AM DX'ing from Winnipeg

For about the past 30 years (this month) on and off I have been into AM DX'ing, which is the hobby of receiving non-local AM radio stations.

The first non-Winnipeg station I used to listen to was Newsradio 78 WBBM Chicago back in late Summer of 1978.

Some of the radios I have had access to have had good sensitivity, while others are just good for local reception.

This time around, I've created an OpenOffice spreadsheet that lists the station callsign, city,

Here's the spreadsheet in PDF format.

And another version, that I've created in MySQL:

mysql> select frequency, callsign, city, state, network from radio_receivable order by frequency;
+-----------+----------+--------------------+-------+------------------+
| frequency | callsign | city | state | network |
+-----------+----------+--------------------+-------+------------------+
| 540 | CBK | Watrous | SK | CBC Radio One |
| 610 | KDAL | Duluth | MN | CBS Radio |
| 660 | CFFR | Calgary | AB | CORUS |
| 680 | CJOB | Winnipeg | MB | CORUS |
| 700 | WLW | Cincinatti | OH | ABC Radio |
| 710 | KXMR | Bismark | ND | ESPN Radio |
| 720 | WGN | Chicago | IL | ABC Radio |
| 730 | CKDM | Dauphin | MB | Ind. |
| 740 | KVOX | Fargo | ND | Fox Sports Radio |
| 760 | WJR | Detroit | MI | ABC |
| 780 | WBBM | Chicago | IL | CBS Radio |
| 790 | KFGO | Fargo | ND | CBS Radio |
| 810 | CKJS | Winnipeg | MB | Ind. |
| 830 | WCCO | Minneapolis | MN | CBS Radio |
| 850 | KOA | Denver | CO | Fox News Radio |
| 860 | CJBC | Toronto | ON | Radio-Canada |
| 880 | CKLQ | Brandon | MB | Ind. |
| 920 | CFRY | Portage la Prairie | MB | Ind. |
| 950 | CFAM | Altona | MB | Ind. |
| 990 | CBW | Winnipeg | MB | CBC Radio One |
| 1050 | CKSB | St Boniface | MB | Radio-Canada |
| 1100 | KZFG | Fargo | ND | Fox News Radio |
| 1110 | KFAB | Omaha | NE | Fox News Radio |
| 1150 | CKOC | Hamilton | ON | Astral |
| 1200 | KFNW | West Fargo | ND | Ind. |
| 1250 | CHSM | Steinbach | MB | Ind. |
| 1290 | CFRW | Fort Garry | MB | CHUM |
| 1330 | WLOL | Minneapolis | MN | Relevant Radio |
| 1430 | CHKT | Toronto | ON | Ind. |
| 1500 | KSTP | St Paul | MN | ABC Radio |
| 1540 | KTGG | Spring Arbor | MI | Ind. |
| 1540 | KXEL | Cedar Rapids | IA | ABC Radio |
| 1550 | CBE | Windsor | ON | CBC Radio One |
| 1630 | KCJj | Iowa City | IA | Ind |
| 1670 | WTDY | Madison | WI | ABC Radio |
+-----------+----------+--------------------+-------+------------------+
35 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Turboprint for Linux

I just bought myself a neat little Linux printer driver, Turboprint.

It can display the amounts of ink left, and has the printer utility programs like cleaning the nozzles, aligning the print heads, printing a test page etc...

However, since I have the Fedora version of Linux installed I must deal with SELinux from time to time. The printer doesn't print from my non-root username. I get the following error in SELinux:

su -

and enter your password, then it prints just fine.

This is just a workaround until I find out how to fix this in SELinux. Apparently it works fine in Fedora 9, but 9 I've heard is kinda buggy... I'm waiting for 10 or 11.
Summary:

SELinux is preventing tpstdin (cupsd_t) "write" to ./print.log (var_log_t).

Detailed Description:

[SELinux is in permissive mode, the operation would have been denied but was
permitted due to permissive mode.]

