As of July 1st, it became illegal to talk on a cell phone in California unless you are “hands free”. Check out this video to see how being hands free has really liberated drivers.
I’m reading my morning news and since I haven’t logged on to Gizmodo in awhile, I checked out some of the articles that were a few days old and stumbled upon this one.
The article itself talks about how this one staff reporter decided he was going to chastize Canadians because it is supposedly harder to get gadgets here than it is in the US. He said a lot of real lame stuff but the good content came when I started reading the comments.
An article about gadgets suddenly turned into the typical American is better than Canada debate. Of course, most of the US posters said that Canada was pretty lame, a socialist country where we are over taxed and have shitty “free” health care. Most of the Canadian posters said their piece and defended the country, and a few others from Canada went on the warpath on some of their countrymen’s repsonses claiming they were idiots to what Canada was really doing.
Now, when I read the article, it had 155 comments on it. I would bet that most of the comments are from American’s and that there were plenty of Canadians who read the article, shook their head, and moved on. Just like we always do with everything that goes on in the US.
I try not to get worked up when I read some of these things because I do a lot of work with American people and I work for an American company, but the truth is, it really does piss me off when I see the kind of arrogance that comes out of people from down there. Although our cultures are very similar, and we basically look the same, talk the same, listen to the same music, watch the same kinds of TV shows, go to the same movies, read the same books, the attitude difference between a Canadian and an American is like night and day.
I don’t see a lot of that when I travel down to the US. The people I deal with are very friendly and cordial, but then again, they are also paying big bucks to have me do work for them so it’s in their best interests not to piss off the vendor. But I do see it on occasion and typically, it’s much less obvious. Just the odd comment here and there and different things that get said. You can definitely tell the difference.
So for today, I’ll just shake my head, and plug on through my day knowing that most American people have this truly dillusional vision of what Canada is. Living here, having been born here, I know better.
It should not come as a huge surprise when I say that I have never been a huge fan of the province of Quebec. It’s a province filled with a lot of arrogance and “snobbery” about the rest of Canada. Everytime I think of Quebec I think of the separatists who think they are better than Canada and should be their own country, yet everytime they try to do a vote on it, it gets shot down. Plus, with the recent Quebec superior court decision about interfering in a parent’s disciplinary measures, it further adds to me distaste of the province.
Despite all of that, yes, I am going on a road trip from Moncton to Quebec City and back. I’ll be leaving on Friday August 1st, and returning on Monday. No, it’s not for work because if it was, I’d be flying. No, this believe it or not is purely for pleasure.
I was invited to tag along with two other geocachers who are driving up there for a Geocaching Mega Event. The plan is to cache all the way there, there, and back. I have not done a road trip of this kind in a LONG time and with me needing some socialization with some people, I think this is a great opportunity. Ya, I’m not a fan of Quebec, but this event is for Geocachers and cachers themselves seem to have a pretty decent attitude, regardless of where they come from. Hopefully this will be much the same.
In other caching related news, I went on a power caching trip with Alex recently where I snagged my most caches in a day thus far. 43. We went from here to Alma and back and got a whole lot of them. Saw a lot of the same types of containers but a few good hides, a few crappy hides, a few DNF’s (did not find) and lastly, a few awesome sites. Need to do these kinds of trips more often. But, it did put me over my 300 finds so I am a happy camper.
It’s Canada Day and I think we will be heading to the beach for a little while. It looks like the sun is going to stay out so I am hoping to catch a few rays, and maybe even hit the water depending on how hot it is. I imagine the beach is very busy today. We’ll see.
Lastly, a HUGE congrads goes out to my wife who passed her RESPDAC exam yesterday. For those who don’t know, she’s been studying REAL hard to become licensed to sell RESP’s and the biggest hurdle to date was getting through her certification test. She passed with flying colors and is now going to move on to the harder but easier part, learning the business. I’m so proud of her and I can’t wait to see how it all works out. YAY TAMARA!!!
Me and Tamara were having a conversation not that long ago about Bobsroom and she mentioned how when she clicks on a photo link here, she didn’t like the fact that it redirected you to a Facebook gallery. I was telling her that it was a little easier to maintain the photos in one spot. Since I put a lot of stuff on Facebook, it seemed a little redundant to put them here too. Why not post it in one spot and link to it? Makes sense right?
Well, I started thinking about it and then I clicked on one of the photo links and noticed it was broken. In fact, I think all of the photo links weren’t working. At some point, Facebook changed all the public URL’s for my galleries, effectively breaking all my links. So, I started looking for something that I could use to manage the photos easily on my site. Sure enough, I found something that works BEAUTIFULLY.
So, despite the fact that I’ll have to upload to more than one place, I think I do prefer the idea of having my photos on my own site, so that I have complete control over them. I’ll still post pictures to FB, but I’ll keep all my stuff here as well.
That having been said, you can check out the two galleries I have by clicking here and here. I think the gallery plugin works pretty good 
I read this article this morning. If you’ve ever been annoyed by Microsoft, or their products, you’ll enjoy the read.
Typically I leave posts about Dylan off this site and place them on his, but this is more a rant and rave about the Canadian government than specifically about Dylan.
Yesterday, I was reading the regular daily news and I read an article about how a 12 year old girl in Quebec who was grounded and not allowed to go on a school trip. So, she took her father to court citing that the punishment was too severe, and the judge sided with the girl. That’s right, a Superior Court judge told a father his punishment was unduly severe and he was ordered to let her go on the trip.
I then came home at the end of my day and had a conversation with Tamara where she was talking about an article in the Times Transcript about how someone was being fined or thrown in jail for spanking his kids. I don’t have the link so I can’t speak to the details of the story.
I also then read about how here in Canada, a new law has been approved by the Senate, and will now go to the House of Commons to be approved, that makes it illegal to spank your child.
WTF is wrong with the Canadian courts and law makers? I would have expected this from a country like the USA where people sue people everyday for such retarded things. But here in Canada? What the hell is going on when the government starts to intervene in how a parent should discipline their child? It’s none of their gawd-damn business and they should leave the parenting to parents.
The whole spanking thing is completely over the top. I was spanked as a kid, and many of my friends were spanked. Did it ruin our lives and cause emotional damage? No. We’re perfectly fine. There’s a line between spanking your kid on the ass for bad behavior, and beating them. I think what the government is trying to do is to protect kids from being physically abused and for that, I understand the logic behind bills and laws such as this, but the fact remains that unless it is excessive force, a good old spanking won’t hurt anyone.
I am sure that I have posted about the whole spanking thing before but I cannot for the life of me find the post, but oh well. The point is, it’s not the government’s place to start telling me how I should discipline my kid.
That brings me to the next point which is this judge who apparently has rocks in her head. Now we’re getting the Canadian government involved when a kid doesn’t like what his/her parents do for other means of punishment. This kid, posted somewhat inappropriate photos of herself on some website, and that’s why the father banned her from going on the trip. Yet somehow, the judge seemed to think it was better for her to go and go against the father’s wishes. WTF?!?!?!
This sets an awful precedent for the future. Does this now mean that when I ground Dylan for doing something I feel is inappropriate, that he can go to a judge and get the judge to side in his favor, and have the courts order me to let him do what he wants?
The world we live in now is a world where kids are not allowed to be disciplined. Teachers have had all of their ability to do anything about troublesome students taken away from them. Students are told to take “time outs” but time and time again, policies and procedures protect the student so at any time, no matter what someone does, they rule in favor of the student, and guess what that translates into? It translates into a world where children know they can say and do whatever they want because neither their parents, the teachers, or anyone else, will stop them.
