Telus Wins
October 24, 2006
After over a year with a Vonage line for business, I’ve given up putting up with the unpredictable service.
After fixing the mess Shaw Digital Phones made of my professionally installed phone jacks, I’ve gone back to a Telus line.
My clients are happier with the phone quality (”hey, you aren’t calling from the other side of the country”) and I’m not frustrated at the seemingly random quality of the connections.
If It Looks Like a Duck
October 23, 2006
When posted about Neal Mueller’s article slamming the iPod, I meantioned it read like a commercial for Creative Labs. Turns out I wasn’t far off according to Mac Daily News…
It seems that under the list of sponsor companies that have provided him with gear on his climbs, you’ll find Creative Labs… If you click on the link to Creative on Mueller’s sponsor page, it take you to the product page for the MuVo, meaning, I presume, that the player was given to him by Creative.
Life on Mars ? Maybe
October 23, 2006
An article in New Scientist suggests that our search for life on Mars may have missed something…
A paper by Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the University of Mexico and others demonstrates that the GCMS (gas-chromatograph mass spectrometer) instrument was incapable of detecting organic compounds even in Mars-like soils from various locations on Earth. This includes Chile’s Atacama desert, where other tests prove that living microbes are indeed present.
In some soils – including samples taken from Rio Tinto in Spain, which contain iron compounds similar to those detected in Mars soils by NASA’s rover Opportunity, the sensitivity of the GCMS was actually a million times lower than its claimed threshold for detection.
So, basically what this means is that if some alien race used NASA-like technology to probe parts of Earth, they too would have gone home empty handed. Hmmmmm. Maybe that’s just as well.
In Burnaby (again) for the Day
October 23, 2006
I’m in Burnaby today, the sky is grey but it is wonderful here otherwise.
Globalization Isn’t a Dirty Word to the BBC
October 22, 2006
LONDON: British Broadcasting Corporation is outsourcing some of its accounting and financing services to India in a move aimed at saving 20 million pounds a year for the next decade. “The BBC is taking advantage of the significant savings of globalisation while maintaining the benefits of more local customer support,” the corporation said on Sunday.
Find Another Way to Die
October 22, 2006
Last week at a business meeting I suggested to someone that they should quit smoking. Its not like they WERE smoking at the time, it was a general ‘poke my nose where it doesn’t belong’ comment.
I’m a reformed smoker, and I don’t much like being around it, but I don’t lecture people and I don’t tell them what to do with their life. And I certainly don’t do it in a business environment. I crossed a line.
But there’s a back story.
One of my best friends and mentors died last week. She had lung cancer that had spread rapidly.
She, like me, was a smoker back in the day. She quit about 15 years ago, but still, she probably smoked for 25 years. We had lunch together a few weeks ago, now she’s dead.
My only sister also died exactly the same way, she was 46.
My sister loved to smoke. She was good at it. She looked good doing it. She lived a full and rich life, but death by lung cancer at 46 is horrible, no matter how big a life you’ve had.
When I was a smoker I understood the risks. Intellectually at least.
But I had never watched someone I love die in front of me. I don’t ever want to spend time on a cancer ward with someone I care about, EVER AGAIN. But I know I will.
And to be honest, I even fear it will happen to me.
British Columbians are Snorers
October 22, 2006
If the person you share your bed with snores, Ipsos Reid says you aren’t alone.
most married people in Canada (54%) admit that their partner snores when sleeping. Regionally, the biggest married snorers are residents of British Columbia (60%), followed by Ontarians (58%) while married residents of Quebec are the least likely to snore