2006 Census of Canada

2006 Census of Canada

I had a bright yellow envelope in my mailbox today. THE CENSUS HAS ARRIVED!

I was worried that because I was living in my new apartment that my existance might go uncounted. I was also worried that if I failed to receive a census and, thus, did not fill one out, I might end up IN THE SLAMMER!

It was nerve racking. I didn't want to screw it up because the form looked very similar to the income tax form. It is well known how that the taxman always forces those to be paid. So I wanted to make sure I was counted properly or I might face the wrath of the Census man who will make sure I am counted either the easy way or the hard way. I hate to imagine what the hard way is! It sends shivers down my spine.

But fear not, I filled out the form and mailed at the local post office right away. It is in the hands of Canada Post now. Wait, the way Canada Post has lost and/or missedplaced packages that my employer sends out I should be concerned that I might not be counted and may have to face the wrath of the census man. OH THE HORRORS!

How can you afford to be a student?

I was talking with my sister on the phone the other day wondering why she hasn't returned home from university.

She noted that she still had exams and was going to be in university until May tenth.

"What?" I asked.

She said, yuppers at her university the exams go into May.

I remember fondly my days at the University of Ottawa where the exams were over by the end of April and I could move home by May first at the very latest. Apparently that is no longer the case at university.

I thought about it a little more lately and noted that my sister is losing important employment time. She is basically losing ten days from her summer employment and the associated loss in wages. These wages usually go towards paying tuition, books and just plain living through the school year.

It seems her university doesn't understand that their students need to work four months during the summer in order to be able to afford to continue their studies.

Its a shame really because not everyone is rich enough to sit on the beach in Maui during the summer months while not attending university. Gee...maybe most students might like to actually have some money in their pockets instead of drumming up their student debt like drunken sailors. hmmmm...novel idea ya think?

The weather...what else is a Canadian going to discuss?

It reached a high of twenty-five degrees celcius today in Toronto. I might note that it is only May fifth and it is already reaching a high of twenty-five degrees. I can hardly wait for to see what the temperatures are going to be like in the summer. (Sarcasm alert!...the previous sentence was chalk full of sarcasm...this has been a sarcasm alert for all those with no sense of humour).

Not helping matters is that my new apartment, which I moved into at the beginning of March, suffers from immense amounts of daytime heating. So when I get home from a long day of work I walk into a warm apartment. That is not an issue in March when you want a nice warm apartment in order to escape the freezer like conditions outside. But in the summer months I look forward to cool places, not hot places! So when I return home now it is a little too warm for my liking. I can only imagine in the middle of July when the temperature outside is thirty degrees. In my apartment it will probably be closer to a sizzling forty degrees celcius. Well at least I will be able cook my dinner without turning on the stove. So I guess there are pluses to having high amounts of daytime heating.

Useless fact of the day

Empire State Building: Official Internet Site

Useless fact of the day...the Empire State Building is 75 years old today and will shine white lights tonight. Why white light? The lights were shining white 75 years ago tonight on opening night on New York City's most popular tower.

The second useless fact of the day. Betty Lou Oliver, an elevator operator, survived a 75 floor plunge in her elevator after a plane crashed into Empire State Building. The elevator plunge holds the Guiness Book of World Records for the longest elevator plunge with someone on board actually surviving. More on this plunge here.

Renovations

Michael's Blog

I decided on Saturday to do some renovations on this blog. It had been bothering me off and on for a while on how dark my original choices of colour scheme was on the original blog.

I had chosen the original blog layout based on the blues in order to match my original website's colour scheme (which was newish at the time for the website).

But the dark navy blue background bothered me. I had attempted to try and offset the dark blue by using white in the main posting section. But the dark background still bothered me. I played around with the existing setup by changing the various components colours. But nothing seemed to work.

So I merely chose a different template from Blogger.com's myriad of choices. Why choose from Blogger's choices and not create my own? Simply, when it comes to technological coding from scratch, I am useless! But I am pretty smart at decoding existing html language and molding it into what I need (which if you view the source on this blog might give a computer programmer a heart attack). So voila here it is. The New Michael's blog!

The new blog maintains the blues from the original website (which I am currently also renovating as well) and makes the blog more readible by removing the dank dark background and enlarging the text somewhat from before.

Don't worry, the original website will continue to exist and expand under the "michaelsuddard.com banner" using the existing framed pages. But some of the older material will be updated as well reformatted to use the current newer colour scheme and layout.

Once that is complete I intend to start adding more expansion to include my teaching lesson plans, more pictures from both New York City, Toronto, Aurora and other places.

So stay tuned! There is more to come!

The Art of the Rant: Disservice to the Troops?

The Art of the Rant: Disservice to the Troops?

I had been thinking about the issue of closing CFB Trenton to the media and the general public for the returning of the four Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan to Canada for much of last week. Should the air force base, CFB Trenton, only be open to the families and friends of the fallen soldiers and closed to the media and the general public?

My mind raced back and forth to come up with a solution based on the right of the public's need to know and the right of the families to mourn in private. Here is what I came up with.

A "Down to earth" question

TheStar.com - Down to earth

Have you ever wondered why some technologies don't seem to receive the same government support as others? Take a look this article and start wondering.

Why can't the provincial and federal government understand the need of reducing power consumption more than one way? Currently the governments want us to use lower wattage light bulbs, more energy efficient appliances, have environmental home audits and so on and so forth all in the bid to reduce energy. All of these methods only reduce what we currently use through either natural gas or electricity.

Why doesn't the government start investing in ideas like thermal heating exchange units similar to thos mentioned in Tyler Hamilton's article referenced above. That article points to a technology that could reduce electricity and natural gas consumption quite considerably both in the immediate and long terms. So why won't governments do it in the name of trying to achieve the targets set out by the Kyoto accord and reduce greenhouse gases?


In Canada quite a few of the local municipalities are in the electricity business. So having all of these homes and businesses switch over from being electricity consumers to possibly even being energy producers. How could they be energy producers? One is obviously by reducing the amount of electricity being used quite considerably by installing the thermal idea referenced in the article. The second might be to either install an electrical generator to use the heat in the summer being forced underground in order to produce electricty. Or the second might include the installation of solar panels and/or a wind turbine to create the necessary energy that the home or business might require. However, if an over abundance of electricity is generated because of the seventy percent energy reduction as well as the energy production, the home/business could sell the excess back to "the grid." In other words the hydro (electrical) companies could end up paying to the home or business owner for electricity produced instead of billing the homeowner/businessowner for energy used. If enough buildings convert, then some municipalities wholly owned hydro companies may start to have to pay out more than is coming in. But that is more likely to be long in the future.

Could it be that the local hydro companies want us to reduce our power consumption because they cannot build generation fast enough? Probably. Do these same companies want us to reduce our electricity consumption by as much as seventy percent? Not likely. Why not? Because that just might put them in a financial hardship if the money starts to slow while the electrical company gets stuck with the bills for maintaining the infrastructure required to maintain "the grid."

But then again bureauracy, as we all know, takes sometimes to recognize the most obvious things. I just hope that the bureaucracy of the government notices this twenty-five year old technology pretty shortly and comes up with a way to fund the installation of it before the ice caps of the Artic become an endangered species.