SELinux is preventing tpstdin (cupsd_t) "write" to ./print.log (var_log_t). The
SELinux type var_log_t, is a generic type for all files in the directory and
very few processes (SELinux Domains) are allowed to write to this SELinux type.
This type of denial usual indicates a mislabeled file. By default a file created
in a directory has the gets the context of the parent directory, but SELinux
policy has rules about the creation of directories, that say if a process
running in one SELinux Domain (D1) creates a file in a directory with a
particular SELinux File Context (F1) the file gets a different File Context
(F2). The policy usually allows the SELinux Domain (D1) the ability to write,
unlink, and append on (F2). But if for some reason a file (./print.log) was
created with the wrong context, this domain will be denied. The usual solution
to this problem is to reset the file context on the target file, restorecon -v
'./print.log'. If the file context does not change from var_log_t, then this is
probably a bug in policy. Please file a bug report
(http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi) against the selinux-policy
package. If it does change, you can try your application again to see if it
works. The file context could have been mislabeled by editing the file or moving
the file from a different directory, if the file keeps getting mislabeled, check
the init scripts to see if they are doing something to mislabel the file.

Allowing Access:

You can attempt to fix file context by executing restorecon -v './print.log'

The following command will allow this access:

restorecon './print.log'

Additional Information:

Metro Winnipeg Transit Logo

I finally managed to create an electronic version of the old Metro Winnipeg Transit logo. I used Inkscape 0.46 on Linux to do it, and exported to EPS, PNG, and Inkscape SVG formats. A while ago I had found a newspaper image with the caption that this would be the logo for the newly formed Metro Winnipeg Transit (circa 1961), part of the Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg, so I had a reasonably good image to use, albeit B&W.

Exporting to Adobe Illustrator in case someone in the future wants to fix up the look of the image a bit is a good idea, but is currently broken in Inkscape 0.46. This means that if someone wants to edit the image, the Illustrator user would have to Import the SVG.

From looking at photographs of Winnipeg trolleybuses and diesel buses from the period, the colours used, for example, the orange is like that from A&W, the green is a kind of deep forest gree/army green, and the yellow is a ever so slightly orangy than lemon.

This is not family-friendly reading material

I've been meaning to contact the WPL over a magazine that I've spotted that they've been carrying for a while - Bitch Magazine.

The magazine claims it's purpose is to:

Provides commentary on our media-driven world from a feminist perspective.

What then is the best way to get this man hating magazine OFF the shelf of our Public Library. It's horribly inappropriate and is spreading hatred against another gender.

I will consider various options to get this damn thing out of our main library and if it's at other branches too.

Restoring from BackUp My PC CD-Rs

This is a follow up to my previous post about getting Linux restored on my computer.

Five years ago I started using a backup program from Veritas, BackUp My PC. It only runs on Windows and I am now just running Linux.

So I had to use another Windows machine to restore those backups.

Six sets of backup CDs were created:

1. Created in May 2003 - the BACKUP file is not recognized by the program. It was a Verbatim CD-R with a paper label affixed.
2. Is not recognized by BackUp My PC. ?? CD-R with a paper label affixed.
3. Recognized. No paper label.
4. Recognized. No paper label.
5. Index file corrupt. The program then says it can manually create a new index from the files, however there is no indication of how it is progressing. No paper label.
   
6. Two disc backup set. No paper label. All files restored.
   

The general wisdom is to never affix any kind of paper label to a CD-R/RW or DVD-R/RW. It is much safer to use a CD-R pen to write the title on the disc itself, and then to use a pen to write on the supplied paper supplied with the CD/DVD or to create a new one using a kit and a proper template for your word processor.

Also the earliest backups have the same files plus newer files between backup #1 and #6. So it's always a good idea to backup all the files incrementally with any newer ones you create.

BackUp My PC stores backup sets in .qic (QIC cartridge) format, which dates back to the 1980s. According to one website it says that Windows backup also uses QIC 113 format to store its backups.

Rewrite of Catholic Preface Dialogue Needed

The Preface Dialogue is the part just before the Eucharistic Prayer. It goes like this:

Priest: The Lord be with you. All: And also with you.
Priest: Lift up your hearts. All: We lift them up to the Lord.
Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God. All: It is right to give him thanks and praise.

Now since at least the 1980s I've been saying:


Priest: The Lord be with you. All: And also with you.
Priest: Lift up your hearts. All: We lift them up to the Lord.
Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God. All: It is ALWAYS right to give him thanks and praise.

