timouse

New Rider you have given me inspiration' date=' the way you changed things around in your life you were not happy with...I need to do that with a few things starting with my job

Good fucking job man

oh and CONGRATS [/quote']

Thanks buddy. After the first two weeks of throwing up, night terrors and super toxic freakouts things were pretty easy. I can't thank the people on here enough for the support I got. Nine months ago I couldn't imagine having a life like this. I'm applying for the marketing/advertising program at Mohawk for the fall as well. Then when you hear a song that you love being used to advertise Taco Bell you can all say "goddamn that NewRider!!!!".

hey aaron! i missed this thread somehow. i am so glad to hear that you are doing well...i hope that nellie and brantford are good for you. i expect that they will be

Happy Birthday Little Sis.

Age is number. Adultlesants for life!

i love that. we should all aspire to be adultesants.

happy birthday sunshine!!!

She'll have more time to hang out with Domi.

Well she quit just in time to watch the playoffs!

sports forum please.

there is a high-res version available too.

here.

and so it goes.

niffermouse did a poster too...

nice one joni. i figured that had to be you. look forward to evenings of being sucked in to your computer glad you're here!

welcome aboard, nibbler. your choice of avatar makes me laugh. wheni grow up i want to be a nibblonian.

perfect...

out of curiousity, is your new place in a town called ayton?

Pretty much everything I do I do drunk! I mean drunk I do....I mean....I am drunk

and that's why we're friends.

i love this place.

welcome aboard, mickey!!

The guys from the Fat Cats are headlining a special show at the Lancaster Tavern on April 28th. Come on out and celebrate the life of Marcel Guderian!

I really like the "what if" type sci-fi type stories too. Ever read any John Wyndham stuff? Amazing stories and not too out-dated considering when they were written. Day of the Triffids is classic.

Have you read any John Brunner? The Sheep Look Up is one of the original environmental disaster novels (as well as being written in a non-linear fashion; see also his Stand On Zanzibar for another non-linear story); it's fairly depressing' date=' though.

Aloha,

Brad[/quote']

the sheep look up is my favourite dystopian sci fi book. double exclamation point. the scary thing is it is coming true...the day the insurance companies roll out policies to protect parents against developmental challenges caused by environmental toxins, i'll be heading to the roof with a mirror to flag down a passing flying saucer.

i drink a whiskey drink,

i drink a vodka drink,

and when i have to pee

i use the kitchen sink.

~Homer

thank you schwa for the much needed laugh

and fwiw, these guys are political and funny. they showed a bit of one of their toronto shows on the new music, the lead singer woman came on stage in a nun's outfit and said "i've just come from having sex with mike harris. he was horrible."

I know i shouln't eat thee...

mmmmm....sacrelicious.

Happy Birthday Brad.

Been nice to meet up with you at shows over the last bunch of years.

Thanks also for the taping. I listen to your shows at least once a week.

Cheers friend,

Deeps

what he said. particularly the bit about listening to your hard work on a regular basis. you keep my ears happy.

happy birthday!!

i couldn't get all the rayrays to stand at the same time, but i did find the oak timouse.

that's exactly the solution, hamilton. nice one.

if you like. i discovered that lots of bird enthusiasts can't spell titmouse.

i think the squat is way better...and the water cleaning thing too. imagine all the toilet paper the world would not be using. i was actually sorry to not have one when i came back from asia. i feel bad about the toilet paper all the time.

after a couple of months of practice, the squat becomes second nature. the whole thing is sort of amusing though, i can just imagine someone used to squatting trying to work out how the hell westerners stay balanced on the seat 2 feet off the ground while tring to poop.

i have heard many cases of this, i have a friend who is a maintenance guy at a factory that employs a lot of new canadians. they eventually installed a couple of squatters after repeatedly replacing trodden on toilet seats.

vive la difference

wow, dave, that truly sucks.

i had a "wake up in a bad place" sort of nightmare recently, and it totally coloured the following day. not good.

now you have all of us worrying about you/rooting for you, please post with updates and or sucess stories about a heady night's sleep.

This is a tough one... and definitely an equity issue. The market can't fix everything (well it can for some I guess)...

