The Procrastination Station

Omg, my AdBrite is closing on Friday February 1, 2013….and I have no time to update! Anyone know another good advertising company besides AdSense?

I’m not sure how an ad network can even lose money to the point of closing down, but I guess this website will now be ad-free indefinitely!

Dear adBrite Publisher,

Over the last few weeks, adBrite and its management have been evaluating the go-forward plan for the business. Given market conditions and certain financial liabilities, in working with our lenders, we have decided to cease operations on Feb 1, 2013.

This is a difficult decision for all of us at adBrite. However, after much deliberation this seems to be the best course of action despite the impact it will have on all the employees, clients and partners who helped build this business. There will be a team in place as needed to assist with winding down.
Thank you for being part of the adBrite community.

The adBrite Team

Yesterday, I must have been extremely bored at the North York library…because I went downstairs to check out the TTC Meeting on proposed route changes. “Route changes” could be more accurately described as “route reductions”. Basically, they are just stopping service at 10pm instead of 1am on about 40 of the bus routes.

I’ve seen the ads in the Metro Newspaper saying that there are public TTC meetings going on all week. I have never been to one, but I kind of imagined it to be a couple of TTC speakers at a table and a room full of reporters (and dedicated citizens) asking questions. In fact, I even thought that there would be refreshments!

To my disappointment, the meeting was pretty much just a room with about 40 posters showing what the route changes are. The info on the posters were pretty much identical to the info on their website.

Sample:
8 BROADVIEW – No service after 10:00 p.m., Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
120 CALVINGTON – No service after 10:00 p.m., Monday to Saturday. No service on Sundays and holidays.
20 CLIFFSIDE – No service after 10:00 p.m., Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.
(times 37 other routes)

There were also some TTC workers standing in front of the posters answering questions and giving out comment forms. I wouldn’t call the event a meeting. It was just an info session for people that don’t have the internet or just want a human to relay the info to them.

I don’t think it’s worth it to attend these meetings. You tell the TTC surveyor that service ends at 10pm, but your shift ends at 11pm. Some will write stuff down on their notepad, while others will just “remember” to bring it up with the people in charge. As the TTC surveyor has no power, once the meeting is over, they can pretty much throw away their notepad and your comment cards. It’s a way to console the public after giving bad news.

I think the TTC is run in a really bad way, but as normal Toronto citizens, there’s not much we can do about it.

Entrance. Get a comment card from the nice lady:

Posters of the route changes aka reductions:

More posters, and a poser!?!:

So today, the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange was arrested in the UK. I think everyone who cares about this topic already get the up to date reports on news sites or Twitter. I was just reading through some sites and this article got me thinking.

It seems like the US government is trying to shut down WikiLeaks: Cutting off their funding (PayPal), Taking away their hosting (Amazon), Taking away their domain name (EveryDNS), and while we are at it, let’s arrest him for not using a condom.

Now, aren’t we doing the same censorship as China? Let’s put up the great firewall of China to monitor and delete all traces of unfavorable historical events and wipe the existence of certain religions from the face of the internet. Let’s just arrest people for writing information and while we are at it, let’s just censor anything on the internet about the jailbird winning any Nobel prizes.

We are all tricked into thinking we have freedom of speech. In fact, we believe in our own freedom so much so that we even condemn other countries for having less of it. How can we claim our media is unbiased when the government can step in at anytime and stop any publication they feel like?

So as I was reading articles on the news websites, I was thinking: “these articles about the government were all APPROVED by the government.” Do you think your local newspaper would risk being shut down by the government over an article? Making money is a newspaper’s number one priority. That is why they dilute the newspapers with as much advertising as they can possibly fit.

So, in conclusion…everything that WikiLeaks is publishing is already known by governments worldwide. Even WikiLeaks can get a hold of these secret documents, do you think that terrorist countries don’t already have this info? The only people that don’t know this information is the general public, and your government is trying to pull a China!

Rob Ford, the new mayor’s first order of business is to kill Transit City. Honestly, I’m not quite sure what was involved in the whole “Transit City” plan. Something about spending billions of dollars to build lightrail lines, repaint some streetcars, and in 10 years, we will have the best streetcars in the world!

The new plan is to just build subways (which are about 3-4x as expensive). I have no idea where Ford will get the money to do it, but hell ya, subways are key. Anyone who has ever played Sim City knows that subways are well worth the cost. If you build subways, people will start using it and the roads will clear up.

Anyway, I was reading some of the comments on the news sites and someone made a very good point.

Note that these subway maps are totally to scale. I looked at a Google map, used my fingers to measure their distances, then resized the Tokyo subway map to about the right size.

If you’ve seen the Tokyo subways at rush hour, just imagine if they didn’t have a subway! All those people would be driving on the 401!

The infamous octopus that correctly predicted the World Cup 2010 matches has died. Some Korean football fanatic decided to turn him into sushi to absorb his psychic powers for himself.

Ok, the official word is that Paul died of natural causes. He was two and a half years old, and they are thinking of burying him and giving him a shrine.

Rob Ford is Toronto’s next mayor.