We’re supposed to try and communicate with our kids and let them know in a calm way what they are doing wrong. Uhm, I’ve only been a dad for less than a year and I can tell you that any kid who is not getting what they want is not going to be calm, and they are not going to be rational. They are going to be irrational and not listen. That’s what kids do. So, are we supposed to just let them run rampant? No, you do whatever you feel as a parent you can do, to make them understand that some things are ok, and some are not. Don’t cross the line of being abusive, and always listen to your kids, but you are the parent, and no kid knows what is best for them more than you do. That’s what makes you the parent. You’ve already been through a hell of a lot more than any kid has so that gives you insight that they don’t have or don’t understand and quite frankly, until they get a little older, won’t care about.
It bothers me to no end to see that it’s getting worse. I mean what’s next, are the cops going to show up at my doorstep telling Tamara she can’t say “No” to Dylan when he tries to eat the cat food because it infringes on his right to choose what food he can or can’t eat?
To be blunt, fuck that. I will never harm my son. I will never beat my son. I will love him, protect him, and look out for him. And if that means I have to tap him on his ass after trying several times to make him understand what he’s doing is wrong, then so be it. If I have to ground him because he’s going beyond the boundaries I’ve set for him, so be it.
No one has the right to tell me how to raise my kid as long as I am being a good, honest, and loving parent. And I think everyone I know would agree.
So there, I’ve had my say.
Wednesday is here folks and it is yet another nice looking day outside. Here’s to hoping it stays that way.
It has been a weird week for me. The company I work for got bought but the mood is not at all like it was the last time. But, there’s still a lot of details to work out so it’s a matter of trying to focus on doing your regular job, but knowing there’s this big “thing” that’s going on that is going to have an impact on you whether its small or big. It does tend to make concentration a little harder. I’m hoping that as the days pass by, it will get a little easier.
On the home front, Tamara is almost ready to write her test for her new job. She’s been studying a lot lately and wrote a sample test and did quite well. I really know she is going to do well she just needs to get her feet wet and dive in. Then when she’s rolling in the cash, I can retire early, and she can do all the work 
Check out this interesting story on CNN about how the Japanese government is now saying that if your waistline is too big, the company you work for will have to pay out MASSIVE fines. This is totally riduculous. No government has the right to force me to lose weight if I want to be big.
Yes folks, within weeks, I’ll be working for the 3rd largest software company in the world. 81,000 employees, with a revenue of about 20billion/year. Here’s the official press release.
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REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. 23-JUN-2008 05:00 AM
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I said this to Tamara today. Especially when the weekends hit. It seems that as soon as they begin, they end. Man, talk about a LOT of stuff going on and just making the time FLY by.
Friday night I went to a Geocaching event and snagged a few caches while I was in Sackville. I’m not too sure if I am keen on those events since I am somewhat shy and awkward around crowds of people I don’t know well but I talked to a few folks but was happy to go off caching.
Yesterday was the same usual stuff, with some caching in as well, along with some driving, shopping, and sleeping.
Today started off with caching again (I really am doing it a lot lately) and I tried my first attempt at the infamous Bridgedale Multi. This is a famous cache among cachers for being very hard to do. I found the first part but had no luck on part 2. I will find it, eventually.
I got home and we headed off to Harcourt for a benefit for one of Tamara’s cousins who at the age of 29, had heart failure, and was a successful recipient of a heart transplant. He is doing well, but his family is in Moncton while he is in Halifax so folks have been trying to raise some cash for him. It was a great event with lots of supporters and even little Dylan had fun. It was all good.
By the time I get home, make supper, and Dylan goes to bed, there’s barely time enough to do my own thing or even just rest. It feels like the days are just going faster and faster. Is this what it is going to be like as I get older and watch my kid grow up? Man, I better hurry up and win the lotto so I can spend less time working, and more time enjoying life.
Speaking of enjoying things, I am going to go enjoy doing nothing for the rest of the night
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Times & Transcript Ken & Lou