It goes right with what the Priest says next:

New Hard Drive

I had to replace my 4 year old 40 GB hard drive last week because it was making clicking sounds and the BIOS was no longer recognizing it.

So the new one is twice the size, and this gave me an opportunity to repartition using LVM and doing it the proper way with the 4 partitions -- /boot, / (root), /home, and /swap.

My /boot partition is 100 megs, while root and /home are 10 gigs, and /swap is 2.048 gigabytes.

After installing all the software I use, the root partition just has 6.5 gigabytes left over, but with LVM I can easily expand that without having to reformat, as there is 46 gigabytes of freespace.

Great, funny YouTuber:

His view count numbers in the 100s of thousands, days after his video rants are posted:

Philip Defranco (sxephil)

An example of how good his video rants are. Here's one on "Realization":




I think Phil should have his own tv or radio show. He's made for it.

Fedora Core 8 & Logical Volume Management

This weekend I decided that after two years with Fedora Core 5 on my workstation that it was time to update because I was missing out on the Linux versions of some great software like Scribus 2.3.4 and Gimp 2.4.

The big computers have had a way of partitioning hard drives that makes it easy to add or remove storage as required without having to shutdown and reboot.

As a fan of that kind of technology it's nice to be able to "test it out" so to speak.

So now the current version of Fedora Core 8 makes it easier to set up partitions using LVM (Logical Volume Management).

But because I haven't really paid much attention to this before because it hasn't really been documented very well how to set it up.

Basically you need 4 partitions:

/boot
/ (root)
/home
/swap

The /boot partition must be located outside of the LVM container though.
The Volume Group shows the big picture and contains all disk volumes. A physical volume is a single hard drive and a logical volume can be spread over one or more physical volumes.

So my hard drive is a small 40 gigabyte model, which is just fine for the stuff I want to do like surf the net, participate in blog and web forum discussions, create documents like the TRUWinnipeg pamphlet, and watch videos on YouTube.

I really don't need a whole lot more than that. I wish I could do desktop video editing, but that is probably best done with a full fledged PC workstation.

So onto the partitioning.

I wanted to set up a separate /home and on the Fedora Core 5 system I had previously I also had a CD-R sized partition on /share that I could use to archive documents to.

This time I also decided not to install Windows XP because I don't really use it, except to scan in the odd image, but that happens very rarely.

The /boot partition cannot sit inside an LVM because Linux won't be able to see it.
The /boot partition must be about 100 megabytes, but not much more than that. It is where the Linux kernels are kept, and you can keep more than one on your system and switch between them if needed.

The /home partition should maybe be about 10 gigabytes. This is where program configuration files are stored, as well as your documents and e-mail messages, so it's important to keep this large enough. When I backed up my e-mail messages I found that 1,000 messages going back about 2 years could be stored in about 250 megabytes of storage... And Firefox browser settings and bookmarks both could fit on one CD-R.

And you really should have a separate /swap partition that is set to double the size of your current amount of RAM.

But because I'm new to this LVM thing I couldn't get it to work as I understood the concept at the time. So instead of a separate /home directory I let Anaconda choose the default setup, which is two partitions -- /boot and / (root).

The restore operation of Firefox and Thunderbird data went very well. Before repartitioning I had copied the following directories onto a CD-R disc:

/home/jim/.mozilla/firefox
/home/jim/.thunderbird

Both those directories store Firefox bookmarks, passwords, and plug-ins, e-mail and login information to all e-mail accounts. This marks the first ever time I have been able to successfully restore my e-mail from a previous installation, and it sure felt good to still have those e-mails to refer to when I need to.

Next time I put a new version of Linux on my workstation I'll know enough to do it the recommended way, which has the benefit of not having to reformat the whole hard drive. I could then leave the /home directory intact and just have Anaconda reformat / and /boot and install onto those two.

Dressing The Man

A book titled Dressing the Man has been out since. The book illustrates through old and new photographs how to make a man look great for work or for formal occasions. I found reference to it at the Fedora Lounge, a website devote to men dressing well.

It says that "business casual" has come to mean sloppy dress code for work, and that we need to reverse that awful trend and get back to looking proper again.

