You either pay attention or pay through the nose. I would rather pay attention.
After all the battling over the dispensing of crack pipe kits to drug users, the Provincial government of Ontario has bypassed the Ottawa City Council by expanding the decision making process to include appointees.
The new system will have 6 councillors and 5 appointees meaning a single city councillor can side with the 5 appointees on any issue and bring crack pipe kits or safe injection clinics to a neighbourhood near you.
Ottawa taxpayers…OfficiallyScrewed again.
As many of you know, all politics and no sports makes Steve a dull boy. So as I do every year, I will be running an NCAA men’s basketball March Madness bracket challenge.
I usually get about 7 entrants so in an effort to do better I am opening this pool up to the public. Feel free to click the link below to join the pool. Note it is run completely online via Yahoo Fantasy sports and is strictly for fun and bragging rights.
I will try to make it a bit interesting by saying if we get 50 entrants, I will order the winner an OfficiallyScrewed.com baseball hat and if we hit 100 entrants I will give first place an OfficiallyScrewed.com T-Shirt and the second place entrant an OfficiallyScrewed.com baseball hat. NOTE: to collect a prize you must provide your email address so I can confirm who you are afterwards.
I know, I know, big spender!!! We ARE in a recession so cut me some slack. 🙂
To join, simply click the link below and go deal with the Yahoo application process if you are not already signed up as a Yahoo user.
http://tinyurl.com/OS-NCAA-Pool
Feel free to invite any friends or family you have.
Important Dates: Sunday March 13th at 5 or 6pm – Brackets are set live on CBS.
Thursday March 17th – noon – First tip off. Your brackets MUST be completely selected through to the championship BEFORE the first game tips off. This is important. DO NOT SIMPLY SELECT THE FIRST ROUND.
Use the comments to ask questions and good luck.
All I can say to my friends in California is a quote from the movie “The Fly” starring Jeff Goldblum.
“Be afraid…be very afraid.”
Kramer, who came under fire at eHealth for runaway spending by consultants and her $317,000 severance package, is executive director of a team bringing electronic health records to the UCLA Health System’s patients in four hospitals and clinics with 2,000 doctors. She is working as a consultant, and is not on staff.
Kramer is part of what the University of California at Los Angeles billed as “an exceptional team of experts” in an online publication Monday.
…
When Kramer left eHealth as chief executive in the spring of 2008, her golden parachute fuelled outrage from opposition parties and the public.
It was later revealed Kramer gave a speech that cost $25,000 to write and that eHealth gave out $16 million in contracts without competitive bidding in efforts to get electronic health records in place as quickly as possible.
Californian Tax Payers might just be … OfficiallyScrewed.
h/t to Shirley for this one.
I seem to have become the go to tech support guy for all my friends who own Blackberries. So in an effort to make life easier, I have listed below a bunch of tips that should help make your experience a bit better.
Reboot
When at homescreen press ALT + CAP + DEL at same time and release
Switching between apps.
Hold Alt and press escape button to right of touchpad/scroll ball. Keep Alt pressed while you scroll through apps. Let go of alt and you will open switch the app.
Press alt plus escape and release to go back to original app.
On newer models you can simply hold down the Menu button (to left of touchpad) until it appears and then scroll to new app and click touchpad
Dial by Name
To dial alphanumeric phone numbers like “1-888-Rogers1″ hold alt while you dial the letter portion and press call. Note this works for dial by name when you call a company directory.
Ring/tone settings.
To toggle between the current setting and the last used setting simply press and hold # (pound sign)
(If you’re in Vibrate and you used Quiet last, then this will switch you to Quiet and/or back again)
Free Flashlight
To turn your bb into a flashlight, open your video camera, go to options and change video light setting to “on”. Then whenever you open your video camera your led light will turn on giving you light. If you want it one click away you can program one of your side convenience buttons to open your video camera. if your BB does not have a video camera you can upgrade your OS and desktop manager to get the latest version which has the video camera. (may not be possible on older blackberrys with less memory or those blackberries without a camera flash)
Tech Info
Alt + Cap + H opens an info screen with any info a bb support or IT support guy would need from you.
Special Characters
To type accented or special characters simply Hold the letter key and scroll with your track pad.
Caps Lock
Press ALT + right CAP to activate caps lock (you’ll see an “aA” icon in the top right of the screen). Press it again to release caps lock.
NUM Lock
Press ALT + left CAP to activate NUM lock (you’ll see a “123” icon in the top right). Press again to release.
To easily manage multiple email signatures.
1. Delete your existing auto signature or change the option setting to No. (Open email. Click Menu -> Options -> Email Settings -> Use Auto Signature and then update your setting.)
2. Make an autotext (Options -> AutoText) entry where:
When you type: zz (or any irregular, non-standard 2 letter combo like zx) Replace it with:
Your Name
Your Company
Your phone, extension, etc.
You can have a “professional” signature and a “casual” sign off. Or many signatures. Now just enter those 2 extra letters at the end of a message and your signature will appear there.
Email Tips
Press T – to get to the top of an email, inbox, web page or document (ER key on a BlackBerry® Pearl™)
Press B – to get to the bottom of an email, inbox, web page or document (CV key on a Pearl)
Press SPACE – to move down one screen at a time (M key on a Pearl)
Press ALT + SPACE – to move up one screen at a time (UI key on a Pearl)
Press N – to move to next email item (JK key on a Pearl)
Press P – to move to the previous email item (DF key on a Pearl)
Press U – to move to the most recent unread email [from within email]
Press SPACE twice to insert a period when typing.
Hold a letter to capitalize it (without using the CAP key)
For you ultimate geeks
The BlackBerry captures and saves an ongoing event log file. If you’re experiencing slower performance on your BB and want to clear the Log, or you’re a developer who needs to see what’s happening at a deeper level…
Press ALT + LGLG (hold the ALT key and type the letters LGLG) The log file screen will appear. Press Menu to see options like “Clear Log” or “Copy Day’s Contents”.
Note: you must be in the home screen to get the log file!
If you prefer more than the simplified wireless coverage “bars”, you can switch to an exact decibel meter view.
Press ALT + NMLL (type the letters NMLL) This toggles between wireless signal as “bars” and showing the negative number decibel value (very techie!) Note: you must be in the home screen to toggle coverage meter.
If you’re a web developer, and you visit a site while on your BlackBerry, you can still view source code. While you’re on the browser page, Press ALT + RBVS (type the letters RBVS).
Credit for many for many of these needs to be given to http://www.asendu.com/node/13
Just like the new rules for credit cards, each electricity bill should tell us when our last payment will be on the debt.
I say this because originally we were supposed to have paid off the stranded debt by 2012. Then it got extended to 2014. Then it got pushed to 2018. And now this from the National Post.
Why is OEFC financing this capital project when OPG supposedly has the ability to raise funds from private sources and the “stranded debt” was placed in OFEC to ensure that OPG would be self-financing in the future? Why is the “debt retirement” money being paid by ratepayers into OEFC now being used to provide new financing to OPG? The historical rate of repayment of the old “stranded debt” indicates it will take another 49 years to retire! Why hasn’t the Auditor General raised some alarms on this? Why doesn’t OEFC publish quarterly reports so the public can properly follow its activities?
So should our bills not say “At current payment rates, you will make your last payment on February 29th, 2060?
If this 49 year extension is accurate, then it is safe to say that this debt has been severely mismanaged by the OEFC. The OEFC was created to hold the old debt and pay it off. And now it is being used as a bank which is funding new projects. This is clearly not good for your electricity bill because what few people pay attention to is the fact that you pay HST on top of that debt retirement charge.
If the infrastructure money for new electricity projects was simply to come from the government and not the OEFC, then you would not have to pay that charge and the HST on it directly. It would simply be rolled in to the provincial deficit/debt. But by shuffling it into the OEFC, McGuinty get’s a nice HST boost and you and get…. you guessed it…
OfficiallyScrewed!!
In light of the witch hunt, I feel the need to repost two videos I made when the In and Out was first brought up.
and
In what I would describe as double penetration, the Ontario Energy Board has ruled that utility companies can raise their rates to pay for $18 Million in fines that they received for….wait for it….overcharging those who paid bills late.
You got it. First they screwed the taxpayer and then they asked to screw the taxpayer for screwing the tax payer….and the Ontario Energy Board said yes.
“It’s a scam,” Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak shot at Energy Minister Brad Duguid in the Legislature’s daily question period, saying the Liberals have turned the energy board into “another McGuinty tax collection agency.”
“Why is it when Ontario families even win in the courts you still make them pay the price of illegal activity?”
Now THAT is getting OfficiallyScrewed.
This morning on Fox’s America’s Newsroom in an interview conducted by Bill Hemmer, Carol Bowshier, the chief of staff for the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association says:
Well the fact is, we could lay off every state worker in Ohio. Every police officer, every firefighter, every corrections officer and we would only close 1/4 of the $8Billion gap.
I call Bulls#!/ on Ms. Bowshier, because her assumption means the average salary of each public service employee is under $13,000 a year which we all know is simply not the case.
As Bill stated at the beginning of the interview, this would affect all 330,000 state employees.
So do the math. If the WHOLE $8Billion was being laid on the union workers (which it is not) then all we have to do is take the $8 Billion divided by 330,000 and we get a measly $24242 per employee (over 2 years meaning the actual per employee cost to eliminate the $8Billion is only $12,121 per year).
And add in the fact that the $8Billion is NOT being solely burdened by the public union workers, these austerity moves by Ohio will likely be able to put the state into a surplus situation.
On Friday, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals decided to put a moratorium on offshore wind projects. I thought a lot about this over the weekend and commented to friends that it is possibly the beginning of the coming landslide in the green energy kybosh which may be the only thing that saves the provincial liberals from a rout in the October 2011 elections.
Then I read this article in the Toronto Star.
In particular this section.
Offshore applications to date make up only a handful of the many hundreds received so far, and the government’s terse news release pointed out that none have been built. Queen’s Park is pulling the plug until “further scientific research is conducted.”
But the reality is that public opinion research, rather than scientific research, is driving the government’s agenda these days. A number of Liberal ridings are being buffeted by wind turbine troubles, notably the Scarborough seat held by Energy Minister Brad Duguid.
The premier likes to boast in his speeches about Ontario’s groundbreaking renewable energy policies and his focus on good government. He has long resisted NIMBYism, and his ministers are known to mock them as BANANAs — Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. But with an election coming, his new priority is putting out political fires — most recently by nixing the gas-fired power plant in Oakville that threatened another Liberal seat.
The opposition is profiting from the anti-wind movement, with many MPPs stirring it up in their ridings at every opportunity. Most of the huffing and puffing is directed against onshore wind farms, which face a 550-metre setback. Offshore turbines, by contrast, faced a five-kilometre setback — virtually out of sight, but by no means out of mind.
So what does this mean?
Well it means that they cancelled a tiny portion of wind, primarily on Lake Ontario, to save Brad Duguid’s Scarborough seat by cancelling wind turbine projects that have to be 5km from shore but it leaves the countless wind farms that only have to be 550 meters from a neighbour’s property. If health was truly the cause of the cancellation, then they would have cancelled the ones that are potentially closer to people. But a) this would affect the bulk of the programs and b) it would not help save Brad Duguid’s job. And since Duguid is now the face of Green Energy in Ontario, it would be a devastating loss and hit to the Green Energy Act if he was unseated.
So rural farmers who make up the bulk of the current wind farms (and their neighbours who make up the bulk of the neighbours of wind farms) get the shaft.
Sound familiar? Well it should. You see back on July 2nd, McGuinty also cut the rates for lucrative 10kW MicroFIT solar projects that were ground based from 80.2 cents per kWh to 64.2 pretty much making them unviable. Yet he left the rooftop installations at 80.2 cents per kWh. The reason they sited was that the ground based installations were cheaper. But they were wrong. The ground based systems need heavy ballasting, far longer trenches, potentially new hydro poles, transformers etc depending on the location. Whereas rooftop systems have all that readily available. and simply connect up to the power near your home meter.
So he slaps the rural community on July 2nd and tells them they can’t really take part in solar and now he slaps them again by telling them Scarborough resident’s health is in jeopardy when they are 5km from an installation but farmers that are potentially 550 meters from a windfarm are not at the same risk. Can we say OfficiallyScrewed?
The ONLY thing that would make this windfarm situation right is if he puts a hold on all ONSHORE windfarm projects as well.
Watch this video. No this is not a bunch of “tea baggers” (i.e. Tea Party members). This is a rally held by left wing group Code Pink whose slogan is “women for peace”. They don’t sound so peaceful.
But for some reason the perception is that it is the right of the political spectrum calling for violence.
WARNING: This is truly offensive video.
I just have to say that if this group ever gets traction, we are all OfficiallyScrewed.