used to be 30 minutes are all now 60 minutes. Ever wonder why? Simple, by the time you add the commercial content you don't have enough time in 30 minutes to tell even a plausable story!

So, keep on blogging. Even if you are called ignorant (which someone is probably calling me right now) you at least have the balls to put your thoughts out there for everyone...

In case you too want to comment directly to the perp that started this here is a quote from the article
"Greg Hill, a director of Fairbanks North Star Borough libraries, Alaska, has shared his views on bloggers in a piece in the local rag, the News-Miner"

tw