Driving... Me crazy...

This morning I left for school at 7:23am I know this for a fact because that is the time my cellphone read when I started my car. In Canada in December it snows, this week it happened to snow LOTS. Almost 10cm in under 24 hours. Naturally, this lead to some of the worst traffic jams of the year. So as per my usual routine I took out my blackberry to surf the internet while the car gleefully whirred away thankful for a chance to get warm, charge its battery and lubricate its various parts. By 7:31am I was "on the road" that is to say, slowly backing out of my parking spot. At 9:07am I was at my estimation, 50% completed my journey to school. The freeway all 4 lanes heading northbound was in fact, a parking lot. I'm a patient person and for all intents and purposes (ignoring the title of this blog) a very calm and level headed type of person, you know, the kind of guy that uses logical thought to work through arguments and the like. But even at 9:24am I still wasn't at school. That's a bit excessive don't you think? Considering on a summer day the drive would take me the shorter end of 20 minutes. By the time 9:32am rolled around I was pretty much getting used to the fact that a major bout of Road Rage was about to spill forth that would make even Gordon Ramsey from Kitchen Nightmares blush. At 9:40 I pulled into the school parking lot with a great sigh of relief. Crisis averted I managed to not kill anyone in a blind rage on the way to school. Its been a good day.

Seriously tho, wanna solve most your city's traffic jam problems without spending a a dime? Simple solution.

BIG GAPS

Yeah for real! BIG GAPS, it will work. Think about it for a second, if everyone on the road gave a 40 or 50 foot gap between them and the car in front of them, people would be free to change lanes, merge and exit in a safe and easy manner. 90% of the problems that cause traffic jams can be eliminated in this manner. I've been driving now for almost 10 years and even back when I was 15 I could see that the most congested places on a major road were on and off ramps. Why? Because there were always droves of people waiting to get on or off. However most driving styles you see are all about "getting there first" meaning people ignore signal lights of other motorists, follow to close and generally act like they are the only car on the road. This in turns makes other drivers slow to a crawl to wait for a chance to sneak in, which now creates more problems because the road with a speed limit of 100 just got slowed down to 25 while the motorist that had to crawl tries to gain his/her speed back and resume normal flow, of course this has consequences in the form of a chain reaction that slows down 50 other motorists behind the original person trying to crawl their way onto a fast moving freeway.

This of course is not a end all solution but it would greatly help speed up roads during peak periods. Just a thought, maybe we should all try it out!

-Sencha

The Art of Politics

Start here: BBC World News
So in Canada we have 4 major political parties that share the federal pie (The fifth being Independents that do not support any of the 4 major parties). Obviously its not split 4 ways. From most to least powerful (based off current election results);

Progressive Conservative (143)
The Liberal Party (77)
Bloc Québécois (49)
New Democratic Party (37)
Independents (2)

Now first just let me state for the record that I realize there is no perfect system and every system will have its flaws. But our current Canadian system is broken and for modern times it is creating more problems than it solves. Firstly, 2 months ago Canada voted and although our Prime Minister did not receive a majority in the House of Commons he won more than enough votes to take leadership. See here in Canada our leaders win by gaining "seats" in the House of Commons. The House has 308 seats assigned to the provinces based on their populations. However, the "senatorial clause" guarantees each province at least as many Members of Parliament as senators. Furthermore, the "grandfather clause" guarantees each province at least as many Members of Parliament as it had in 1976 or in 1985. Because of these two clauses, the size of the House of Commons exceeds the minimum (282). At present, the House includes 308 members. Each member represents a single electoral district (or "riding"), and is elected in that district by the simple plurality voting system. Members must be Canadian citizens and at least 18 years old. They hold office until they resign or Parliament is dissolved, and can be reelected any number of times. For example our Canadian Prime Minister lives about 4 houses away from me. Since he holds a seat in the house I have the option to vote for him (Conservative) or for any of the other people running for his seat, be it Liberal, Democrat or Independent. This is how I vote for Prime Minister. Elsewhere in the country your vote for your local MP is the exact same but since you don't live in the Prime Minister's riding like I do, you vote for your choice of person and his party will be the party you wish to lead the country. Think of it as voting for teams and the team's leader that wins the most seats gets to be Prime Minister.