Last month was my birthday. I already had a medium blue dress shirt with a yellow grid pattern I bought last year. I know that blue and purple are complimentary colours, so I searched out a purple tie.

Wow!

I haven't felt this good about choosing colours that go with one another to make an outfit since, uh, the mid-1980s, when Madonna's True Blue album was on the charts.

Earlier in June I bought myself a felt fedora hat. Never had a nicer hat before in my life, but way back in the 1980s I decided that by the time I turn 40 that I want something nicer than a baseball cap. This past Spring was very cold compared to previous ones, so it was not any different than wearing it in April.

But by the time the temperatures warmed up to the mid-20s Celcius I found it too hot if I was walking around in it for over 30 minutes outside. Someone told me that I should get a straw fedora. I'm totally new at this hat thing, but I thought a straw hat was like a "garden hat" for working outdoors. Not really. The Bay also had one of these for $25.

It is ALWAYS right to give Him thanks and praise

Part of the Catholic Mass (and in some other Christian services) there is a two way exchange between the Priest and the congregation, called the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer (Sursum corda in Latin). A few years ago I felt the need to add a word in the congregation's response because it makes the most sense...

Priest: The Lord be with you

Congregation: And also with you.

Priest: Lift up your hearts

Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord

Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God

Congregation: It is always right to give Him thanks and praise.

That last line. I add the word "always" in there, even though it is not part of official Mass... But it really balances things out correctly, because of what the priest says next...

Priest: Father, it is our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere, to give You thanks through Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

So next time you're in a Christian church and they have this ping-pong style prayer, add the word "always" in your last response. It agrees with and helps the Priest or minister with his next part — the second part of the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer.

See also:
Rewrite of the Apostles Creed is Needed

How Hats Communicate Chivalry

Image courtesy of Th3 ProphetMan

Since I was a teenager in the early 1980s which was also when my Dad reached the age of 50 I had long ago decided that when I reached the age of 40 I would go from wearing a baseball hat to wearing one of those nicer ones men used to wear.

My Dad looked really awful in a baseball hat when he turned 50. His hair was not always short enough at the time to make it look good, but that was part of the hair style back then to begin with.

So flash forward to the past year. Men have lost their "cache" of being real men, and I guess when things got bad enough I decided that I needed to fight back as best as I could and this meant going from very casual dress code at work to emulating what men wore in the 1940s and 1950s...a suit, a tie....and a fedora hat.

The fact that I bought one so close to the opening of the fourth Indiana Jones movie is just pure coincidence. And I've noticed too that other men, young and old are also starting to wear the nicer hats.

I think it is all a part of men wanting to be men again, and deciding that when women told us guys from the late 1980s that we "should get in touch with our feminine side" was just pure rubbish to begin with.

The story goes that until the early mid 1960s all men wore a nice hat like the one above, whenever they went out beyond their home. There was a certain protocol that also went with wearing such a hat, rules that have been forgotten by men, such as when you're in an elevator. If you're the only man or if the elevator is full of other men you are allowed to keep your hat on. However, once a lady steps onto that elevator and until she/they leave you must take it off and carry it in your hand beside you.

You're also supposed to tip your hat to a lady that you know when you pass her on the street. I have never been taught this and I'm finding it hard to remember, but I know eventually it'll be as easy as second nature the more I practice.

And I suppose that to take this to the next level, as a man, you can act more gentlemanly, and use the hat as a sort of "prop". For example, this afternoon on my lunch hour I was waiting for the bus. A young lady was passing me by, and for a second she kind of glanced at me and my hat. What I should have done, and I think what men used to do in such a circumstance, is to tip their hat slightly and say something like "Afternoon, ma'am". But like I said, I need experiences like this to form or recall a protocol that I really was not mentored in.

What does this mean though? Why am I doing this? Aren't we really past all that formal stuff and just talk lazily like "Howz it goin', man"? I think that just like the dress code has slipped too far to the extreme, the way we talk to one another has also slipped. Therefore, I am all for bringing back civility to the way men and women talk to each other in our everyday lives. In the years ahead it may mean the difference between a nicer, more civil city, and one that is more meaner and less friendly than it is now.

