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.

I’m in Burnaby today, the sky is grey but it is wonderful here otherwise.

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.

full story here

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.

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

This article, in WashingtonPost.com, written by Everest treker Neal Mueller, almost reads like a commercial for Creative’s MuVo:

Last year my team on Mount Everest witnessed firsthand how lousy the iPod is.

On our expedition, we brought enough electronic gadgetry to outfit an army. What broke first? The iPods. The batteries croaked, the cases scratched and the hard drives seized from the rarified air…

That makes me a big fan of the Creative MuVo, because it has what I want: battery life, light weight and rugged reliability.

I must admit my disappointment at how easily my first iPod got scratched within minutes of taking it out of its package. When I bought my video iPod I also bought a protective after-market case which I hope will protect it as much from drops as from scratches. I’ve also witnessed first hand the dead battery syndrome. It’s a great, yet delicate little sucker.

52 minutes, 3 customer service reps, and insisting on talking to a supervisor. That’s how long.

Shaw finally agreed to send someone to my house to restore my phone jacks to the way they were before they messed around with them. At the 47 minute mark of my call with customer service, we were still in the ‘we’ll have to speak to the installers and get back to you’ stage, so I pushed back and asked to get a supervisor on the phone.
They’re coming to make things right next week. I’ll keep you posted. All in all, my foray into Shaw’s digital phone was pretty disasterous and cost me a whole lot of time.

I really find it incredible that companies can still operate on this model of treating customers with so little care.

Just as an aside, who’s the brilliant person who came up with Shaw’s ‘phone on hold adverts’ that brag about their great customer service, WHILE YOU’RE ON HOLD waiting for a person to actually help you?

It is unbelievably annoying, particularly after you’ve heard the ad for the 30th time as you wait. It would be much better if instead they apologized for the inability of their customer service reps to actual provide customer service in a timely manner.

My bad experience iwth Shaw digital phones continues.  As I mentioned back in July my Shaw digital phone didn’t work properly and I dumped the service after a few days. 

In my particular situation, the Shaw line was going to utilize the jacks I had for a 2nd phone line that I had discontinued.  For business reasons, I’ve decided to bring the 2nd phone line back up, but have discovered that the Shaw installation screwed up those jacks.  I’ll now have to get an installer to come in and see if they can put it back to it’s previous WORKING ORDER.

This is very annoying. For one thing, Shaw claims that their service uses your existing jacks.  That’s true, but only after they rewire them, leaving them incapacitated for reverting to a land line if you need to.  The other thing they fail to mention is that they install a butt ugly and huge modem that they screw into the wall next to your jack – it’s like a giant wall wart that you can’t move or hide anywhere.

Great news for the 2010 Olympics, having managed to lure Nancy Lee away from CBC. She’ll be the new COO of  Olympic Broadcast Services.  Its a major score; Nancy’s a fantastic manager and brings top tier experience to the big show.

I highly recommend a nice little place on the North Shore – close to Cypress (home of snowboarding) this side of the bridge heading for Whistler (key) and only 15 minutes on the freeway from the Vanoc office. There’s a nice Starbucks in Edgemont Village – that’d be my choice.
Vancouver says Welcome Nancy !!!

Around 5:30 this afternoon the light was spectacular and I managed to grab this shot of some maples.

Lucky for me this only happens about once a year. Perogies and Eggs – fried in butter of course – a real cardiac arrest breakfast.

My friend Keith Gardiner spotted this weed-seeking robot in Engadget today:

According to the Engadget blurb…

A team of scientists at the University of Illinois have developed a robot that searches for weeds, chops them off, and then sprays herbicide all over the weed stump. The as-yet unnamed robot (which we’ll be calling the weedinator for the time being) packs a Windows box with a 80GB hard drive (including WiFi), stands at about two feet tall, is a little over two feet wide and is nearly five feet long.

Which begs the question…do you think I could get a research grant for my brilliant idea for transforming my 2500 psi power washer into a weed eater ? 

I’m working in Burnaby today.  I like it here. It is sunny, but the Starbucks has no coffee because their grinder is broken.

And people think BC’s politics are wacky.

Voters in a Manitoba city will face a weird twist on the theme of law and order when they go to the polls on Oct. 25: Three of six candidates seeking to become mayor of Brandon are fighting criminal charges.

full story here

It’s great to see Pam Williams launching the Chocomap.com, a project we had a lot of fun working on with her.

Google Maps meets Chocolate meets User Input – now that’s a three-way made in heaven.

I’ve posted some interview clips on a blog we set up regarding our local school board’s plans to sell off a forested parcel of land next to the elementary school.

From the BBC:

Operations in which patients had the wrong body parts operated on have risen by a half in the last three years…last year guidance was issued to doctors to ensure consistent methods were used to mark which body parts were due to be operated on.

The story includes this classic understatement:

“This [sic] mistakes have devastating impact on patients”.

I guess if my surname was Googan this would be my home page too…

Our local North Vancouver school board (district 44) is proposing selling a number of parcels of land adjacent to schools. One of them is a lovely wooded area next to Cleveland school. Our kids and their friends love to play in the woods next to the school, it is an amazing thing to have nature right outside the door, and it would be a travesty to see the land sold for development.

To help make sure everyone’s voice is heard, I’ve set up a blog at blog.ambleside.com. The process from initial discussion to eventual sale should provide everyone with a chance to have their voices heard. Kids deserve more than concrete and gravel areas for playgrounds.

If you ever attended Cleveland and remember playing in the woods please add your voice to those concerned about seeing this natural amenity disappear.