Out of those 308 seats they are NOT split evenly thought out Canada there are more or less seats in each province based on population. Since eastern Canada is the more densely populated area there are more seats out east than there are in the west (where I live) and generally the east and west are divided;

West: Conservative
East: Liberal
Quebec: Bloc Québécois (We are gonna come back to this)

So one half the country votes Con. and the other half votes Lib. and who do you thinks wins (most 95% or more) of the time? The Liberals. There are simply more people out east so they pretty much always get what they want. Except this time. and this is where the problems are coming in. The Liberals and Democrats have formed a coalition (alliance) against the Conservatives and it is backed by the Bloc Québécois. They have based this on the current world economic crisis and have said the Conservatives have not provided viable options to this crisis. Its not enough for them that they are working on it shortly after a federal election. So their whole idea is to gain support to call a vote of no confidence for the Prime Minister. This has happened twice before. Once in 1979 (Joe Clark) and again in 2005 (Paul Martin). If this vote gets passed Stephen Harper will be forced to step down and the next powerful party will be granted control. In this case, the liberals.

Now that you know a little bit about the situation and how it works. Here is my huge problem with the way its happening.

The Bloc Québécois. What can I say about these separatist fuck sticks? I know! How about, lay down and die. You are no longer wanted or needed in federal government. As a matter of fact I think its highly suspect that you even get federal seats in a country that you want to separate from. In federal democratic politics the voice of the people vote in the best interests of the country as a whole, not one province, in this case Quebec. I think that this party should be forced to disband and a law should be introduced banning the formation of federal political parties that only support one province. I honestly don't give a flying fuck if you are French or not and for that matter I don't even care if you are English, Spanish, Indian, Asian or Martian. Vote for the good of the country as a whole or fuck right off. The 49 seats the Bloc hold should be emptied and they should be redistributed and voted for Canada wide.

As for the Liberals and the NDP I think most of these coalition ideas are fronted by Liberals and I think it has more to do about being sore losers than it does about our budget.

This post was gonna dive into American politics and why we should adopt a new style government based on a new modern era and blah blah blah, but honestly I could go on about it for days and days and probably write a book on the subject. Not only that but I'm in class and I'm starting to get some weird looks because I've been madly typing for the last 25 minutes.

Happy hump day.

-Sencha

When I Grow Up...

First and foremost big thanks goes out to PurEvil for helping me do an oil change on my car when I was in too much of a rush to remember my shop clothes. So thanks buddy!

I'm sitting in class right now and to be honest I'm as bored as sin. My instructor isn't in today but there were instructions written on our white board.

"Please read the material in the text we discussed yesterday. We will be talking about it tomorrow in class. Also try not to trash the lab ;)"

My instructors are pretty cool people, they get down to business when they need to but are pretty down to earth and fun people to be learning from, even if the courses are very serious.

I was also thinking that its finally time to make a change. Time to get back in shape! I'm gonna start slowly at first to get back into living healthy. Only a few years ago I was playing hockey 4 or 5 times a week and being pretty active. Now is the time to try to get back into that.

How American Idol ruins lives. - I-Am-Bored

If the planet earth had a Facebook account. - College Humor

Amazing graffiti animation that will blow your mind. - Blu

Thats all there is today folks. Tomorrow is hump day. Joy.

-Sencha

Gonna run with it...

Like the title of the post says, I'm just gonna run with this update, things have been rather slow but at the same time oddly, I have been busy. Updates were scarce the last few days because I felt the need to catch up on some things that have been slipping, for the most part cleaning and organizing. At school I usually fill a good sized note book in about a week, so I read through all of them and organized them so when I need to study I have them at the ready. I also cleaned my room and my car. Then it got cold, then it snowed. So I went out and bought the new expansion pack to World of Warcraft, The Wrath of the Lich King. I must say, great expansion. I have 2 classes worked up to level 70 and now with the release of Wrath I have 2 classes, a hunter and a paladin to level to level 80. Along with my Death Knight which I have already got to level 60 and man do I love playing my Death Knight, I love the class what can I say? Haha.

On to more important stuff, my rant today focus' on my idiot work. See because I'm in school full time working on a 2 year Diploma program in 1 year my classes are doubled. I work hard in school, I don't have a choice. So when I was looking for a part time job for school I went to Safeway. To be honest its a great place to work, its pretty busy but things are usually under control. The only problem is I work a weird set of shifts because of my school situation, I need time at home to study. Well now that I have been working there for about 3 months I'm getting pressure about my shifts which are apparently not part of the "master template" meaning my shifts are "not real shifts". Well I call bullshit, since I started they knew when I could work and they gave me the job and gave me the shifts anyway. So to bring it up now is horseshit. I also asked for a Sunday off for a day to study because I had a very important exam coming up Monday. Now I go into work to find that next weeks schedule is out, but I'm not on it. So I ask why. Apparently they are going to be looking for another spot for me that fits more with when I'm available. Too bad so sad, I'm quitting and looking for another job. Fuck Safeway and fuck the lifer managers.

-Sencha

OBAMA!!

Well the United States has their first black president. AMAZING!

Now here is something I would do if I had a time machine.

Right now I would be headed back to yesterday to try to convince Barak Obama to walk out on the stage on the last day of campaigning and say a few short words. They would be in no less or no more words...

"Fuck you America, Fuck you!"

Just to see the results that a train wreak like that would have on a presidential campaign. In just 24 hours.

Just a thought...

-Sencha

P.S. - I have never felt so proud to be a neighbor of the United States.

Little do they know...

Reading stuff like this - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7697898.stm

Always makes me a little angry. I understand the need to protect your intellectual property and for studios, record companies and films to want to get paid for what they produce but lets face it, we don't ever get what we pay for when it comes to music and movies. Games are a different story and I'll talk about it after.
When it comes to movies, for the last 8 or 9 years I have felt that rather than getting true original stories that keep us enthralled, excited and on the edge of our seats we get a lackluster story that has been stripped down, dumbed down and generally watered down to the point where we are forced to watch something that rather than be a work of story telling art we are left with rubbish that tries its hardest not to offend . I used to love going to the theater to watch whatever movie interested me, as a matter of fact I remember seeing the midnight showing of Star Wars Episode 1 on opening night, and going back 5 more times to see it again. I loved it, and I still love it for my own reasons. George Lucas, 20th Century Fox, Lucas Arts, ILM, and the movie theater that I saw it in all deserved my money for that film and I gladly gave it to them.
Now here's the kicker... Come Episode 3 I was a little older, a little wiser and thanks to major movie studios and record labels I was also a little poorer. I didn't even go to the theater to watch the 3rd and final chapter of the Star Wars saga, I waited until I could rent the DVD. Reason being? When I went and watched Episode 1 the cost of the movie was 8 dollars. Popcorn? 2 dollars. So for 10 dollars even I could watch one of my favorite movies on the big screen. I saw it 6 times, and I think I got popcorn each time but I can't remember, lets say I did.
6 nights out to a movie w/ popcorn to see Episode 1 = $60
Now jump forward a few years to the release of Episode 3 and we start to understand why I passed on the big screen, in those few years between the films ticket prices for a movie jumped up to $14.50. Popcorn? $6. Just to see the movie once would have cost me $21.50. To see it 6 times? $129... $129!!!!!!! Over double the price in just a few years to see a single film on the big screen. Horseshit.
This is why I can understand the lure of piracy. Free movies? Ok! So where does one get access to these free movies?
Start here: www.piratebay.org
Now music... Wow! I could go on about this for years, I HATE record companies, they are run my fat cat old men with only one thing on their mind, the all mighty dollar. 90% of the music these major record companies punch out are exactly like my morning dump. Shitty. I'm fairly certain I have farted better music in my lifetime then some of the crap that gets released in today's world. For a surprisingly true look at how new musical stars are born go watch the movie Josie and the Pussycats. It really is the record companies that decide who is gonna be big and who isn't. If you're female and your face is marginally attractive you can be a major music sensation. We'll just add some breast implants, suck out some fat and cake your face in makeup and call you a star. Easy. Oh wait... then there is the small detail of the music, well that's easy too, all you need to do is sing 3 or 4 lines, the studio will remix that shit so much that you can sing like anyone you want. Just as long as it isn't live... Right Ashley Simpson? Shit even me, a male could sing some Britney Spears if a record company felt like making me a star. Fuck that. I honestly agree that charging 15 dollars for a CD that contains 13 or 14 tracks of this remixed computer generated bullshit is like robbing someone. I could see maybe 7 or 8 dollars for a CD these days but not 15. www.piratebay.org - Lots of indie music there that isn't tied up in major record deals with thieving record companies.
That pretty much sums up my views on movies and music, personally I think that if you enjoy something you should pay for it, however I also strongly believe that the garbage the major players in each industry are pushing on us are really over priced and not worth it, which drives people to download it illegally. If the MPAA and RIAA want to slow down piracy (lets face it they will never stop it completely) they need to get back in touch with their consumers and lower their prices. People simply can't afford the insane prices they are charging for their garbage. I'm very prominent in many piracy circles around the globe and every person I talk to and ask about their reasons for downloading whatever it is they download comes down to one thing. Price. They simply can't afford to pay the prices asked for movies and music.
Now I know that costs go up as each aspect of making the film or album go up, but actors do NOT need to be making 50 million dollars for a single movie. Pay them 1 million or tell them to take a hike. After they spend their money they will be happy to make movies for a million bucks. Same goes for recording artists.