See also:
Art of Manliness - The Perfect Hat For Your Face
AskAndyAboutClothes.com - Etiquette for Hats and Caps
The Fedora Lounge

Tears For Fears - The Hurting

I recently bought a CD of rock group Tears For Fears live concert from1985, playing the music from their first two albums -- The Hurting, and Songs From The Big Chair.

TFF, as fans like to refer to the group, was my third favourite group in the 1980s, behind Phil Collins (including Genesis), and Madonna.

While I've had a copy of The Hurting for a few years now, I have not really played it much. Maybe it is because of the heavy theme of family dysfunction. This now classic album cover features a young boy sitting down with his head in his hands looking as if he is crying. The songs are told as from a child's point of view within a family. Maybe it was just the technical standards of some of the tracks on the CD. For example the title track which appears first could have been produced a bit better with maybe more volume in the bass track prior to final mixing. But this may have more to do with the then new Compact Disc technology which appeared at the same time as The Hurting did. To test this theory I'd have to acquire a cassette tape or LP copy of it to compare.

The tracks that I have not really paid any attention to now were The Hurting, Memories Fade, Suffer the Children, and The Start of the Breakdown. Listening to these four tracks can be quite intense, and I recommend you not listen to them too often because of the likelihood you may feel worse off. Everything in moderation as they say.

Safeway Canada's Blue Ribbon Campaign for Prostate Cancer

Three cheers for Safeway Canada for their recent campaign to raise funds for prostate cancer research... We all know that prostate cancer affects more men than breast cancer does women.

Someone I know said that Safeway had a breast and prostate cancer campaign about four years ago, however, they chose to go with a pink ribbon as a symbol rather than keep the two campaigns separate as they should have been. This is a much better campaign. Perhaps we should give written kudos to Safeway for supporting men's health issues.

And yet the so-called breast cancer awareness campaigns have been ever present at various stores and in the print and electronic media.

I'd really like to get a Blue Ribbon campaign going in Winnipeg, to counter what is being taken away via breast cancer campaigns.

One of these days someone will be crying that their father, child, uncle, grandfather is dying of prostate cancer because there was not enough funding to help him.

I really feel that what the current craze over breast cancer is all about is not really about the cancer itself, but it is just the inevitable result of all those abortions that were performed after birth control pills were made widely available. It's just catching up to the women.

Told 'ya so.

Boy & Man Friendly Music

This is a list of music albums that provide a positive message to boys and men:

Pop
A-Ha - Hunting High And Low (1984/85)
Neil Diamond - ?
Duran Duran - Rio (1982), Seven and the Ragged Tiger (1983),
Huey Lewis and the News - Fore! (1985)
Howard Jones -
George Michael - Faith (1987)
Men At Work - Business As Usual (1981/82)
Simply Red - Home (2003)
Thompson Twins - Into The Gap (1984)
Wham! - Make It Big (1984), Music From the Edge of Heaven (1986)

Rock, Rock n Roll
Bryan Adams -
April Wine - ?
Boulevard - BLVD (1988)
Phil Collins - But Seriously (1989)
Doug & The Slugs - ?
Genesis - When The Sour Turns To Sweet (1968/69), And Then There Were Three (1978)
Corey Hart - ?
Def Leppard - Adrenalize (1992)
Rush - Roll The Bones (1992)
Bruce Springsteen - Born In the USA (1985), Tunnel of Love (1987), Human Touch (1992)
Tears for Fears - The Hurting (1982), Songs from the Big Chair (1985), Elemental (1993) Raoul and the Kings of Spain (1995)

Non-male albums that are considered safe to listen to
Madonna - Like A Virgin (1984/85), True Blue (1986), Like A Prayer (1989)

This article, from the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, says that more and more women have taken Accounting positions within KPMG in the past few years.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/10/15/onthejob.DTL

Quoting a piece from the article:

What's responsible for those trends? Anecdotally at least, flagrant chauvinism is very much the exception to the rule. The task of answering this question puts KPMG among a growing number of accounting companies contemplating the next phase of dismantling the glass ceiling — in no small part because women now outnumber men entering the field. Certainly overt and mind-boggling sexual discrimination is alive and well in plenty of offices across the country. But in plenty of other offices, where messages of diversity and inclusion have finally been soaked up by the leadership — because they believe in it, or because they fear lawsuits — gender remains a significant issue nonetheless, albeit subtler and harder to pinpoint.

