Hotashi - Jack’s Blog

Remember back in grade school your teachers will always have you line-up in single-files along with the other kids. This happened before recess, before lunch, before the school day ends.

Now, we’re all grown up. We’re adults. We don’t line-up single-file anymore. Nope! We found a better way…

The TTC subway pulls up, with a sea of people crowding in front of the tracks. The door opens, and it’s everyone for themselves. Pushing, shoving, anything goes!

This morning on my commute to work, the subway was delayed at Yonge station (yet again). And there were maybe 3-4 times the normal number of people at the station. Let me just say it wasn’t pretty. When the train finally came and the door opened, people were trying to get on when the other passengers were still trying to get off! All I heard was one lady shouting in a very frustrated voice, “Let the other people off first! Geez!” Finally, one decent person among the zombies.

Why does Toronto, and probably all of North American, suck so much? Why can’t we be like the Japanese and line-up for the trains. The most efficient way to board a train is to line-up. It should be first-in-first-out queue so it’s fair. I hate when you get there first but some punk pushes his/her way in front of you.

Zaza Pachulia of the Atlanta Hawks appeared on CNN to plead for peace between Russia and his home Georgia. Zaza may be the only NBA athlete that’s actually doing something useful this summer other than kissing China’s ass.

What’s Kobe doing? What about LeBronze. They have stated before the Olympic games started in Beijing that you can’t confuse sports and politics.

I completely disagree with that statement. Sports and politics are very intertwined. How would speaking out against oppression hurt them? Maybe they will have their visa revoked by the Chinese government, just like Joey Cheek. But so what?

Is “redeeming” for Team USA’s past failure to win gold more important than humans lives? Would they NBA discipline them for speaking out during Olympics? Certainly not! In fact, people would applaud them as heroes if they do choose to speak out.

Olympics is such a joke right now. It’s nothing but a distraction from more important world issues. Maybe if the competing athletes actually start to promote peace instead of McDonald’s then I’d have a little more respect for the Games.

Update on the Spanish Ad: It seems Spain and the their basketball players don’t see anything wrong with what they did. Pau Gasol of the LA Lakers said he was uncomfortable doing it, but ended up caving to pressure. So far no one has apologized yet. I wonder if this will play out when Jose Calderon comes back in the fall to play for the Toronto Raptors. Toronto does have a big Chinese community.

I have a high-interest savings account open, which is where I put all my savings into — dur. The only problem is that when I sign on to internet banking, I can see all my accounts listed there. A few times in the past I actually took money out from my savings account to pay off my credit cards. Well, most of the time it’s because I transferred too much into my savings without realizing I need that money for my credit cards.

I read some tips online about setting up automatic transfers to transfer x amount of money from your cheque into your savings, everytime you get a paycheque. This way you can fool your self to think that you have less money than you actually do. The only problem is that the tip only works if you’re transferring to another bank, like ING. Since I see my money listed there anyway, it’s almost pointless.

That’s where Greasemonkey comes in! Using some JavaScript, I hid my Savings account from the accounts view. Of course, I put in at link that I can click on if I do need to see it. I think it’s going to work well. :)

I’m moving into an apartment in Toronto, and I still need get get an ISP so I can connect to the interwebs. I’m leaning towards rogers… but they just seem too evil for me to associate myself with. The transfer limits they introduced (60 GB for the Express plan) are just way too stupid. Why do you need 7 Mbps if you can only transfer 60 GB per month? Dicks!

I heard about this other ISP Teksavvy. They rent their lines from Bell who, like Rogers, does traffic shaping. However, Teksavvy seems to be a decent company, and they support Net Neutrality — they were on Parliment Hill protesting… where was Rogers and Bell? Oh wait, I don’t think they support Net Neutrality, just show them the $$$ and they’re happy! Also, Rogers actually breaks into your browsing sessions and rewrite the pages you view to warn you about going above the transfer limit.

Out of principal I want to go with Teksavvy. But for some reason I’m still leaning towards Rogers. I think it’ll be easier to just go with Rogers, and I’m not really sure what to expect from Teksavvy. Am I stupid? :P

PS. There is a forum where users discuss different ISP, and there is a section for Teksavvy.

Firefox 3.0 has officially been released today. The Mozilla Foundation aims to set a world record with the most downloaded software in 24 hours. FF 3.0 makes huge improvements to memory usage, and also javascript execution. Go to the official site to download the installation file.

Want to get the most out of FF 3.0? Check out Lifehacker’s full coverage on the release, including top 10 new features!

Enjoy!