Well, the first month of school for the kids is almost over.   But this year is a bit different for my kid.  She's going on a student exchange.  They get "twinned" with another student in another school, and for a week, my kid goes Quebec to learn the culture.  Later on, her twin comes here to spend a week with us .   That's going to be interesting because this family is of Chinese descent and even though we are mostly N. American born and follow pretty well all the culture of N. America, there is still a lot of Chinese left in the way we live.  For instance, this kid from Quebec coming to BC thinking he or she is going to live the English Western Canada culture is going to find that there's going to be a lot of Chinese food to be eaten here.  Also that grandma here doesn't speak a whole lot of English or French.  Cantonese or Fukien are the Chinese dialects in this house.   Actually, we're very multicultural here.  This is going to be fun. 

 

Of course, no student exchange is really successful without parental involvement.  So I got to learn, along with others in a committee, to build a website, rent webspace, register a domain and allocate email accounts under that domain name.   As it turned out, my friends a the Westcoast Fieros of BC was in process of moving to some more reliable webspace.  I was introduced to a company called 1 and 1.   1 and 1 rents webspace with a domain registration and up to 600 email accounts for as little as $4 a month.   The thing I noticed about the Fiero club site is that it's much faster and more stable now.    The website we've built will be used to communicate between the two schools and have a forum space for the students, parents and those involved to interact.   The power of the internet!

 

On the work front, it is quarter end.  It's really busy.  Along with that, we are converting to a new enterprise system.  Lots of testing, finding issues, and then hoping we've specced all the requirements and they've been properly interpretted.   This is big, and I've got a blistering headache.  Needless to say, so have my colleaques.   There are going to be things missed and we hope we are able to keep the business up and running as we resolve the problems.   Do we detect a bit of anxiety here?  You bet.   But I think things will work out.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

Well, the summer's over.  Kids are back at school, so drive with extreme due care and attention, especially in school zones.   I noted that the local police had set up "seatbelt checks" even in the neighbourhood sidestreets this morning.

 

Here's a rant.  After spending millions of dollars to fix up the traffic flow of the North end of the Queensborough Bridge in Burnaby, BC, traffic has become an absolute bottle neck.  They made it worse while also eliminating one traffic flow.  One cannot turn from Marine Drive to 6th street anymore.  Well done.  The person who designed the new pattern needs to have his head examined. 

 

My highlight of the summer was having to go to Rochester NY to work.   I got to see a part of the world in which I have never been before.  I met some fine people and hope the economy improves there.  Other things I did included attending a bunch of car drives and show n shines.  It was a rather relaxing summer actually.

 

Speaking of cars and economy, the big 3 American based car manufacturers have gone to governments begging for money.  Seems if they don't have this money, chances are they will go bankrupt, putting hundreds of thousands of people out of jobs.  After decades of arrogant mismanagement, GM, Ford and Chrysler have realized that they gave away all the billions they made in the 70's to 90's to exorborant executive compensation and ridiculous salaries to their unionized workers.   They should have invested some of that profit into building and supporting products that would make their companies proud, but instead, took the profits and ran.  Now they're on the brink of bankrupcy expecting the middle-class taxpayer to bail them out.   GM's advertising is all based on a car they are working on, but currently does not exist in a form or product you and I can buy.   Everybody is banking on 2010.  I feel sorry for anybody needing a new car between now and 2010 (2009?).  And what does the taxpayer get in return for "lending" this money to companies that are losing $100 million dollars a day?   

 

Both the USA and Canada have elections coming up this fall.  We're both going to bombarded with telephone surveys of who you are going to vote for and what you think the issues are.  I also know that many relinquish our responsibility of voting and try not to deal with politics.   In a democratic society, you get whats you pay for. 

It still bothers me that many who complain that George W was a lousy president didn't bother to even vote.   The same with Canada.  Those who thought Stephen Harper was a lousy Prime Minister should have their say.   However, in Canada, Canadians do NOT vote for Stephen Harper as the campaigns say.  They vote for a member of parliament.   If most of the MP's voted in are of Stephen Harper's party, then Stephen Harper gets to be the Prime Minister.   In this sense, them, a Canadian should be voting for an MP.  What is that MP going to do for your riding?   In the US, it appears to be more complicated.  You can vote for a Democratic Governer and a Republican President?   Worse yet, you could vote for a non-partied president (Ralph Nader comes to mind).  Pretty scary to me as the president pretty well does what his advisors tell him.  I'm pretty sure if George W. Bush hadn't chosen decent advisors and followed their bidding, he probably wouldn't have become president.  But then, I've been wrong before.   So it's the responsibility of every citizen in a free democratic society to excercise their right, priviledge and responsibility to learn about the issues at hand and to vote for whomever is going to represent YOU to the leaders of the nation.   You as an individual may not have much of a say in any policy being made, but if you and 100, 1000, 100,000 others are of the same opinion on something, you will be heard.  That's how democracy works and for the most part, it's a pretty good way of doing things.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading.