MTS Allstream, Shaw Cable, UBB and U and Me.

What is taking MTS so long on switching to their new 3.5G network? My Rogers contract expires in two months! Shaw is planning on charginging $2 a gig for exceeding their lowered 60 GB cap, so for once I'm actually considering a switch to MTS (especially with the way they argued against UBB with the CRTC..) Makes me proud that the only respectable incumbent ISP left is Manitoban. Though I am severely disappointed in Shaw. Jim Shaw leaves, and the company turns to complete shit in a matter of months.

Heres the thing about Shaw charging for bandwidth overages. They do a study that shows people aren't using their bandwidth to backup lowering the caps. *THEN* they fix their bandwidth monitoring tool (my bandwidth seems to have jumped by 300% since then.. coincidence?) Then they implement charging for going over their caps. Screw them. They've squandered all of the good will I had for them in one fell swoop. Their non-existent cell phone service? Off the table for me. Shaw has positioned themselves in the same boat as Rogers and Bell. I hope the UBB charges they get from people will offset all of the people who will be cancelling service with them. I'm not the heaviest internet user out there, but I'm not some grandma using the internet once a week either. However I will make it my goal to badmouth Shaw and convince people to switch until they act in a more respectable manner.

I'm concerned for people like my mother, who runs an unencrypted wireless network using Shaw lite. Sure I could fix that, but that would mean going to my mothers place and .. fixing it. Which again, screw you Shaw. For making me do that work. For making me go through my old emails to see if I ever used a shaw.ca email for anything important and forcing me to change it.

But most of all, screw the CRTC. Screw the people AT the CRTC. They are clearly criminals who deserve to be punished for their treasonous actions against the internet and Canadians. That they wont, causes me to lose any little faith I had in society. And once people start to lose faith in their society, the rule of law crumbles. All actions have repercussions. Certain individuals need to be mindful of the fact that their blase decisions don't happen in a bubble. They affect us all. There is only so far people can be pushed before people start to push back. The CRTC thinks these companies should be allowed to take the policies of the most hated companies in Canada and apply them to the internet too. The CRTC thinks companies that own the media industry should be allowed to shut down their competition on the internet using bandwidth caps that are shameful compared to any other country, using charges that are 1000x pure profiteering. Despite the fact that they exist as monopolies because Canadians themselves used tax dollars to INVEST in that infrastructure. Maybe these companies should be made to realise that the repercussions of acting in such a reprehensible way is government takeover of what used to be their companies. Think then they'll act so callously?

Franklin' speaking I think it's a bad idea.

92 Citi FM wants Winnipegers to sign a petition to get Sir John Franklin community centre renamed after Mike Keane.

I have nothing against former Manitoba Moose captain Mike Keane, but why is there such a pressing need to name a community centre after him? And at the expense of Sir John Franklin?

As Wikipedia states: Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin (16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847) was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer who mapped almost two thirds of the northern coastline of North America. Franklin also served as governor of Tasmania for several years. In his last expedition, he disappeared while attempting to chart and navigate a section of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. The entire crew perished from starvation, hypothermia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning, scurvy and exposure before and after Franklin died and the expedition's icebound ships were abandoned in desperation.

As Wikipedia states: Michael John Keane (born May 29, 1967 in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a retired Canadian professional ice hockey winger. Undrafted, Keane played over 1100 games in the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1988 until 2004, and then played six seasons for his hometown Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League until he retired in 2010. Keane is a 3-time Stanley Cup champion, having won with the Montreal Canadiens in 1993, Colorado Avalanche in 1996 and the Dallas Stars in 1999. He is one of only ten players in Stanley Cup history to win the Cup with three different teams.

I really think community centre namings should be reserved for people who die of starvation, hypothermia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning, scurvy and exposure, rather than hockey players. It's far more interesting to learn that the place you book ice time at was named after a guy who died in the Arctic looking for an easy shipping route for the British Empire, rather than some guy who won a bunch of Stanley Cup rings, even if he is a hometown hero in some fashion.

look at this guy, Sir John Franklin. Not only was he bald, not only did he die in the cold Arctic, not even accomplishing his expedition, but now we want to take away the community centre named after him? Shame on you, 92 Citi FM. .

Am I the only one who sees this?

Located across the street from the Burger King near the Bargain Shop, and Money Mart on Jefferson, the Seven Oaks Monument commemorates the battle of Seven Oaks, which if you know anything about the history of the Selkirk Settlers, was pretty bloody. I think almost everybody died. Yet whenever I see it, I think of a Vinegar bottle.