The final voting results:
Rob Ford – 47% (380k votes)
George Smitherman – 36% (290k)
Joe Pantalone – 12% (95k)
Rocco Rossi – 0.6% (5k)

When I look at these numbers, it doesn’t seem like a lot of people vote. About 800,000 votes from a population of 3 million? I thought Rossi was a contender, but he only got 5,000 votes. If I told all my Facebook friends to vote for me, I wonder if I could beat that number. Hrm…maybe I should try out for the next one. lol

Anyway, the Torontonians have spoken. They want change and we will see if Ford can deliver it. It will be an interesting 4 years.

I installed Windows Live Messenger 2011 with the Live Essentials update. Opened up MSN and WOW, it’s asking me to connect to Facebook and Myspace. (Not impressed). I skip that process and the real MSN loads up, but with a Bing browser window on the left, and a gigantic advertisement on the bottom right. (very not impressed). I searched around Bing for 5-10 minutes trying to figure out how to disable the browser window attached to MSN 2011 or how to go back to MSN 2009.

The good news is that I found the button to switch it back to the old look. I just had to click the square beside “Inbox” at the top right. Or you could click on your username and select “Switch to Compact View”.

The bad news is that my Microsoft Outlook has also been killed =(

KFC’s infamous bunless burger, also known as “The Double Down” finally comes to Canada. It is basically 2 pieces of bacon, wrapped in 2 pieces of cheese, wrapped in 2 pieces of chicken. Weighing in at 540 calories (about the same as a Big Mac or carrot muffin…), the Double Down is $6.99 and combo is $8.99.

Many fat people have criticized KFC on coming out with such an unhealthy menu choice. Well, they probably shouldn’t be eating at a place called Kentucky “FRIED” Chicken anyway. I mean, don’t they notice that the restaurant only has deep fryers (no stoves, no microwaves). The bunless burger is also KFC’s most successfully launched sandwich ever.

Anywho, I went to try out the Double Down on Tuesday. I got the combo because the sandwich looked smaller than I imagined it to be. It came out to $10.16 after tax, which is pretty damned expensive for fast food. So here is my review:

- Too expensive (could have gotten 3 Toonie Tuesdays)
- Meat is much more filling than bread, so it turned out to be bigger than it looked. lol
- Quite salty and white meat, so you pretty much have to get a drink with it.
- Actually seemed healthy with good meat quality compared to a beef burger.
- There wasn’t enough sauce. I wanted to dip my Double Down in some gravy.

It tasted pretty good, but I think they should have added a piece of lettuce or tomato. It would make it less densely filling, and look a little bigger. A dark meat version of it would be a great idea too. Eating a giant chicken McNugget seems more natural than eating a chicken breast by hand. They also need to drop the price =)

At the G20 Summit meeting on June 26 and 27, the world leaders will talk about world economics. The yellow lines on the map shows where a gigantic fence is going. More details about the security zoning at the Toronto Star.

So I just heard that the G20 Summit in Toronto is apparently a big deal…(honestly, I’ve seen the articles in the Metro newspaper for a while, but the headlines made me think it was just some sort of global warming discussion, and obviously sudoku was way more interesting) I know it is a big deal when my friends tell me “they have the week off during the G20″. (I coulda swore they worked 7 days a week!) Anyway, that lead me to do a Google search to find out what the G20 ordeal is all about.

Word is that Canada spent $1.1 billion on facilities and security for G20 and G8. (Japan G8 2008 was $381 million, United States G20 2009 was $18 million) Most of the money goes towards security costs. They have to fly in RCMP officers from all over the country to keep people out of the danger zone…

As a solid Torontonian who could care less about the G20, I just had a few questions:

Why is the G20 in Toronto?
It seems like a bad idea to put it in the busiest city in Canada, then spend a billion dollars to evacuate it. I’ve asked about 20 people on MSN, and about 20 of them are against the G20 in downtown Toronto. So what are the advantages of having it here?

What exactly are the G20 protesters protesting about?
I mean, do the world leaders even know that you spray-painted some ATM machines? I don’t think they would even care if you robbed a couple of banks. Rich people don’t use ATMs. They tell their assistant, who calls some people, who then calls a manager, who then tells their employees to prepare a room/car/sandwich/etc!

Why not have a G20 webcam meeting?
Imagine 20 faces on a single monitor (or 20 faces on twenty 3D TVs). It would be cheap with zero chance of assassination. Also a much better use of technology than giving sound cannons to people that are trigger-happy with their tazers.

I think that if the meeting was really that important, they wouldn’t have time to plan it for months and billions of dollars. Obama would just call up Harper and say “Yo, what’s up H-man! We have to do a conference call right now with Iceland because their volcanoes are costing us some dough!”

omg, Taco Bell $2 Combos in the US! A medium drink, a bag of Doritos, and your choice of Chicken Burrito, Double Decker Taco, Gordita Supreme or 5-Layer Burrito.

Too bad in Canada, we are still going to have to break a 10 for the same combo.

Now there are three great reasons to move to the States:
1. McDonalds $1 McChickens (not the subpar Jr. Chicken McNugget on a bun for $1.39 in Canada)
2. KFC Bunless burger
3. and now, Taco Bell $2 Meal Deals

How can you possibly beat that deal? It’s like diarrhea for half the price! But personally, I am still most down for that bunless burger.