Wazzup?

What a year I had, bought out my business partners, doubled my sales, moved my office, went to costa rica twice, rode powder all winter, drank beer in the sunshine all summer, travelled a whole lot and had an all around great time.

Now I find myself in Toronto visiting family and bored out of my skull. I can't wait to get out of here and I'm looking forward to a loud drive home with Lady Sovereign and Avenged Sevenfold.

Back in St. Donat, about 50cm of snow fell and I couldn't resist going snowboarding last weekend. To say it was superb would be an understatement especially given that it was the middle of December. So I'm stoked about heading back up north and hunkering down with all of the yardies for a few days of booze, snow and general outdoor stupidity.

On a sad note, one of my employees mom just passed away so I've got a funeral to go to this week. That really sucks over the holidays, poor fellow.

What else? Stephen Harper is an incoherent babbling sour grape with an anti-anything reactionary platform but it seems to me like he'll be our next prime minister. I can't see how he'll ever be able to run a minority government because there isn't anybody on the other side who will prop up his party, sigh, another government destined to fall - what a waste of time.

That's it for the year, see y'all next year and if you want to come snowboarding this week give me a call at the usual numbers.

Random thoughts

The Apprentice

I watched the Apprentice yesterday night and I thought I was going to be sick. There's this fellow who won who seemed to have great integrity and solid values, everybody respected him and he was a great leader. In the last minute of the show when he was given the opportunity to let the runner up win as well and win a non-competing/life changing carreer, he shut her out.

I still feel sick thinking about it. It seemed revolting seeing gangs of people in Atlanta looting and murdering in the wake of a disaster but to see an honest looking man execute a move with zero integrity made me feel disgusting, I was fooled by this guy and I realized how gullible we all are.

I wish them both well but I think that that fellow won the contest but lost the game.

XBox 360
By fluke, I got an email at 8:45 from Futureshop saying that they had 10 available today, across the street from my office. There's a massive blizzard in progress so getting there from anywhere else at rush hour is nearly impossible. So I walked across the street and bought one retail. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

Music
Here's my favorite tracks/albums of the year:

Rise Against - Siren Song Of The Counter Culture
Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch, International Dateline
Boysnightout - Train Wreck
Richie Hawtin - DE9: Transitions
Alexisonfire - Alexisonfire

What I want for Christmas

Here's my list (besides world peace)

1) Celestron Skyscout: handheld eyeball computer that has GPS and X/Y/Z tilt sensors and a database of stars. Your personal planetarium.


2) GE lightbulb socket self charging smoke detectors - so simple yet brilliant, flick the light switch twice to test & reset.

3) iubi 100GB personal media player - 175 grams and 100GB, embedded linux - brilliant!


Here are my favorite new gadgets that I am using this year:

1) General Instruments DCT5100 high def PVR (videotron)
2) Konfabulator weather and stock ticker widgets
3) Dell 2300MP projector
4) Gateway widescreen convertible tablet PC
5) Rio Carbon 5GB
6) Sure E2C Sound Isolation Studio Quality Earbuds

Bill Gates as Robin Hood

It never ceases to amaze me every time that I read Slashdot how many people hate Microsoft and Bill Gates so much for all the wrong reasons. At this point it's so ridiculous that it seems like a Monty Python skit. Even in my job I see it from time to time regarding audio and video codecs. So many intelligent people from big corporations have been taken in by the mass anti-MS hysteria. How silly, for the record the Windows Media Codec is nearly a SMPTE standard and will be directly licensable from MPEGLA (same as MEPG4/MPEG2). IF you look a little harder, you'll find the source code for the decoder and if you want to license it from Microsoft, you can get it here. We definitely can't say the same about Apple, Real or Sony.

As for Linux, I love it but it's still a pain in the ass and at the end of the day Companies don't save anything unless they have tens of thousands of servers like Google, Akamai or Netapp.

Sure Microsoft steals ideas, crushes and strangles competitors and is ruthless in the market. Who isn't? The other guys (Apple, Redhat, Sony, Dell etc.) all used the exact same tactics but just weren't very good at it. The exception was IBM who were great at it but like Microsoft, got their knuckles rapped by the anti-trust commissions in the 80's. Both IBM and Microsoft got defanged by this process, IBM got eaten alive by Microsoft and Microsoft will likely get eaten alive by Google if they don't move fast. They know that too well in Redmond.

Here's the biggest stinker, as much as you can hate this vicious corporate competitor, Bill Gates has done more for world health and poverty than almost any man alive. Let's see Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Donald Trump and the other billionaires do the same.