Dogs and Cats living together.

92 Citi FM's Tom and Joe are fighting for the cats and dogs at the Winnipeg Pet Rescue Shelter on Monday. I have donated to the pet rescue shelter in the past, and I think it's a worthy cause. So I promise to do my part. For each hour between 6am and 7pm that they have the balls to play Dire Straights Money For Nothing uncensored, I will donate $5. Anyone else wanna pledge anything?

Dire Straights

I'm sorry, Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, but are there really gay people out there offended by the term Faggot in this day and age? Aside from some made up gay rights group that I've never heard of before and never will again, and is likely using the issue as a way to increase their minuscule membership. The name, address, and phone number of anyone who wants to censor something in Canada should be made public so that they can feel the repercussions of what their idiocy hath created.

I highly doubt the complainant in this case was a homosexual male. In fact I think it more likely that the complainant was a religious zealot campaigning against what they consider swear words.

Now all of the rest of Canada, most of us sensible, look like idiots thanks to your efforts and the efforts of this one idiot newfie.

I'd also like to point out that 92 Citi FM, POWER 97, BOB FM, or any local radio station does not actually have to abide by what the broadcast standards council has set out. It is a completely voluntary organization radio stations feel the need to join to make it look like they're sensitive to the complaints of the idiot minority in this country who are offended by anything and everything.

If I could bring anyone from the past back as a zombie

I think I'd bring back Bob Ross.

Beer Commercials

You know, the commercial for it makes the Budweiser plane seem dreadfully unsafe.

mass convert rar to zip (or cbr to zip) in linux

found this script on ubuntu's forums. had to modify one part of it but seems to work in linux (though you will have to input the full source directory name) I didn't look too closely at the source though.

#!/bin/bash

# Set the "field separator" to something other than spaces/newlines" so that spaces
# in the file names don't mess things up. I'm using the pipe symbol ("|") as it is very
# unlikely to appear in a file name.
IFS="|"

# The script should be invoked as "cbr2cbz {directory}", where "{directory}" is the
# top-level directory to be searched. Just to be paranoid, if no directory is specified,
# then default to the current working directory ("."). Let's put the name of the
# directory into a shell variable called WORKDIR.
# Note: "$1" = "The first command line argument"
if test -z $1; then
WORKDIR="."
else
WORKDIR="$1"
fi
echo "Working from directory $WORKDIR"

# Now, execute a loop, based on a "find" command in the specified directory. The
# "-printf "$p|" will cause the file names to be separated by the pipe symbol, rather than
# the default newline. Note the backtics ("`") (the key above the tab key on US
# keyboards).
for CBRFILE in `find $WORKDIR -name "*.cbr" -printf "%p|"`; do
# Now for the actual work. First, extract the base file name (without the extension)
# using the "basename" command. Warning: more backtics.
BASENAME=`basename $CBRFILE ".cbr"`

# And the directory path for that file, so we know where to put the finished ".cbz"
# file. You could potentially hard code this to a single directory - your choice...
# backtics again...
DIRNAME=`dirname $CBRFILE`

# For the new file name, let's convert any spaces to underscores. We'll do this with
# a "sed" (stream editor) command. Backtics again.
NEWBASEFILE=`echo "$BASENAME" | sed "s/ /_/g"`

# Now, build the "new" file name,
NEWNAME="$NEWBASEFILE.cbz"

# We need a guaranteed empty directory to work in, so I'm creating a temp
# directory under the current working directory. It will be deleted when we're
# done with it:
mkdir cbr2cbztemp
cd cbr2cbztemp

# Now that the preliminaries are done, we start doing some work.
# We need to copy the ".cbr" into the current "temp" directory for
# unpacking/repacking.
cp "$CBRFILE" .

# rename the file to a ".rar" file. I don't think this is necessary, but it shouldn't
# cause any problems...
mv "$BASENAME.cbr" "$BASENAME.rar"

# Unpack the rar file
unrar e "$BASENAME.rar"

# Delete the .rar file
rm "$BASENAME.rar"

# Create the ".cbz" file
zip "$NEWNAME" *

# And move it to the directory where we found the original ".cbr" file
cp "$NEWNAME" "$DIRNAME"

# Finally, "cd" back to the original working directory, and delete the temp directory
# created earlier.
cd ..
rm -r cbr2cbztemp

# At this point, you could potentially 'rm "$CBRFILE"' to delete the original, but
# I'd suggest not doing so until you're certain you've got a good ".cbz" file...

done

.. honestly it was driving me crazy before I found this. I assume it works for rar to zip too but no guarantees that it doesn't trash your whole system.

