Mama It’s Hot Outside
(Corinne, a friend from Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, finds herself spending the winter in Rio de Janeiro; here’s the first of what will become weekly journal entries on the VanRamblings site) …
Hi all.
Sure enough, though it’s hard for me to believe, I am sitting in the Copacabana, a block from the white sand beach, writing to you. The trip from Halifax to Rio was not too bad. Continental has all new planes, with head rests that you can bend up around your head to support it if you are one of those lucky people who can sleep on planes.
I am not one of those people.
Don is hopeful that he has bought a house, the one with the colonial era furniture. It has four bedrooms, one for Don, one for Jim & Tania, one for me, and a spare one.
It is very warm, the women wear as little as possible, regardless of what shape or age they are. As for me, I am looking forward to getting different clothes.
The restaurants in Don’s neighbourhood are three to a block, open air with tables on the sidewalks, excellent food that they cook to order so it takes a while. Small children are everywhere. I read somewhere that 60% of Brazil’s population is under 40. The fathers are as involved with their children as their mothers.
As gas costs over a dollar a litre, and there are no parking places, all cars are tiny, like the Echo hatchback. Even the police cars. And the garbage trucks, while they are the same shape as ours, are only as big as a smallish pick up truck in Canada.
I am still a little tired from the trip, but very excited to see so many new sights. It’s all very “foreign”, which is exactly what I was looking for. Sorry that’s all I have the energy for right now.
Bye for now.
Corinne.
Monthly Archives: February 2004
Brain Trust Brain Dead
Reading Greg Douglas’ column in the sports section of The Vancouver Sun on Saturday, he reported that CKNW programme director Tom Plasteras has announced that MOJO radio, AM 730, will be losing its unsuccessful Radio For Guys orientation, in favour of becoming Vancouver’s 2nd all-sports, AM-based radio station.
Now, MOJO radio was born in response to AM730’s previously failed “All News” format (which never rated higher than .7, while competitor CKWX hovered in the 2.3 – 2.8 rating range). MOJO Radio, over the course of the past 18 months has also never climbed higher than a .7 (percentage of all Vancouver listeners tuned to radio at any given time) rating.
So, what does the brain dead brain trust at Corus Radio (owners of CKNW, MOJO Radio, CFMI and CFOX) plan for MOJO’s replacement? How is it that these folks think that a second all-sports radio station in Vancouver is going to achieve a higher rating than their CHUM Radio-owned Team 1040 sports competition (which itself has never managed to climb out of the 1.0 ratings basement)?
Joe Leary, in his Province newspaper column published this past Monday morning, reports that MOJO has fired most of the on-air personnel.
Why didn’t Corus just turn AM730 into a jukebox, and voicetrack it? At least that would have made economic sense.
But a second all-sports radio station? Please, give all of us a break!
Computer Security: Pre-conditions necessary to surf safely
Given the proliferation of the MyDoom, Blaster, Welchia and Dumaru worms, and the myriad other worms and Trojans which impact on your ability to surf the Net with some degree of safety — not to mention, the thousands of pieces of adware, spyware, malicious cookie and programme hijackers, and variants of each of these malware intrusions into your computer — if your computing experience is to be anything approaching satisfactory, you are going to have to protect yourself.
Read below to learn more about the minimum set of conditions for surfing the Net so as to protect yourself, and everyone else, on the information highway …
Continue reading Computer Security: Pre-conditions necessary to surf safely