Puleeeez

The word was 'ramp up' last year. Everyone was ramping up something or other. Instant cliche. Happening all over again with 'going forward' the new buzzword that is so sickening when you hear it from every single person on radio and TV!
Please, vary your speech and notice the useless buzzwords! They are an earitant!

Warning to tourists

Welcome to the Olympics - body armor is available.

Tourists and residents - Places where you should not go in the Greater Vancouver area
- Any Skytrain station
- Granville Street clubs at night
- Surrey in general
- Any Langley Mall
- Anywhere in Abbotsford
- many grocery store parking areas
Please call police or RCMP for their list of safe places to visit, I think there is one so far.
Don't call Wally Opal, he has nothing to do with .. er ... anything.

Warning signs - Any Cadillac Escalade or black Lincoln Navigator driven by teenager. - added - Black Range Rover

Tourists and people looking for danger holidays, adventure weekends, Olympic side trips please visit any of the above locations and don't worry about flying bullets, the police assure us that they are not aimed at you. Sort of like 'friendly fire' in Iraq.
Drugs are freely available on almost any street corner, just watch for someone staring down the street, they are all similar.
Have fun and get your will up to date!

update: 15 shootings in Vancouver in the last month!
oops, TWO last night = 16
oops, another one today - 17
oops, another one last night - 18 (maybe we should put a gun on the Olympic pins?)
oops - 46 shootings so far as of April 5.

Criminal sentences in BC - average sentence for first crime = 101 days ... average sentence for 35th to 40th crime = 25 days. Come to BC.

Hudsons Bay Company

The Bay just announced that it is laying off 1000 employees 'because of the economic downturn causing poor sales'.
Message to the Bay - You just don't get it, do you; Your poor sales have nothing to do with the economy, it's because you have only one sales person per floor who is only there to shop for themselves!

Google and your ISP

Google has just announced a new project designed to irritate internet corporations who are ripping you off. I think they are onto something. Google is saying that many internet service providers are not supplying the service you are paying for. I am embracing Google as God!
In my own case I have Telus as my internet people. I pay them lots of money to provide a connection to the internet for me. I am supposed to be on something called 'extreme high speed DSL', that is of course when I can connect at all! Mornings are spent steaming at the screen message, 'Cannot connect to the server.' Otherwise my connection is only extreme slow.
Here is a site you can use to check the speed of your own connection now - http://www.speedtest.net/ Be prepared for surprises.
My Telus speed this morning is 5168 kilobytes per second download, 642 kbps upload with a ping of 137. I was told by a Telus technician that was fast, for Telus. What you usually cannot do, is check a different internet connection through your own computer. In my case I have a wireless neighbor through the wall and can use that connection as well! It is a Shaw Cable connection. The speed this morning on Shaw, right after my Telus measurement, at the above test site was 14782 kbps! Fourteen THOUSAND! 978 kbps upload and a ping of 36! That is way over 100 percent faster than my so called Extreme High Speed Telus connection!
So Google intends to have a site where we can all go and get our internet speed. Good for them, the only remaining thing is to get your service provider to answer the phone on inquiries about what speed results you want to know about.
In the case of Telus, you'll be dealing with a strategy of confusion and frustration intended to make you hang up and go away.
I wish I had not gone to Telus in the first place. My bad for being loyal to my old BC Tel company.