The article goes on to say that Accounting profession has been going through some changes in the past couple of decades and that women are now comfortable doing Accounting work, compared to previous generations.

Further down in the article, and I don't exactly understand why it was included in the published piece:

So it was that Lorna and the rest of the women in the large conference room soon paired off, looked each other in the eye and proceeded to brag. Peggy Klaus, a communication and leadership coach, had been brought in to teach the skill of "tooting your own horn without blowing it."

In minutelong spurts, the women attempted to brag about favorite vacations, things they're proud of, things they're proud of at work, an adventurous thing they've done, and so on. The idea, of course, is that women learn from an early age that boastfulness is inappropriate — a lesson that men don't always catch.

They say that women are not into expressing accomplishments, and being boastful... That's because that is a built in quality of boys and men... Women should not be nurtured on that quality because it is not built-in to them. God didn't make women to have those qualities for a reason. Women are there to support the man and his accomplishments which are of a higher significance. Women are a support for men, both by maintaining a home, and by following him, not the other way around.

How did women start to outnumber men in fiends where men were dominant? By lowering standards, and in this case I think it is from computerization to the point where an elementary school kid could almost run accounting software like AccPac, Intuit QuickBooks, etc... Just point, click, and you're done.

But compared to men doing the same task, how many women will be as productive, because some women tend to be more talkative with their co-workers, and will tend to talk more about shopping and take more time for self-grooming than actually process customer information.

The Switcheroo - Countering The Lies

http://antimisandry.com/truth_slowly_emerging-t10096.html?p=63009#post63009

Several lies that some women tell about the women's movement are countered by 'Percy' from Antimisandry.com.

The woman in this case, Judith (Judy) Woods, is reviewing Susan Pinker's book The Sexual Paradox.

Judy comments that the women on the BBC 1 television series The Apprentice are an "abberation", and how the women featured in the show are different than the men.

It seems what the ladies do is substitute the word "man" for "woman" and then use that to "pretend" they are like a Man. It will be up to us men to reverse this trend and to "set things right again".

Inflated Housing Prices Caused By "Dual Income" Families

I just finished reading a blog post titled The Problem With Women In The Workplace:

Because not only was feminism a dismal failure, but a quantified disaster. Little known fact: Because of women entering the workplace en masse in the 1980’s, the price of homes and vehicles EXPLODED. Why? Because people could charge more for homes and vehicles because working women created the dual income household. No one is going to ask 250K for a home if no one can afford it. So now women are forced to work, whether they want to or not, victims of the economy they created; 95% of them stuck in low paying, dead-end jobs. Most men can no longer earn enough for a woman to stay at home because of the now diluted workplace… over crowded by women.

In other words men, what they are saying is that the $4,000 - $7,000 6-cylinder Ford, Chevrolet, or Pontiac car you could afford in the early- mid-1980s and be generally happy with paying for it through your job and having your wife stay at home to look after the kids, has turned into the $35,000 SUV behemoth Excursion by the mid- late-1990s.

It is also precisely why the ``housing boom`` — created skyrocketing values of homes during the past 10 years in the first place. Because of dual income`` families. But now there is a possible real estate crash caused by something and we might not know for several years in hindsight what caused that.

At around the same time in the 1990s there was the trend of more women entering the workforce and in the government clerical jobs, as reported by Statistics Canada. The CPA the report refers to is Core Public Administration. To quote:

Women gaining ground in the CPA

The proportion of women within the CPA increased continuously from 1995 to 2006. In fact, since 1999, women have outnumbered men within the CPA.

Men still outnumber women in the workplace. However, the gap between the proportion of employed men and employed women has been slowly narrowing.

In 1995, nearly 46% of employed Canadians were women. By 2006, this proportion had grown to over 47%.

In contrast, in 2006, women accounted for the majority (54%) of all CPA employees, up from only 46% in 1995.

Between 1995 and 1997, more men than women left the CPA. Since 1998, this situation has reversed, and more women have been leaving the CPA.

