Year in Review 2007
2007 Overall, wasn't too bad. Made some progress, had some setbacks.
This was a year for the Greens
Over summer, I took a class "Ecological Economics"; I thought it would be hippie tripe, and to some extent I was right, but it turned out that I'm actually a radical environmentalist and I didn't know it. I just assumed that everyone (intelligent) around me cared about their ecological footprint, but I was obviously mistaken. Around that time I found an organic food shop (on 14th downtown?) in regina, and I've since gone to Green Drinks to drink with the local green reps. As the year progressed, topics like global climate change became more commonly discussed, and I read some of Paul Hawkens, Bjorn Lomberg and Edward O Wilson.
Nine inch Nails released their Year Zero album, which blew me right away. For those few of you who haven't heard of it yet, in addition to being an exceptionally good album, who's blend of ambient, industrial and rock is really nothing like anything that has came before it, it was also from the get-go a participatory project--the fans were a part of the album experience. Tracks were left in concert halls on USB keys with clues on them, and the fanbase had to work together to uncover the story behind the album, hidden on websites across the 'net. It's an eerie postapocalyptic story, and in my opinion is right up there above The Wall, in it's entirety as a project.
Duncan named his band after me, which is something I think all musicians aspire to. Even though my musical skill is atrophying, to boot.
First I started using eGold, but shortly afterwards the US Government moved to steal all eGold's vaults of bullion, so I went looking for non-US alternatives. I found Ripple. Ripple, like Bittorrent, is a(n open) protocol. It has a free software implimentation, written in Python/Django. Unfortunately the version of Django they used is really, really out of date now that Django has released their first stable/production version, so using it on your own computer as things currently stands is impossible unless you have the skills available to modify python(which I am at least a week of effort away from). And there is currently to my knowledge only one website that supports the protocol, RipplePay.com. But regardless; this program, or if it fails, one like it, will revolutionize banking and finance, and in doing so the political world. I read the Baroque cycle this year, which is about banking, and the sweeping changes that occurred from the 1600s to 1700s, and those changes are the same kind of changes this kind of a banking system will promise. Saskatchewan's main sector of employment, and contribution to GDP is the finance sector, and this program will make all of that trade absolutely unnecessary, essentially automating the biggest portion of the saskatchewan economy. Of course, that's only if entrepreneurs(or, govenrment, ngos, community groups) actually get their act together and make it happen. Don't like banks, but appreciate some of their advantages? Ripple will deal away with banks almost entirely, while leaving the benefits of financial system intact.
Although a highschoolish-type experiment, I successfully created my own battery. The principles behind it are easy enough to understand, any two metals seperately submerged in a liquid create a voltaic cell; plug one end to one side of a circuit, the other end to the other end of a circuit and DC electricity flows through the circuit. The metals I had on hand were very similar, but it worked nonetheless. In case society falls apart, assuming I can get my hands on the right raw materials, I could probably trace more steps of the scientific revolution.
This year The NAU/SPP went from being a politically verbotten topic, relegated to conspiracy theorists and nobodies, to being widely acknowledged on both sides of the political spectrum. Various parts of the canadian, mexican and american government are in disagreeance, but some of them(such as the alberta provincial transit & highways) have included NAU/SPP plans as things they are implimenting. Harper met with bush in a closed-doors NAU/SPP meeting, and any Canadian who wanted to come and protest this undemocratic meeting was given an extremely hard time--some were led astray by the cops, told to leave when there was no legal reason why they couldn't be there, others were peppersprayed and beaten. Connie Fogal, leader of the Canadian Action Party somehow managed to get on the front lines of the protest. All the major media outlets reported (to varying degrees of accuracy) the protests at Montebello. (The NAU/SPP is an attempt to undermine canada's sovereignty, in effect making us, the US and mexico one non-democratic political entity, like the EU only worse).
The battle over the CDMCA is not over, although it's certainly worth making note of. Minister Prentice put the country on notice that parliament would be discussing a new copyright bill. When first asked about it, he only hinted that the interests of the copyright maximalists were being represented, and that it would be a carbon-copy of the DMCA. On the first day, 50 people showed up to protest. By the third day there was a facebook group with over 1,000 members. By the end of the first week, there was somewhere around 20,000 members in the facebook, and the Harper Government had been scared into not putting forth an amendment after all. As things stand the facebook group is just under 40,000 people, and although there's some suspicion that the Harper government may not pass the issue after all, now that the facebook group alone is bigger than the membership of all the copyright maximalist groups, they are a force to be reckoned with politically, and the conservatives know this; they know that they are living under the microscope on this issue, and that Canadians are Concerned. I was a small part of this effort.
