It’s been over a month of me trying to get some resolution to my problems with my Internet at home, and I’m happy to say that I’m a step nearer today. I imagine it’s due to everyone’s help on Twitter to be honest, since a few people made a few calls internally on my behalf. So thanks if you helped out. I got a call a while ago from someone within Shaw who was informed of my problems. Right away, she said she was going to make some price adjustments to reflect the fact that my service has been sub-par. First, she lowered my monthly internet fee from $45/mo down to $10/mo for a full year. Second, ...

It seems like I spend a lot of time at the Apple store trying to get things fixed. My current laptop has had the LCD replaced, and the main board twice now. My previous laptop also spent a few visits behind closed doors there as well. Truth be told, in the shower today I was trying to think of any other devices I’ve ever owned that have been in for repair as often, and I can’t think of any. I’ve had each of my cameras in once to the shop, once to repair a cracked LCD (I dropped it), and once for a cleaning. So other than when I drop things or get them dirty, not many of my devices crap out on ...

It’s still early in the process, but today we (as a group) started planning a big WordPress event in Vancouver: WordCamp Vancouver. For those of you who follow regularly, you’ll remember that I was a co-organizer of WordCamp Whistler, which turned out to be a very well received event with an attendance of about 120 people, which is rather remarkable, given how expensive Whistler is and how far many people drove to be there. In the past, I’ve helped put together a few small WordCamp Vancouver events, but the one we’re planning is going to be a fairly large one I imagine. Right now we’re exploring ...

So, this is actually a timely story, given my recent efforts to purchase more local food. The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control has recently shut down a local Chilliwack company that produces raw (i.e. unpasteurized) milk due to contamination with faecal matter. I won’t argue whether or not that faecal matter is of concern, since I don’t know the levels that were found or how they relate. The owner of the business is obviously upset with the government interference: But Home on the Range owner Alice Jongerden said the health agency has never contacted them with concerns, or gave them ...

I said the other day that I wasn’t going to make any New Year’s resolutions, and for the most part that’s true. One thing I’d like to do this year though is to try and eat as healthy as possible. For starters, I gave up soft drinks the other day completely. I’m sure I’ll still have a rum and diet coke from time to time, since it’s been my drink of choice for around 12 years now, but I’m going to try not to drink any type of carbonated beverages around home for the most part if I can. I haven’t had any diet coke in about five days now, which is a pretty big accomplishment. Second, and I imagine ...

Now that I have a blender, I’ve been experimenting with a few variations of a low-carb protein shake at home. My best iteration so far is a chocolate and banana flavoured protein shake. Here’s how to make it: 125 ml of normal or unsweetened soy milk 6 ice cubes 2 tablespoons of whey protein isolate 2 tablespoons of ground flax seed 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder 1 cap-full of banana extract 3/4 of a teaspoon of stevia sweetener 1/4 teaspoon of Xanthan gum Put all of that in a blender and chop/mix it all up. It’s actually pretty tasty. Nutritional info: 227 calories, 6.8g of fat (4.5g of omega-3), ...

Today was an odd day. It was the first day back to work in about two weeks now, which in itself was a lot of fun, given what we have on our plate. Prior to that though I had to go a few tests down at Chilliwack General Hospital as a final follow-up to all that garbage I went through with my c. diff. infection years ago. Thankfully everything checked out ok, and I think I can finally put that whole health saga finally behind me. That said, I got nothing but sympathy for anyone who acquires c. diff in a hospital setting like I did. After work today I went out and made a run to all of my favourite ...

I picked up a Nexus pass about a year ago, mainly because I thought it would help with the amount of travelling I have been doing over the years. In theory, a Nexus pass will let you cross the US/Canada border without waiting in those huge line ups. My first attempt at using my Nexus pass was by road. It’s a bit scary using it, because they have so many restrictions in place for the program. For example, if you do something wrong (like attempt to bring a person across with you who isn’t a Nexus card holder), they can revoke your privileges and take your card away from you indefinitely. Plus, they ...

This is an open letter to the people of the United States, namely those people who think universal (or government run) health care is bad. In November of 2006 four idiots I had never met threw me through the plate glass window of a 7-11. Apparently, it was a fun thing to do after a few beers. I ended up in the hospital that night with five fractures in my face. Approximately two weeks later I had surgery to repair the damage to my face, and ended up getting a piece of plastic surgically fitted under my left eye. Without it, due to the lack of bone, my left eye would probably hang down into my ...

There has been a lot of talk in the Twitterverse lately regarding diabetes, so I thought I’d write a small entry dedicated to it. While I don’t suffer from diabetes, I do a lot of research in the area of something called metabolic syndrome, which in a lot of ways directly relates to diabetes. Prior to around 1980 or so, there were two forms of diabetes. The lay public generally referred to these as juvenile diabetes, which many people essentially were born with (or diagnosed with at an early age), and adult-onset diabetes, which was usually diagnosed later in life. Nowadays we call juvenile diabetes ...

** I wrote this article last year on another site, but given recent events I wanted to repost it on my site. I’ll talk about it more in a future entry ** I came across this article the other day, and found it particularly distressing given the prevalence of online social websites such as Facebook and MySpace these days: Megan Meier thought she had made a new friend in cyberspace when a cute teenage boy named Josh contacted her on MySpace and began exchanging messages with her. Megan, a 13-year-old who suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder, corresponded with Josh for more than ...

Someone on Twitter tomorrow asked for some advice on things to see and do in Tokyo, so I thought I’d write a bit about my trip in April of 2006. At the last minute, my employer asked me to attend a SIP interoperability conference in Tokyo. Since I had never been to Asia before, I thought it would be a pretty awesome trip. Derek and I left Vancouver sometime in the afternoon on a Saturday I believe, and we landed in Tokyo 10 hours later. Narita airport is actually more than an hour outside of Tokyo, so even after you land you still have a fairly long trek to get into the city. Derek and I paid ...

On September 11th, 2001, I was working in the middle of a clean room in a tiny building somewhere in the middle of Ottawa. Upon walking down the hall, I learned from a co-worker that a plane had just struck the World Trade Center. Thinking it was just an accident, I continued on with my job without any more thought to the event. Upon learning that another plane had hit the second World Trade Center building less than an hour later, I began to realize the magnitude of the day’s events. A few hours later, I would find myself across the street on Hunt Club, watching history unfold on a small television ...

If you would have mentioned that you were trying to lose weight by a reducing your carbohydrate intake a few years ago, people would have dismissed you as crazy and told you that you were only hurting your body. However, that all changed sometime around 2003 when a prestigious medical school released a peer-reviewed study that basically showed Low Carbohyrate diets not only help people lose more weight, but also result in better blood-lipid profiles than their low-fat counterparts. Since then, I’ve read countless studies on PubMed that basically indicate the same thing. However, another fairly ...