However, during the 11-year period, there were continuously more female than male employees heading into the CPA.

Alongside the above trends there was more suburbanization at the edge of the city. More people commuting further and further to their jobs using more fuel. Public transit ridership took a nosedive, unless you were lucky enough to have rapid transit like a new or expanded LRT or subway line, you were facing a very lengthy commute indeed.

And just how was the public sold on the "need" for an SUV? Well people who bought them "sit higher up" in the vehicle, so it seems more "safe". Baloney. Just look at all the car accidents and tip overs that SUVs had. No, to reiterate, the reason why SUVs were created in the first place was so that it would become prohibitively expensive for the guy to afford by himself. He "needs" his wife to work full-time.

And then of course there are the families who break up (divorce is now more than 50% of marriages)... She is probably more likely to get the car/SUV.

So men, what are we going to do to fix this problem that was created in the mid-90s?

Ladies, do you really need that large(r) vehicle? Do you really need a bigger house? Another cell phone? Or can you get by with something smaller, and instead of a cell phone, going back to wired communications?

To God be the Glory.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter too all of my readers.

Jesus has Risen!

A Day for Men

Today is the United Nations sponsored International Women's Day.... Whoopdee doo!

Over the past 40 years women have been advancing and advancing until the current decade we are living in, the 2000s, they have surpassed us. Men are now considered second class citizens.

Canada has an International Day of Men, on November 25th, but it takes place when the snow begins to fly, and when the temperatures start to dip below freezing. We should move the Day to later in the Spring.

To make people aware of our oppression, of our hardships, our medical conditions, and the issues having to do solely about men.

It doesn't have to be adjacent to International Women's Day, March 8th.... It can be in April, May, or June... It would be nice if it could take place during the warmer weather because it would mobilize more of use to maybe take part in a march to the Legislature or something like that.

Here's two resources to get us started on that project. Perhaps in the next 3 or 4 years we can reach the goal of having our own Day of Action.

Wikipedia - International Men's Day
PetitionOnline - International Men's Day

Being Reverent

This week at Church, our priest made an announcement that Catholic Church policy, or at the Diocesan level, has changed. Apparently a newsletter was sent out to Parishioners in December 2007 titled Toward a Full, Conscious and Active Participation, it states:

As the worshipping assembly processes together in revernce and song, the food that is shared, is changing and transforming. Standing together until the last person has been fed, the assembly is transformed from individualism into one body.

Once the communion procession is completed the entire assembly kneels or sits to share in a moment of silence and thanksgiving.

1. Stand in line for communion
   
2. Music was sung or not
3. Receive communion and (optionally) the blood of Christ
4. Walk back to your pew
5. Kneel in silent prayer for a bit, length of time up to the parishioner -- could be 30 seconds to 2 or 3 minutes or more.
6. After we kneel and say our communion prayer, we are to stand up and wait for the last of the communicants in line to finish.
7. The priest washes the challice and puts away the cup and other communion related items.
8. ... (the end of the Mass)
   

This parts from the previous policy in which the routine was:

1. Stand in line for communion
2. Music was sung or not
3. Receive communion and (optionally) the blood of Christ
4. Walk back to your pew
5. Kneel in silent prayer for a bit, length of time up to the parishioner -- could be 30 seconds to 2 or 3 minutes or more.
6. Sit down quietly and continue singing along with the music that is being sun, or just be "quiet in the spirit" so to say.
   
7. The priest washes the challice and puts away the cup and other communion related items.
8. ... (the end of the Mass)

There was a time since about the early 90s where Catholics were instructed to stand in the middle part of the Eucharistic prayer. I thought this to be less reverent than the old time honoured policy of kneeling throughout. I still keep to the old rule, not because I like old things, but sometimes the old rules are better than the newer.

Also, after the Lamb of God prayer, before the Priest says ... I will kneel because this is also being reverent to the Holy Trinity.

People are so much like lemmings though. Most will do as you tell them to. I am however built a bit different I guess, thank God. After all, how often do we kneel in everyday life? Not very often. We mainly stand and sit. The act of kneeling is special. It is mainly reserved when we are in taking part in a church Mass or a service. Basically through the act of kneeling we are admitting that God himself is the higher being and that we fall prostate to Him.