I worked at SaskTel for most of the year, and made enough money to live comfortably for awhile. I helped thousands of families with their computer and networking problems, and although I didn't solve everyone's problem(and caused a few), most days I went home with a grinning satisfaction that I had made someone's day, and helped the (socialist?) economy as a whole operate smoothly. They claimed that they will most likely rehire me if I apply, although there are two things that *might* get in the way of that
1) the Sask Party got in in the provincial election, and they have publicly stated that they want to get rid of SaskTel as an entity.
2) They are a huge, ancient bureaucracy that dates back to the early days of telephones. While I saw a lot there that shows that they have actually been trying, very hard, to keep up with the times, I think to some extent, any company that big, and that old, is going to be struggling. They live based on assumptions that things need to be kept secret from their customer, their equipment is treated like black boxes, and really they are missing a lot of the benefits that come from an amateur-to-amateur system of content distribution.
Of course by saying this I don't mean they are completely bad--on the contrary they are probably near the best choice for a variety of things--their internet service is second to only FiOS and Accesscomm on the continent, and their phone service is probably one of the best in the country, especially their landline service. They are also one of the first companies in the world to have High Definition TV over DSL, far before Verizon, Bell and AT&T. But they are going to have to address their problems, or other companies will eventually overturn their market dominance.
I took 5, and passed 3 classes. Not much, but then again I did work throughout the year too.
I passed:
Ecological Economics ECON296
Macroeconomics ECON202
CS330 Operating Systems CS330(I'll be retaking to get a better grade this winter)
which puts me as a 4th year student, with 1 year of classes to go. I'm hoping to graduate by 2009.
The university went on strike and I was the only one who didn't really cross. Consequently I also lost out on grades, and spending time with people who did cross; a rather large setback all in all.
Bain Error (Abort/Fail/Retry)? Up until this year I felt sorry for people who had migraines; it seemed to me like there wasn't much room in the world for them. You can imagine my surprise when I found out I was among them; I had a migraine in 2005, working at the Max(although I didn't know what it was), and again, in 2007, I had one while I was working at SaskTel. Thankfully neither has really affected me except in making work impossible for a few hours(since I went temporarily blind). Although I'm still not 100% sure it was a migraine, it seems to fit all the symptoms, and the neurologist has yet to get back to me on the matter.
Of course the really big event this year was my Vasectomy. Of course it would ironically be the year my evil twin had her first child, but I went under the knife and can no longer produce offspring. I can no longer rely on children to assist me, but on the other hand it is no longer necessary to save resources to raise them either. Let's just see what I do with this new, second chance at life.
This was a year for the Greens
Over summer, I took a class "Ecological Economics"; I thought it would be hippie tripe, and to some extent I was right, but it turned out that I'm actually a radical environmentalist and I didn't know it. I just assumed that everyone (intelligent) around me cared about their ecological footprint, but I was obviously mistaken. Around that time I found an organic food shop (on 14th downtown?) in regina, and I've since gone to Green Drinks to drink with the local green reps. As the year progressed, topics like global climate change became more commonly discussed, and I read some of Paul Hawkens, Bjorn Lomberg and Edward O Wilson.
Nine inch Nails released their Year Zero album, which blew me right away. For those few of you who haven't heard of it yet, in addition to being an exceptionally good album, who's blend of ambient, industrial and rock is really nothing like anything that has came before it, it was also from the get-go a participatory project--the fans were a part of the album experience. Tracks were left in concert halls on USB keys with clues on them, and the fanbase had to work together to uncover the story behind the album, hidden on websites across the 'net. It's an eerie postapocalyptic story, and in my opinion is right up there above The Wall, in it's entirety as a project.
Duncan named his band after me, which is something I think all musicians aspire to. Even though my musical skill is atrophying, to boot.
First I started using eGold, but shortly afterwards the US Government moved to steal all eGold's vaults of bullion, so I went looking for non-US alternatives. I found Ripple. Ripple, like Bittorrent, is a(n open) protocol. It has a free software implimentation, written in Python/Django. Unfortunately the version of Django they used is really, really out of date now that Django has released their first stable/production version, so using it on your own computer as things currently stands is impossible unless you have the skills available to modify python(which I am at least a week of effort away from). And there is currently to my knowledge only one website that supports the protocol, RipplePay.com. But regardless; this program, or if it fails, one like it, will revolutionize banking and finance, and in doing so the political world. I read the Baroque cycle this year, which is about banking, and the sweeping changes that occurred from the 1600s to 1700s, and those changes are the same kind of changes this kind of a banking system will promise. Saskatchewan's main sector of employment, and contribution to GDP is the finance sector, and this program will make all of that trade absolutely unnecessary, essentially automating the biggest portion of the saskatchewan economy. Of course, that's only if entrepreneurs(or, govenrment, ngos, community groups) actually get their act together and make it happen. Don't like banks, but appreciate some of their advantages? Ripple will deal away with banks almost entirely, while leaving the benefits of financial system intact.
Although a highschoolish-type experiment, I successfully created my own battery. The principles behind it are easy enough to understand, any two metals seperately submerged in a liquid create a voltaic cell; plug one end to one side of a circuit, the other end to the other end of a circuit and DC electricity flows through the circuit. The metals I had on hand were very similar, but it worked nonetheless. In case society falls apart, assuming I can get my hands on the right raw materials, I could probably trace more steps of the scientific revolution.
This year The NAU/SPP went from being a politically verbotten topic, relegated to conspiracy theorists and nobodies, to being widely acknowledged on both sides of the political spectrum. Various parts of the canadian, mexican and american government are in disagreeance, but some of them(such as the alberta provincial transit & highways) have included NAU/SPP plans as things they are implimenting. Harper met with bush in a closed-doors NAU/SPP meeting, and any Canadian who wanted to come and protest this undemocratic meeting was given an extremely hard time--some were led astray by the cops, told to leave when there was no legal reason why they couldn't be there, others were peppersprayed and beaten. Connie Fogal, leader of the Canadian Action Party somehow managed to get on the front lines of the protest. All the major media outlets reported (to varying degrees of accuracy) the protests at Montebello. (The NAU/SPP is an attempt to undermine canada's sovereignty, in effect making us, the US and mexico one non-democratic political entity, like the EU only worse).
The battle over the CDMCA is not over, although it's certainly worth making note of. Minister Prentice put the country on notice that parliament would be discussing a new copyright bill. When first asked about it, he only hinted that the interests of the copyright maximalists were being represented, and that it would be a carbon-copy of the DMCA. On the first day, 50 people showed up to protest. By the third day there was a facebook group with over 1,000 members. By the end of the first week, there was somewhere around 20,000 members in the facebook, and the Harper Government had been scared into not putting forth an amendment after all. As things stand the facebook group is just under 40,000 people, and although there's some suspicion that the Harper government may not pass the issue after all, now that the facebook group alone is bigger than the membership of all the copyright maximalist groups, they are a force to be reckoned with politically, and the conservatives know this; they know that they are living under the microscope on this issue, and that Canadians are Concerned. I was a small part of this effort.
I worked at SaskTel for most of the year, and made enough money to live comfortably for awhile. I helped thousands of families with their computer and networking problems, and although I didn't solve everyone's problem(and caused a few), most days I went home with a grinning satisfaction that I had made someone's day, and helped the (socialist?) economy as a whole operate smoothly. They claimed that they will most likely rehire me if I apply, although there are two things that *might* get in the way of that
1) the Sask Party got in in the provincial election, and they have publicly stated that they want to get rid of SaskTel as an entity.
2) They are a huge, ancient bureaucracy that dates back to the early days of telephones. While I saw a lot there that shows that they have actually been trying, very hard, to keep up with the times, I think to some extent, any company that big, and that old, is going to be struggling. They live based on assumptions that things need to be kept secret from their customer, their equipment is treated like black boxes, and really they are missing a lot of the benefits that come from an amateur-to-amateur system of content distribution.
Of course by saying this I don't mean they are completely bad--on the contrary they are probably near the best choice for a variety of things--their internet service is second to only FiOS and Accesscomm on the continent, and their phone service is probably one of the best in the country, especially their landline service. They are also one of the first companies in the world to have High Definition TV over DSL, far before Verizon, Bell and AT&T. But they are going to have to address their problems, or other companies will eventually overturn their market dominance.
I took 5, and passed 3 classes. Not much, but then again I did work throughout the year too.
I passed:
Ecological Economics ECON296
Macroeconomics ECON202
CS330 Operating Systems CS330(I'll be retaking to get a better grade this winter)
which puts me as a 4th year student, with 1 year of classes to go. I'm hoping to graduate by 2009.
The university went on strike and I was the only one who didn't really cross. Consequently I also lost out on grades, and spending time with people who did cross; a rather large setback all in all.
Bain Error (Abort/Fail/Retry)? Up until this year I felt sorry for people who had migraines; it seemed to me like there wasn't much room in the world for them. You can imagine my surprise when I found out I was among them; I had a migraine in 2005, working at the Max(although I didn't know what it was), and again, in 2007, I had one while I was working at SaskTel. Thankfully neither has really affected me except in making work impossible for a few hours(since I went temporarily blind). Although I'm still not 100% sure it was a migraine, it seems to fit all the symptoms, and the neurologist has yet to get back to me on the matter.
Of course the really big event this year was my Vasectomy. Of course it would ironically be the year my evil twin had her first child, but I went under the knife and can no longer produce offspring. I can no longer rely on children to assist me, but on the other hand it is no longer necessary to save resources to raise them either. Let's just see what I do with this new, second chance at life.