What about pot smoke?

yes please.

i'd rent or buy in a smoke-free building if given the choice. don't want to see it legislated though, that's a slippery slope.

i quit smoking in august, and now i'm so sensitive to smoke i can smell in my apartment when the person down and across the hall is smoking, through two thick doors and who knows what else. i can see where these people with babies and young children are coming from.

i quit last june, and i hear you about being aware of people smoking. i agree that this shouldn't be legislated...but i also thought that smoking in bars should not have been legislated either.

i would have no problem with landlords marketing buildings as smoke free, but i would have a problem with smokers being denied housing....slippery slope indeed....

link to full story.

they claim a PC uses $80 a year in electricity. oddly enough that's $6.66 a month. coincidence?

A single incandescent 100-watt light bulb left on around the clock for a year costs more than US$80 to power. Generating that power releases about 1,350 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere — a major contributor to global warming.

According to Dean DeWhitt, director of Microsoft’s Windows Kernel team, that is about the same amount of power many PCs consume while not in use. Yet, while few people would leave a light bulb on for a year, many people keep their PCs running with screen-savers at all hours, which actually consumes more energy than an idling PC. What’s more, many large organizations constantly leave their PCs running so they are available to receive security patches and updates.

“While education may be the key for many consumers, businesses are forced to balance cost and environmental impact against their own security and operations requirements,†says DeWhitt. “New power management features in Windows Vista are designed to help them with this challenge.â€

In fact, Microsoft today announced the results of an independent study from UK-based PC Pro Labs, which looks at the energy consumption of Windows Vista and the potential reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. "Power Consumption, Windows Vista versus Windows XP" compared energy usage between Windows XP and Windows Vista, clearly showing that the power management features in Windows Vista could help reduce the carbon dioxide generated in an organization, equal to 45 tonnes per year for a 200-seat business. In addition, the study found that these features could also deliver savings on energy bills of up to £46 per desktop PC per year.

The study is based on real-world usage of desktop computers in the work environment of 800 desktop PC users. The cost savings and reduction in carbon dioxide emissions are due to the “Sleep†mode in Windows Vista, which automatically activates after one hour of non-use.

Known as Standby or Hibernate in previous versions, Sleep is a state where a machine and monitor can become available instantly if needed, but are each using only two to three watts of electricity in the meantime. While other versions of Windows have had success with standby modes, according to DeWhitt, Windows Vista’s version of Sleep provides by far the best user experience to date.

Environmental Groups Shed Additional Light

During development of Windows Vista’s power management capabilities, DeWhitt’s team sought to collaborate with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) to understand how they could develop the technologies with the environment in mind.

“We heard from customers that they were very focused on the cost savings of power management features, but we knew that there could also be some benefit to the environment,†he says. “The EPA and the NRDC really helped clarify the potential environmental impact of this technology beyond the cost efficiency.â€

With this knowledge, the team’s mission evolved from pure savings toward a more “green†focus on energy consumption and conservation. With environmental experts plugged into the process, the team set about delivering the best user experience possible while lowering energy use.

To explain the dramatic difference power management can make, the team published research that showed that a typical desktop PC and LCD monitor sitting idle for a year (outside of business hours) would consume 632 kilowatt hours of energy — compared to 34 in sleep mode. That’s a savings of 598 kilowatt hours per PC per year.

The NRDC’s senior scientist Noah Horowitz puts it another way. “If the majority of U.S. computer owners take advantage of the enhanced energy saving features in Windows Vista, we could easily cut our nation’s electric bill by about $500 million per year, and prevent 3 million tons of global warming pollution from being emitted from electric power plants," he says. "This is the equivalent to preventing the pollution from 390,000 cars -- approximately the number of cars in the city of Seattle.â€

The implication of his point is echoed by all concerned — while the ability of Windows Vista to intelligently manage power consumption is an important piece of the puzzle, getting people to adopt power management into their computing routines is what really has the potential to create a broad impact.

