Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

I’m at the UofR at the Microsoft “Heroes Happen Here” conference/presentation. I’ll include updates throughout the evening from my XO Sugar-Linux laptop.

6:30 - Right now my former graphics professor is giving an introduction.
6:40 - Will Craddock is giving a 41 slide presentation from 80 originally.
- IIS 7 is a completely new product over ver. 6.
- Server 2003 install was “arduous”, and 2008 doesn’t need an admin password set until you start it up.
- Single Management Console is improved.
- PowerShell is a new addition (was in Exchange 2007).
6:45 - Group Policy runs as a service for a user, giving new ways to make changes without reboots.

Vista not well installed in Regina in corporate workplaces… heheh.

6:50 - Demonstration of the MMC
6:57 - Talk about Windows Server 2008 Core and adding a GUI for it from www.petri.co.il

7:04 - Firewall more intelligent than Vista pre SP1.
- Protection Features - Network Access Protection. NAP, I want that right now (didn’t get enough sleep last night).
- AD Rights Management - File permissions could be network based, so files can’t be taken home to be opened. Note that this is essentially DRM for the corporate world!

7:17 - Virtualization still not as “robust” as VMWare, but moving in the right direction apparently.
-Hyper-v virtualization
-Virtualize applications to run legacy software.

7:23 - Ruby and PHP have worked better on Apache.
7:27 - MS Silverlight is their “Flash killer”. MLB is using Silverlight to stream games online.
First session wrapped up.

SQL Server is the next presentation. I just showed off the OLPC XO-1 to Will and one of the surprisingly few women in attendance at the event.

7:57 - Security discussion.
7:59 - The projector quit! What does a room full of computer geeks do when a computer in a presentation stops working? Panic, of course ;-)
Actually, a restart of the equipment fixed the problem 4 minutes later.

8:13 - Speaking of crashing (no this isn’t a set up to a Microsoft joke) my XO locked up after trying to browse for a photo I took of the SQL presentation! I pressed CTRL + ALT + Erase and X shut down and restarted in under a minute.

8:34 I’ve been trying to figure out where to find the photo files, and flickr crashed the Mozilla browser (or maybe Flash) again, and Photobucket.com might have worked, but I didn’t figure out the non-Journal file system fast enough.

8:44 The presentation is wrapping up a bit late. The other session(s) has wrapped up. I spent time trying to upload the photo to my blog, but WordPress had trouble with the “browse” just about like Flickr did. I had to restart the browser after it was stuck doing nothing.

There are prize draws…
8:49 Some more people in the crowd including professor Yang were looking at my XO laptop.

8:53 Another appeal from CS Dept. for industry to work with the UofR.

8:55 Enrollment in CS around North America is down 75% from the 1990s, but industry is picking up in demand. There’s no way to meet the demand - we’re being asked to influence kids to have them study Comp. Sci.

8:58 It’s too bad Yang had to give his full speech twice. It’s not bad, it’s just too long for how late it is getting. I heard some people complain about not having good parking options when they arrived. The room was also advertised wrong as “Education Classroom” which was confusing because there is an Ed. Building, and Classroom building.

9:03 Will’s repeating a speech for CIPS and guest speakers coming up including a MS employee from Estevan, SK.

9:06 Prize draws starting finally? ;-)…

I won nothing.

10:10 Moved the photos easily off the XO onto my USB drive by:
1- Plugged in USB drive.
2- Went to Journal
3- Selected Photo
4- Pointed to the copy option, and clicked on the picture of the USB drive
- The photo copied to the USB drive then.
5 - Back to the previous screen and repeat as required.

Rural History has a blog in Saskatchewan. There are good photos and quotes of famous people, around the site.

Check out the upcoming Gardiner debate with the KKK re-enactment. It’s taking place in Lemberg later this Summer.

-Regina at sunset

==

Meanwhile, it’s getting harder to photograph trains. I don’t think walking down tracks should be encouraged, and probably should be discouraged, yet there are many places where it’s not any more dangerous to cross than at a street. A huge stretch of track in downtown Yorkton isn’t fenced off, because it makes no sense to walk about 3 blocks in either direction to cross the tracks to the residential homes just to the south. If they hand out any tickets there, there will be many fuming people. My hunch is this is at least as much an attempt at cracking down on vandals, and drifters, as it is for safety. CN police had better use discretion when handing out fines, or this will be a PR disaster for the rail company.

The last couple mornings I’ve tried two different radio stations to wake up to. The first one, Z99, was rambling about Miley Cyrus (the pseudonymously famous daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, I later learned) who apparently set off some controversy for posing partly nude for a trashy [are there any other kinds?] checkout magazine. She’s only 15 years old.

Tuesday morning I switched to the new Astral Media country station “Big Dog”, and they were talking about guess who? Miley Cyrus is the correct answer. They mentioned how former Rosanne child actor M. Fishman (or someone anyway) was on The View (the trashy media just keeps on rollin’) and his comment on the Miley story was that it was “great”. It must mean the Iraq War is over if that’s what the news is now. Zing!

I can’t wait to hear what station number 3 presents on Wednesday morning. :-\

UPDATE: Country 100 in Moose Jaw didn’t talk about Miley, yay! Here’s another blogger’s take on the controversy.

Is $700 a meal out to lunch? I think so, since many Canadians can pay rent with what one meal cost Richard Portelance. Restaurant = lucky. Taxpayers = duped. Richard Portelance = too brazen for polite language to describe.

