'Tis the Season

Advent began on Sunday. Tomorrow is the first day of December. For me the Christmas Season begins. It would be very nice if the retailers kept all their Christmas decorations on hold until tomorrow instead of putting them up after Hallowe'en. The season would just appear! The credit union gets decorated on Friday morning with the staff putting everything up in the morning. The local nursery, Tanglebank, delivers a few dozen poinsettas and suddenly the place is Christmassy. (Is that a word?) And to top it all off this evening I managed to write two Christmas cards! Boy times are changing.

We are invited to attend the graduation ceremony of my cousin's son who is about to enter the police force. It should prove interesting. Don't know what to expect. The law and order types should feel very safe. The rest of us may feel guilty and a little paranoid. Shouldn't massive numbers of policemen-women make anyone feel paranoid?

Downtown

Today I was downtown at Birks picking up my old wedding ring. It had to be expanded by two sizes to get it back on my finger. They did an excellent job and it was pretty cheap. Nice place and nice people. So far they have the best Christmas tree I've seen this year.

So I am heading back to the car, which was parked on the street beside a non-expensive traffice meter. This young fellow shouts out "Sir do you have 25 cents or a dollar spare change? I need to catch a ferry and am $7 dollars short." What the heck, it is getting to be like Christmas and the guys looks like he could use some change. My hand comes out of my pocket with a few loonies and quarters. So I pick one of the loonies out and give it to him. He doesn't say thanks. He says "How about another one of those?" I am a little shocked --- How about another one of those? --- I told him "Not today" and got into the car. A little unerving to say the least.

So I stick the key in the car and am getting the faceplate for the CD player out of the glove box and putting the cell phone in the holder. Suddenly there's a car horn honking away. I look in the side mirror and somebody is blasting their horn wanting to get into the parking space. Now I am really upset. I pull out muttering to myself about the impatience and lack of civility of the downtown poplulace. It sure felt better when I was on the east side of the Georgia Viaduct.

Kill Bill's Browser

Kill Bill's Browser - Switch to Firefox

And the games continue...

Not having used Explorer for well over a few years you wonder what all the fuss is about. Maybe the question that needs to be asked is why do people use Explorer. Any site that is so specific that it doesn't let you use anything but Explorer should be magnetized. It doesn't make sense with the underlying freedom of the web to let anything take that freedom away.

Movies and Remembrance Day

I watched most of The Accidental Tourist tonight. It didn't meet the "very interesting" movie standard due to the number of times it made me fall asleep. It wasn't a bad movie, it just was the kind you wished maybe you should have done something else rather than watch this one. The plot of any movie can be weak but this one was just not understood. A movie should at least hold your interest. When you start wishing for commercials to move it along maybe it is time to take a walk.


Day off tomorrow due to Remembrance Day. Having not lived (or better yet not having any recollection) of a time in my life of war as a Canadian is sometimes difficult to fathom. Your view of war is pretty much what you have seen on a screen or read in a book. Those people that you have talked to over the years never really wanted to say much about it. It was too dark and not something to share. My father in law who was in the Danish underground never spoke of it openly. The one time I did hear something was with his brother in law speaking of the night the Allies had parachuted some supplies in a field and how they had just missed being caught by the Nazis. One fellow I worked with who was a bombadier for over 26 bombing missions said he still woke up at night in a sweat. Another who was in a tank throughout the war said that he was closer to that crew than any of his family. Those medals we see tomorrow on the chest of our vets probably represent more sentiments that we can imagine. War is hell and we should never forget that.

Sxip Identity

Had the pleasure of sitting through an excellent presentation by Dick Hardt today. It was about sxip identity. The whole concept is intriguing and puts some powerful elements into play that were seemingly "forgotten" when looking at the security aspect of other methods. First, the privacy issue is solved as the individual themselves allow the digital information to pass to those requesting it and secondly, which I think is the most important, it puts the individual into the picture as the ultimate controller and decision maker in every instance. This whole realm is really put back to the individual and that is really what gives it tremendous power as a unique idea. There is no place like home!