Games, I left this till last cause its really a black and white area for me. If you wanna try it, download a demo, if you like it, buy it. If you honestly need to try more than the demo to get a clear idea, then fine download the full version, but again, after a week or 2 if you really like it, go buy it.

In closing I only really have one thing to say, RIAA, MPAA, and any other industry association are not gonna have a hope in hell of stopping piracy. Think about it, for every person working for those places there are 10,000 hackers, crackers and pirates working against them to figure out a way to get what they released for free. Gonna go to the authorities? Ok fine, go for it. Sue people, for every person you sue 10,000 more grow to hate you are vow to not support you. Which is turn leads to more piracy. Turn to government? Yeah ok! Eventually the voices of 6 million will be heard and the politicians you turn to will be taking orders for the pirates who elected them. To that I say... Owned.

-Sencha

Second Post in One Day OMG!

I have found a kinda semi direction I wanna go with this blog... May I introduce you all to Ernie's House of Whoop Ass here.

Its not gonna be a copy or anything but I think I'm gonna start giving out links to interesting things that I find online. Mainly because I find LOTS of stuff online in my day to day life, and maybe there are people out there like me that like the weird and crazy stuff I like.

Stay tuned for the changes.

-Sencha

P.S. - Welcome to the Halloween color scheme! Boo!

Couple o' Updates

First things first... Use the poll on the left to vote for your choice for US president.

Here we are at another week... Some interesting things went on this weekend. My work is filled with retards I'm now convinced of it. I missed a shift on Sunday that I was told would no longer be on the schedule due to some training I was supposed to go do. My manager was to change the shift from 230-1100 to something that would fit the training schedule. Well that change never came... Oh well. While I could use the money being a full time student and all it was worth it cause I got to spend the afternoon and evening with my dad before he had to go back to the hospital. An added benefit was also that I got to visit with family that came in for a surprise visit on the weekend. So not all was lost.

A friend of mine gets a new house this weekend. I'm stoked, no more idiots stomping out all the fun stuff. He currently lives with a family member and while they are blood related they don't act like it. The family member that is not my friend acts like a crying sniffling little bitch. He cries about EVERYTHING. One of my favorite examples is TV Volume. Now I'm almost 100% certain that my DJing in past years has dwindled my hearing a little bit, although I do like to actually HEAR what I'm watching and I also like talking during shows sometimes, so I like a little extra volume. That being said if I'm over at my friends house and we are watching some TV the volume is usually pretty decent, unless... said family member/roommate is home, in which case we run into two problems. The first being that his massive fucking home theater is cranked up so loud that we can't hear the TV on our floor below, or said family member is being his usual bitch self and is sleeping and our volume has to be no louder than a whisper. Lame.

There are many other examples of this family members douche-baggery. But aren't really worth writing here... Unless somehow I was able to get this website on his computer so he could read what I really think about him. How great would that be?

Anyways, come Friday my friend is out of his nightmare and into his own house. Good times should be had by all.