So when the Catholic Church, or the Winnipeg Archdiocese puts out a new policy where we are to stand instead, that rings alarm bells, and makes me question just where these new policies are coming from?

What is the root of this change in policy? Who is the one who suggested the change? I don't think that it is the Pope, since he is too traditional for that kind of thing...

I need to find out more about this and hopefully in the next while I will have an answer... Perhaps an e-mail or letter to the Pope is in order here.

Getting Rid of Men

Back in 1997, during Mayor Susan Thompson's reign, City Hall had hired George Cuff, who hailed from Edmonton, to look at ways to further deepen Unicity government here. At the time, there was a major campaign through the press to replace the five City Commissioners, who were all Men, with one CAO at City Hall.

The way this concept was sold was we were constantly told that Edmonton City Hall had recently replaced its Commissioners with a CAO, thereby saving costs. Enacting this required an amendment to the City of Winnipeg Act, which was put into action on October 29, 1997.

However, the first Winnipeg CAO was a woman, Anita Stenning, who after quitting that position, went on to CEO of CentreVenture, which is in charge of getting a hold of property that is vacant and finding new uses for them.

TVOntario's Agenda had a program topic about Women in Politics, and whether there should be more women encouraged to enter that field.

One of the panelists said because women are finding it hard to break through the so-called "glass ceiling" in politics, but doing the job of CAO is easier because it is a managerial job and not an elected position.

About halfway through the program, one of the panelists mentions that 54% of CAOs in Canada are women!

I wonder whether the Cuff Report was written to get rid of some Men in civic administration.

See also:

Frontier Centre for Public Policy - Cuff Report: Tricky Treat?

We Are Borg, Resistance Is Futile!

This past weekend I had the opportunity to check out the Facebook website.

I did this only because in checking the weblogs for truwinnipeg.org, it reported that most of the accesses to our site were via Facebook, rather than Google, or MSN Search, etc...

So after getting curious about this created my own Facebook ID. The difference in creating an on this site as compared to others is that you are highly encouraged to use your real name.

There are online communities similar to those on the regular web, except to view them, you MUST have a Facebook ID.

I know a few people on there locally, and of course I typed in 'Winnipeg Transit' to find groups related to that, and I also became official friends with other TRU Winnipeggers, and a politician.

What bothers me about Facebook is that it is like peering into someone else's private life. For example, I have a friend outside of Winnipeg who used to live here. I know that he has 3 or 4 kids. I can view photos of their Christmas together. I can also view photos of another friend, this one who does live in the city. And his kid is a bit on the obese side, for someone his age, yet I have had not met been in the presence of this person yet.

One other friend that I know allows Facebook to publish the latest songs and YouTube videos that he has watched.

We are quickly becoming a surveillance society, with Facebook, other online communities, and of course surveillance cameras on buses, and on street corners, and inside businesses and civic institutions like the public library.

Facebook to me, could be used for evil purposes. It could conceivably create a community against a person, and unless that person were a member of a site like Facebook, they would not have a clue what is being said about them.

I see this being used, in worse times that we live in now, as a sort Orwellian "eye", where there is considerable peer pressure to remain part of "the collective", like The Borg of Star Trek fame.

I will NOT be emasculated!

It is since 2002 that it seems that most men my age are too soft when it comes to the way they act... They are not "real" men because society has told them that men with male qualities of assertiveness, aggressiveness, and competitivenesses is somehow wrong.

Well, this is just plain WRONG! I have a very strong sense of being male. You cannot take that away from me. You can try, but in the end the man with inner boy comes right back. I almost fell for being emasculated earlier in the decade because I noticed more young women serving me at fast food restaurants for example... Soon enough you start to talk to yourself in that feminine voice. But no more! I've figured out the plan.

And men have been constantly told that we "need to get in touch with our feminine side" Rubbish! This false propaganda is the the source of the problem.

So whenever I see a Mom telling her young son that he is acting to aggressive, I have begun to tell the Mom that "he is normal, that is normal for a boy".... I mean as long as he is not punching another person and causing physical harm that way, no harm.

Guys are guys, and girls are girls. That's the way God designed us.