Radio stationary

I wonder how much it costs to operate an am radio station.  I was thinking of competing with cjob and calling the station cjop "just old people commercials".  Only need to figure out how to get old people to change the dial.

Museum Piece

I read an article recently about the City of Winnipeg cutting the grants that city museums receive by 10% in the new operating budget. According to the article, the cuts impact each museum differently, as they don't receieve the same amount of grant funding. The St. Boniface Museum faces $45,000 drop in grant funding. That's a drop in funding of $45,000 That's 10% of what they receive from the city. I can't believe they even get $45,000 let alone $450,000. The Manitoba Museum would lose slightly more than $5,000. I'm surprised the main museum in Manitoba receives such little funding. The Children’s Museum would lose $12,000 in operation funds and $9,200 that was promised to help pay for recent renovations. Which is kind of odd. The city should at least commit to funds that were agreed upon for renovations. Now what annoyed me was receiving notification via RSS from CBC news about an article titled "Winnipeg Jets could help museum funding shortfall, says official". "Says official". Official from where? Now I read this headline, and I thought, huh, the Winnipeg Jets are considering helping fund the Children's Museum? How odd. Then I read the article. The head of Winnipeg's museums board (the "official") is basically saying "Hey, the Jets are rich, gib moneys pls huehuehue" This annoyed me. It's one thing to see if they could come to a mutual agreement with True North contribute to the Children's Museum, they might even go for that. Heck I'm surprised they don't already. But on what planet is it True North's responsibility to help pick up budget shortfalls of the city? Why are they the first thought? I question the efficiency of these operations if the first thing they do is look grumpily at the Jets success and think "we should be getting some of that". I wonder if this budget decrease has some connection to the "Museum for Human Rights" currently nearing completion. I wonder if the city is planning to take away with one hand and give with another. Or maybe already has. I don't know. Anyways, its not like this budget decrease is going to hurt anybody. Inner city youth maybe won't get free visits? But so what? How many inner city youths have gone to the children's museum and then thought "I'm not going to join a gang, I'm going to be a railway conductor! All thanks to my free trip to the children's museum paid for by city taxpayers!" Maybe that's too cynical, but honestly, seeing that CBC article which was basically panhandling the Jets ticked me off. Do I support public funding of museums? You bet. Aviation Museum, Childrens Museum, St Boniface Museum, all great museums that I have enjoyed visiting and add a lot to our city. Am I against funding cuts? Not necessarily. 10% seems a bit arbitrary. why not 5%? Though if property taxes are going up anyways, are museums really the biggest drain on tax dollars? Somehow I'm skeptical. Still, $450,000 a year for the St Boniface Museum? Wow. Somehow in the end I'm wondering where all the money is going.

Brian Burke's last laff

Idiot journalists and others are confused with the timing of the firing of Brian Burke.  Its not confusing at all.  Instead of being angry at the leafs organization, for the lockout AND for not firing Burke, now they're excited for the season and happy the wishes of a majority of leafs fans have been listened to.  Its actually brilliant misdirection.  They kept Burke on the payroll until now just for this.  Maybe.  But if they did, that's brilliant manipulation of their fanbase.  Bravo.

Winnipeg Jets alternative to booing players/True North chant in response to lockout

I feel instead of booing anybody involved with the NHLPA/NHL lockout negotiations, Winnipeg Jets fans at the first game back should simply yell Rabble Rabble Rabble to express our discontent. 





I call this 'Project Rabble without a Boo'

or maybe 'Operation Rabble Rabble.'

IMAX maxed out.

The downtown Imax theatre is going to close in a couple months.. which is sad and tragic.  I'm glad I guess I didn't buy a yearly pass or anything.  If you have a show and save book better use it soon.  They have the best popcorn.  Hope they get to screen the hobbit or something good as one last hurrah.  Maybe they'll get bought out by a larger chain and offer first run movies.  Unless there's a problem with their equipment being out of date or something which makes it pointless.  I saw django unchained at portage place but it wasn't that busy there either.  Maybe regular movie theatres aren't doing great either.  I do hate the arrangement of the escalators at portage place.  Very annoying. 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2013/01/07/mb-imax-theatre-winnipeg-closing.html

It dont impress me much

The shrine to Shania twain in Timmins Ontario is not as popular as the creators thought it would be.  If Shania twain isn't enough of a reason to go to a museum what does that mean for Winnipeg's human rights museum?

Think Different? Never! ThinkPAD.

Congratulations Dr. Peter Hortensius.

Dr. Peter Hortensius is the new head of Think Business Group.  The new company spun off from Lenovo that will continue to run and improve the Thinkpad computer brand started at IBM.  The best computer brand of all time.

Who is Dr. Peter Hortensius?   He is a former Winnipegger and IBM employee currently part of Lenovo.  He has some patents to his name and has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Manitoba.  The best kind of Engineering.  (You heard me, structural engineers.. who needs you!) He was born in Regina but hey, nobody's perfect.  He was raised in Winnipeg and look at that he's now running the major business computer spinoff of the world's second largest PC vendor (as of 2011, might be largest as of now)

So what does this mean? I have no idea.  Hopefully it means a focus on quality hardware and more competition for Apple.  

As a person who exclusively buys Thinkpads, I'm optimistic.  The trend for most budget computers is garbage screen resolution and garbage keyboards and trackpads.  Whereas the trend for Apple computers is quality, excellent design, great support, and crazy high resolution screens and innovation.  This was once the domain of Thinkpads, and while Thinkpads are still quality devices, the line could use a bit of a refresh.

Will we see new thin Thinkpads with brushed metal (or other) designs and Solid State drives with Trackpoint and high quality multi-touch trackpads?  Perhaps with reversible high quality screens that can be flipped into tablet mode?  There is no evidence that we will, but there's no evidence that the NHL lockout might end or that the Bombers will compete in any way next year but you never know.

So many opportunities here.  If any laptop brand can compete with Apple on quality and name recognition, its the Thinkpad line.  When I saw NASA scientists at the launch for the Mars rover using Macbooks it was like a punch in the gut.  How could they switch to the dark side?

Though I refuse to pay for Windows 8.  Windows 7, I'm grudgingly fine with as it works in a reasonable way, but I'd rather have a no OS or Ubuntu option than to be forced to pay for Windows 8.  What a travesty that OS is.  If you're reading this, Peter Hortensius, keep that in mind.  I mean, not having Windows hasn't hurt Apple in any way.  IBM didn't need no stinkin Windows computers they had OS/2 and PC Dos. 

I wish Dr. Peter Hortensius the best of luck with his upcoming crisitunity.  I'm always willing to give horribly insensible suggestions if anyone is willing to ask me.   Hint Hint.