I find myself in class right now being bored. I brought my laptop today to get some software setup that I want to use at home. I'm done the only lecture I have for the day and for the life of me I can't seem to get into the study mood. I'm ahead of the class in content and my grades are in the high to mid range 90's so I'm comfortable but exams can and will pose a problem if I can't get into study mode. Anyone got any motivation?

-Insert 2 hour gap here- (Haha.)

OK so its been two hours and I've had 2 cups of coffee and finished a chapter of studying including all the related assignments for said chapter. God I love coffee. For me today its almost time to go home. I need to stop at work today and see about a schedule for this week... I wonder what it is... haha. Oh well, guess I find out soon.

-Sencha

I hate long weeks...

Short weeks spoil me... Pretty much to the point that when the next 5 day week starts I'm dead by Tuesday... Like today... I feel like hammered shit. I suppose it has to do with my weekend being spent sick, staying out late and working. Anyways thats not really what I wanted to talk about today.

November 4th 2008 is set to be a date when history is made, I'm positive of it. 2 weeks from now when the United States go to the polls I hope they make the right choices. I live in Canada so I don't get to have any sort of official say in the matter but if I did get my chance my support would go to Barack Obama. This is odd choice for me because if I was living in the states I would be, or at least my political views would be labeled as Republican. As a matter of fact I mostly agree with the Republican general attitude when it comes to running the US. But I can't in good conscience, even a little, support a man like John McCain or his running mate Sarah Palin. Their campaign has been nothing but slander and negative commentary towards Barack Obama. Calling him a terrorist was the straw that broke the camels back in my opinion.

I'm going to continue this post later I think as I have to head to class.

-Sencha

That was exciting...

Not really... After only 2 days my blog was flagged and locked for being a "possible spam blog", I really don't think anyone is reading this yet and anyone that was probably isn't anymore due to the huge gap of time that the blog was locked.

Anyways, on to the beef. I was driving up to school today for a lecture and I couldn't help but thinking how incredibly stupid some drivers are. We have a major secondary highway running through our city which in places turns into a 8 lane freeway. I was cruising along at a brisk 120kph listening to music enjoying the smooth flow of traffic, when out of nowhere a silver Honda Civic cuts me off and slows down, forcing me to put on my brakes and wonder what is going on. As it turns out NOTHING is going on, this dumb broad in the civic just wanted to be in the fast lane but do almost 20kph slower that everyone else. Now I drive a little red sports car so what did I do? Yeah that's right, I dropped a gear, switched lanes, sped past her, got back into my fast lane and away I went. After getting off on my exit I was stopped a red light and beside me up pulls, low and behold the silver civic, with honestly one of the most 'sour' looking women driving I have ever seen. "Weird", I thought to myself, "It appears we are going the same direction". After the light turned green I had to wait a second or two for the car ahead to turn left but by then the silver civic had gained a pretty big lead on me and was far ahead. Anyone that knows me will know that I usually (especially when I'm driving my car) don't drive slow, so now with a nice huge empty road ahead of myself and about 4 blocks before I have to turn left to get to school I gunned it, hard. I was probably doing 80 or 90kph within 3 or 4 seconds and sure enough on comes the left hand turn signal of the silver sour civic. At these speeds I usually think to myself "Ok don't panic, they see you coming and will wait till your past" I usually think this because my car is pretty loud when its wound up to 7000RPM and I'm usually moving VERY fast. When I saw her blinker turn on I was doing more than double her speed and only 4 or 5 car lengths behind her. Needless to say within the next 2 or 3 seconds I would have been far past her leaving her free to switch lanes at will. but oooooh no. She decided that switching lanes NOW was her best course of action. So what do I do? I slam on my brakes, now I have VERY VERY VERY good brakes and ABS together they stop my car FAST. To me it almost felt like I had hit her. My brakes snapped my speed down to 10kph or lower in what felt like half a second. I open my eyes, take a breath and check to see if my insides are still inside of me then I look up to make sure I didn't hit her. Relief! Success! Rejoice! No accident today... Wait! Whats that?! Anger! Fury! The stupid cow in the silver civic has slowed down and is giving me the middle finger and shaking her head at me! I'm gonna pause this right now and give you a quick recap of the events.