#!/bin/bash

# Set the "field separator" to something other than spaces/newlines" so that spaces
# in the file names don't mess things up. I'm using the pipe symbol ("|") as it is very
# unlikely to appear in a file name.
IFS="|"

# The script should be invoked as "rar2zip {directory}", where "{directory}" is the
# top-level directory to be searched. Just to be paranoid, if no directory is specified,
# then default to the current working directory ("."). Let's put the name of the
# directory into a shell variable called WORKDIR.
# Note: "$1" = "The first command line argument"
if test -z $1; then
WORKDIR="."
else
WORKDIR="$1"
fi
echo "Working from directory $WORKDIR"

# Now, execute a loop, based on a "find" command in the specified directory. The
# "-printf "$p|" will cause the file names to be separated by the pipe symbol, rather than
# the default newline. Note the backtics ("`") (the key above the tab key on US
# keyboards).
for rarFILE in `find $WORKDIR -name "*.rar" -printf "%p|"`; do
# Now for the actual work. First, extract the base file name (without the extension)
# using the "basename" command. Warning: more backtics.
BASENAME=`basename $rarFILE ".rar"`

# And the directory path for that file, so we know where to put the finished ".zip"
# file. You could potentially hard code this to a single directory - your choice...
# backtics again...
DIRNAME=`dirname $rarFILE`

# For the new file name, let's convert any spaces to underscores. We'll do this with
# a "sed" (stream editor) command. Backtics again.
NEWBASEFILE=`echo "$BASENAME" | sed "s/ /_/g"`

# Now, build the "new" file name,
NEWNAME="$NEWBASEFILE.zip"

# We need a guaranteed empty directory to work in, so I'm creating a temp
# directory under the current working directory. It will be deleted when we're
# done with it:
mkdir rar2ziptemp
cd rar2ziptemp

# Now that the preliminaries are done, we start doing some work.
# We need to copy the ".rar" into the current "temp" directory for
# unpacking/repacking.
cp "$rarFILE" .

# rename the file to a ".rar" file. I don't think this is necessary, but it shouldn't
# cause any problems...
mv "$BASENAME.rar" "$BASENAME.rar"

# Unpack the rar file
unrar e "$BASENAME.rar"

# Delete the .rar file
rm "$BASENAME.rar"

# Create the ".zip" file
zip "$NEWNAME" *

# And move it to the directory where we found the original ".rar" file
cp "$NEWNAME" "$DIRNAME"

# Finally, "cd" back to the original working directory, and delete the temp directory
# created earlier.
cd ..
rm -r rar2ziptemp

# At this point, you could potentially 'rm "$rarFILE"' to delete the original, but
# I'd suggest not doing so until you're certain you've got a good ".zip" file...

done

credit to "Lloyd B." at http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-522660.html.

Followup on Zellers hours downtown

I spoke to soon in my last post. They seemed to have changed their store hours to closing at 7pm monday to friday, and 6 on saturday and sunday. Kind of disappointing, but there you have it. Understandable, at least for the Bay. Why does everything downtown need to close early though? I understand some businesses exist merely to serve the workers in the area, but what with the MTS Centre and some residential there, you'd think there'd be enough presence for them to at least stay open until 8pm Monday to Saturday. I suppose they didn't really have much sales during the time they were open during the christmas rush and used that as a basis.. but they just opened up. I would like to think they'd give it a bit more time to build up regular customers.

Also, has anyone else noticed the unsynchronized crossing signals for the blind play out "FIGARO" at Portage and Vaughn?

Telebus

It used to be that you could call Winnipeg Transit Telebus and type in your bus stop number and get the time your bus comes next and all was good. But over the last year they've started putting in little advertisements for their other services like BusTxt (which I, as a Linux using poweruser can not understand) and Twitter (Which I as an intelligent human being have no care for). My problem isn't the advertising per se, it's the fact that I HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE GODDAMN THING. I can't interrupt it, otherwise it will take longer than playing the message. I can't just press the stop number, because it won't let me. It's a cavalcade of FAIL and it infuriates me. I don't care about twitter. I don't care about bustxt. I just want to know when the next bus is coming.. oh look, I missed it because I was too busy trying to find out what time the bus is coming to see that it just came. Who is the genius who set this thing up? Newer Technology always makes things worse. Same thing at the Library. I miss the old winnipeg public library terminals you could telnet into. I hate using the web to get that information. It's so slow. Technology from the 80's is faster. Why is that.