“Having previewed the energy saving features of Vista, it is obvious to me that Microsoft has put a lot of effort into improving the overall power management experience,†says Steve Ryan, program manager for the EPA’s Power Management Outreach Campaign. “Also gratifying has been Microsoft’s efforts, through written articles and speaking engagements, to educate software developers and other IT professionals on the importance of power management. If everyone took full advantage of these features at home and work, our country could reduce its annual electricity use by tens of billions of kilowatt hours.â€

Making Sleep More User Friendly

According to DeWhitt, the way to achieve this broad participation is by making the features easy to use and turning them on by default so users don't have to learn or make value decisions. A number of changes implemented in Windows Vista make going into Sleep mode a seamless and natural experience, which he hopes will encourage people to take advantage of Sleep.

During use, Windows Vista also keeps close tabs on what the computer is doing, what it is running, and how busy the machine is. Windows Vista can speed the computer’s processor up when a higher level of performance is needed, and bring it back down to a low power level when the machine is less active.

The system also improves Sleep’s responsiveness. The team redesigned the way Windows Vista “remembers†its current state, making it much quicker to respond when a user puts the PC to sleep or awakens it. In fact, computers resume from Sleep in under two seconds.

“You should immediately see the screen go dark,†he says. “So it’s a really crisp, responsive experience both going into sleep and coming back.â€

Centralized Management and IT Control

When it comes to environmental impact, the biggest potential for power management to make a difference lies with large organizations, which often deploy hundreds if not thousands of PCs, all of which could be saving significant amounts of energy with the new system.

But while ease of use may compel individuals to adopt good power management practices, the key for most large organizations is the ability to control power management centrally. For instance, a company can decide that PCs in their network will go to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity.

“There are various technical and behavioral reasons why individuals and organizations do not take advantage of a system’s power management features,†says the EPA’s Ryan. “One of the things we’ve needed is an improvement in technology and a reduction to the technical barriers of implementing power management. Windows Vista is one example of improving the technology landscape.â€

All of the power management features in Windows Vista are available for central IT control, and can be set or turned off however the company chooses. Windows Vista also provides the IT department with the ability to program power management settings directly into a computer’s start-up routine.

If a security patch or important update comes out and must be immediately deployed to thousands of machines, the IT department can use software such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 or another third-party solution to “wake†those machines so the patch can automatically be installed if the computer is connected to the network.

This helps overcome a barrier that many companies have faced in balancing power management against security of their networks, since one major reason that some companies leave their computers running all the time is that they need to have the PCs available in case an update or patch must be rapidly deployed.

According to Ryan, allowing IT pros to control power management across all PCs in a network is a simple improvement that gives large organizations the ability to create enormous value.

To explain this, Ryan points to a study by the EPA’s Energy Star program of General Electric — in 2001, the EPA began examining the impact of GE employing the power-management functionality of Windows XP and Windows 2000 across 75,000 PCs, setting monitors to shut down after 15 minutes, the PC itself after 30 minutes, and moving into a full “hibernate†mode after three hours.

The result was a savings of $2.5 million per year in energy. The EPA estimates it was enough to power 23,000 homes each year. The reduction in carbon emissions associated with that energy was estimated at 20,000 tons — the equivalent of planting 5,600 trees.

For all involved, the hope is that the vastly improved Sleep functionality developed for Windows Vista will drive many more large organizations to adopt these kinds of green technology policies.

“For the past six years, EPA has been working to increase the number of computers and monitors across the country that are actively managed in this way,†says Ryan. “While we have had much success, there is still a long way to go, with an enormous potential to save energy and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.â€

For the makers of Windows Vista, the extent to which that potential is realized boils down to the success of the team’s “people-ready†design philosophy and how users and organizations respond to the tools they’ve put in place.

“If you think about the installed base of PCs being over 600 million, the potential impact of this is mind boggling,†says DeWhitt. “Ultimately, PC users will decide how much of a difference power management can make. What we’re trying to do at Microsoft is give people a way to use personal computers that delivers a great user experience and is also a very efficient way to use personal computers. The energy savings associated with these efficiencies, scaled over millions of PC users, can really add up.â€

I keep wondering what all the paramilitaries are going to do. This threatens to take all the fun out of their day.

they will be able to get work with blackwater or wackenhut.

"there's nothing like the personal touch of hired goons."

-montgomery burns