Silver civic cuts me off and slows down on the free way forcing me to cut around her and continue on.
Speed limit 110kph - My Speed 120kph - Her speed 100-105kph

After taking the exit and waiting at a red light the civic pulls up beside me and pulls ahead while I wait for a car to turn. I gun it and I'm quickly doing twice her speed when she cuts me off forcing me to slam on my brakes. I then get the finger and shake of the head from her.
Speed limit 100kph - My speed 90kph - Her speed 50-60kph

Ok so now as you can see I'm doing UNDER the speed limit still when she cuts me off. Its not my fault she drives a car with no balls and takes her 20 minutes to get to the speed limit. So when is she giving me the bird for cutting me off? Who knows, maybe she thinks it's her God given right to change lanes as she pleases, when she pleases. This however is NOT the end of the story. Now that I'm behind little miss sour c*nt it tuns out 3 blocks later that we are turning the same way yet again. Keep in mind here that even though we both needed the same turning lane she had hundreds upon hundreds of feet in which to do it after I passed her. Anyways, after we get into the turning lane I'm behind her and I pull up my usual distance and sit there waiting for the light. Then I look up and she is giving me the finger and waving for me to back up. To which I think to myself "You dumb hoe I'm not moving anywhere" So... I creep up a little bit closer to her car, now I see her either mouthing or screaming in her car "Back Up Asshole" to me. Turning light flashes green and she is still turned toward me not paying attention so, here is one of the fun parts I rev my engine HARD with makes her eyes go wide and I just lay on the horn and I'm not talking *honk* *honk* here I'm talking a full on 7 second blast of pure ear drum shattering (at least at 7:30am) nastiness. So she turns around and continues on, by this time I'm having fun again because I know I have some time to really mess with her. So I got right on her ass. We are driving slowly and I'm trying to see how close I can get to her bumper all the while she is waving me back screaming and still tossing that finger around. Now some of you may or may NOT know that once you piss me off I become a real asshole and that's exactly what I did next. The road we were on split into 2 lanes allowing her to change lanes and avoid me. Well no... for me this was not over. I sped up cut her off and slammed on my brakes. Hard enough to make them squeal. Then I cut back into my previous lane slowed down got beside her looked over and with a smile and a wink started nudging my car closer to hers, basically squeezing her off the road. My plan went a little to far when I heard her tires start to rub the concrete curb and she panicked and drove up onto the grass. I quickly sped away hoping she didn't have time to get my plate.
Now that I think about it tho, fuck her. she almost caused an accident got pissed at the wrong person and was acting like a complete douche bag. A little road rash on her brand new rims is a small price to pay for pissing me off. Anyways, that's it for this morning, I have a class starting now.

-Sencha

In class.

Well here we are, the first real post on this blog. As I write this short little update I find myself on a break from class reading a textbook on computers. As it so happens its a book on A+ and everything that has to do with studying for those exams. I already have my A+ certification but its always good to go back and look at the book again as a refresher. I'm just currently reading the chapter on DOS, Windows 9x/Me and Startup disks. I wish I could say that I'm learning lots of new things but its not really the case. I know most of this stuff already, meaning I'm looking at DOS commands and remembering my childhood. I dunno how many of you remember using DOS but to open files and launch programs you had to issue text based commands. It kinda looked like this;

You start at a prompt like so;
C:\
now if you type a command in this case 'dir'
C:\dir
and hit enter you get a list that looks like;

09/09/2008 11:37 AM Games
09/09/2008 12:42 PM Programs
01/20/2008 09:12 AM Office
09/11/2008 10:28 AM Internet
09/12/2008 06:17 AM Documents
2 File(s) 1,437 bytes
5 Dir(s) 34,989,518,848 bytes free
C:\

So then it puts you back at the prompt and you get to go along your merry way... Fun huh? Needless to say it was quite a bit different back then. But it was how it was done, I remember and I still got it memorized just because of how many times I had typed it. How to launch a program called X-Wing... yup the same X-Wing from Star Wars. Great game. I loved it. The command was.

c:\sencha\programs\games\xwing xwing.exe

That launched my game... and boy how I loved it. (I didn't use the name Sencha I used my real name in the old DOS days... haha)

Anyways, thats my blog for my school break and getting some fond memories from reading a old textbook.

Till next time,

-Sencha

Day 1

Here we go...

Welcome to the start.