It is bad, but it comes from “bubble living”. Each of us on a computer here in Canada has our own bubble we live in, where daily Internet use is commonplace to the point where we’re offended if it goes away without us wanting it to, even for a few hours. Yet the standard for most of the world is no daily Internet, and at best an Internet cafe or library providing access a few minutes at a time.

It’s the same thing as buying a $700 meal. If you routinely spend more than $100 on a meal (good golly that’s pricey) then $700 isn’t unusual for a “special occasion”. Yet in reality, a special occasion meal for most Canadians would cost $100 or much less. I’d say “different strokes for different folks”, except that’s our tax money we’re talking about. It’s obscene whether Shell Oil, or the CBC does it. Not much can justify that much spent on one person, on one meal. It almost makes me feel ridiculous over being concerned about the exorbitant $14/day I’d get to cover lunches when I was on the road for my previous provincial government-affiliated jobs.

Yet, I suppose it should make me feel proud that I was concerned enough to feel concerned. Apparently, CBC execs feel nothing; How else could you not stop yourself from paying “$717 for a single dinner”? Ryan points out that pricey meals may be simply the cost of doing business to compete with moneybags like Shell Oil who no doubt help set the tone for not-affordable dinner meetings. I’d like to see not only taxpayers punishing government and CBC execs who abuse meal allowances, but shareholders punishing CEOs who are so brazen as to waste company money on corporate culture extravagance.

In Saskatchewan, a city is essentially a town with more than 5000 people. Well Census Canada gave us a new one out of thin air, because they forgot to include an estimate adjustment previously. How could they forget, seriously?

Anyway, I propose calling the new fictional city:
Saskboyville
population: 5903

An adjustment in the Statistics Canada census count suggests there are 5,903 more people in Saskatchewan than initially thought, meaning the province’s population as of Jan. 1 was 1,012,547.

The overnight .59-per-cent increase is a result of a correction in the 2006 census “undercoverage adjustment”, according to information provided to the government from Statistics Canada.

The initial May, 13, 2006, census count in Saskatchewan totaled 968,157. However, the federal bureau readily acknowledges that people get missed in the census and it adjusts then re-adjusts its estimate of the number of people thought to have been missed. The latest “undercoverage adjustment” number for this province has been revised to 24,710 — 5,903 more. That means the actual population of the province on Census Day nearly two years ago should have been 992,867.

If all you have is nothing… learn to enjoy it. There’s a lot more nothing where that nothing came from.

It’s actually very good advice. With so many things in life, believing is seeing. Advertisers will tell you the opposite, because happy people don’t buy as much!

The protest was in response to a blog entry by John Gormley Live producer Tammy Robert. In the post (which doesn’t reflect the official position of the Rawlco radio station, apparently) she criticized Amber Jones, the leader of the Green Party of Saskatchewan, for breasfeeding her infant while off stage at a news event.

- Photo courtesy CanineCaptures.com through Facebook for Saskatoon Attachment Parenting/ Natural Family Living Group

There are two versions of the story up at Rawlco (times two, because it’s duplicated at 650 and 980), and no other sources for information the protest can be found by me at this time.

About 35 breast feeding mothers brought their babies with them to protest a News Talk Radio blog site at the Saskatoon station.

Last week John Gormley Live’s producer Tammy Robert wrote about breast feeding politicians who use their babies as political props.

Green Party president [sic] Amber Jones had her baby at a news conference where she breast fed the child.

Jones has been invited to do a guest blog on News Talk Radio, and guest on one of our talk shows.

Opinions on blogs are one person’s opinion and not those of the the radio station.

What’s funny, is that Tammy appeared to be looking for a way to slam Amber, and lacking any policy reason, she took offence to Amber’s supposed use of her baby as a political prop. Well, Tammy finally got to witness first hand what it looks like when a mother (a whole group of them) breastfeeds a child in a political demonstration.

–

UPDATE: A random bit of funny stuff. At the bottom of my blog I have Google Ads. One displayed on my homepage the following:

Breastfeeding Baby
Join the program today & get free samples, coupons, emails, & more!

*confused look* “free samples” :-S
Naturally it’s an ad for formula, not breastfeeding support. Note that the company stresses that their formula won’t cause brain and eye deficiencies! Sign me up!

==

And there’s some real, and serious news too. “Prepare to be shocked.” Indeed.

Food Prices On The Rise

By Sarah Mills
Updated April 28, 2008 - 1:44pm

Your grocery bill is going up.

No food rationing yet, but that is the case in the United States right now and starvation is becoming more serious in poorer countries.

Inflation rates have been fairly low since the 80s.

But business professor Dr. Ian Lee, of Ontario’s Carleton University, is predicting hard times ahead.

With a recession and people possibly losing their jobs, he argues people can’t put off buying food for a few years while waiting for the economy to recover, like they can a big purchase.

Lee claims since people under 30 haven’t seen a big economic crisis before, they will be the most shocked.

Where’s food rationing taking place in the USA? [In Sam’s Club, and Costco, where law allows.] I’d be more shocked if I hadn’t been expecting something like this for many years now. I don’t think I’m alone, but those who have seen and lived through worse times are going to be better prepared. I’m sure it will be a lot harder to accept when it actually hits here. [The comment in the link to the Coloradoan story, is probably correct. Even though the US may produce most of its rice, if the rest of the world is struggling, most of that rice will be exported for more money to be made! Patriotism doesn’t pay the bills in the USofA.]

This is pretty amusing, if you like cheesy pickup lines, and techno goodies.