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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Wed May 23, 2018 10:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm all caught up!


The taxes got sent off yesterday and all the plumbing is working and non-leaking. Strange to see that Toto toilet now functioning completely normal. I'm now looking for things to do. The obvious is to sort out my clothing and have them always in drawers instead of all over the place. Then sort and pack stuff lying around although things are looking organized already.


It is strange to have time on your hands.....


As for the orgs another issue of The Fortress should be printed. Give all the websites a good going over now that you have the time. You do this now as things constantly change. It would seem the one thing I dread more than not having enough time is having all time to do whatever I want. It's just strange that. I do have some perennial problems like the squirrels in my attic but that is a major project to get rid of them now. I also have a ton of slides to turn into photos. Yes once upon a time people made slides and used a projector to show them to families and friends. When we had people over for dinner, afterward we would set up the screen and the projector and look at slides of trips and memories from way back when. My parents actually wanted to throw them all out, but I saved them! No projector but it is probably at my father's place along with the screen. I have a scanner that can convert them into photos so that should get going sometime and maybe now is the time. My Oma is in there somewhere in color. Bottle fed me and changed my diapers and all the rest for my first three years. The first words out of my mouth were German, in fact my first language was German - how strange is that for a little brown boy. I used to share a bed with this cute little German girl my age, so unlike what you would have thought of displaced people from post WW2 Germany..... I actually remember seeing her asleep beside me in bed, like two peas in a pod. I wonder what she is doing these days..... These were happy times for me. So my upbringing was a bit unusual and so totally unlike what most would have expected. Always judge with your own eyes and ears, I am living proof of that! I have only one or two black and white photos of her but I know there is more.



Me as a baby and my Oma!


We just play a waiting game with the advocacy but the TV stuff should get a reboot after the end of May. Next Monday I have some oral surgery at the peridontist. After having him take the lump of death out of my lip I had him do a once over on the gums and he will rebuild one little area getting a little bit thin. He did an excellent job on the lip with no noticeable anything that anything had been done - so this is his reward. Then I go asking for more rejection in TV land.....



Goodnight.....





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9esWG6A6g-k&feature=share
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 8:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good on my word I am going through the slides looking for stuff.....


As you can see I found an unexpected photo of my Oma. But it was this crap slide with discoloration and dark as all hell. I brightened it up and cropped it and the photo below is what you get. Now I have to be careful as the brightening software can create some ghoulish stuff like around Oma's eye glass frames as I am sure she had those pencil thin brows like in the other photos a year or two earlier. But this is all I have now and hopefully more to come - hopefully. So you can see I have grown a bit between photos. And now I know why this woman bothered with me and all the rest. It is simple that these two Muskateers bonded with each other and it was as simple as that! I was a cute kid and used to win baby contests early on. So you had this cute kid giving you the oogly wooglies with his eyes while you bottle fed and changed nappies. And then teaching him how to talk and walk and all the rest. You get genuinely attached to the kid. And that explains how I came to be a genuine member of that family. I stayed there Monday to Friday day and night and my parents got me on the weekends - as strange as that sounds as my real mother worked and my dad was at the University of Manitoba back in the day.




The original slide.




That slide enhanced in Photoshop!



Anyway those were happy times for me and every time I see a photo from that time it just confirms what I felt about those days. It must have been really hard on Oma when we left for Edmonton after three or four years (this was in Winnipeg, Manitoba at the time). I always felt that and now I am sure..... At any rate I'll spare you the trip down memory lane. Suffice to say I tried to get the old projector to work and the bulb still lights and all, but the feed mechanism is stuck. So I had to use the flatbed scanner to create the files to show you and after some fiddling it worked! So more searching for stuff in the slide archives. These slides are like 55 years old and reasonably preserved. Who would have ever thought? The commercial ones - including a reddish photo of the UN in there oddly enough - have all lost their color but the Kodak slides are still rock'in!




The old slide projector.



In other news, later on this morning I will take a break and go to our office an make sure the Vatican has not sent back our stuff as in the next day type of thing. Just a check and then back to the slides. I was also looking at videos of Buddy Rich beating his drums back in the day. My only beef is that I feel he is the best drummer who ever lived and as time goes by he is slipping in the rankings with lesser drummers - but with more successful bands - getting in ahead. Listen, every drummer from the big band era on owes Buddy Rich. If you look at his style it looks almost hokey now; this guy in a suit beating the drums like the long haired rockers do, only more restrained. What up with that! Well the what up is that he was the first! He created the style! That's what up!

This was a guy who was undisputedly the best of his time, and yet never could learn to read music. This is a guy who never took lessons as he claimed lessons would only mess up his natural talent. Now there is some truth if you never heard it before! That is soooo right! He also claimed he never practiced. Practice was the same as performing. When Buddy was in your band he took the spotlight. He would also get inspired and go off the rails on a song so much that the song was completely butchered at the end if the band even got a chance to save it after the Buddy Rich treatment. It is almost laughable to watch the band try to take its cue when to end the thing but it only happened when Buddy was finished his solo - whenever that happened..... But the crowds loved it as they had never seen this before. In the end Buddy solved this problem by creating his own band and playing as he wished. As I said, the crowds loved this as they had never seen anything like this before - a drummer being the star of a big band! Anyway I feel he is the best drummer that ever lived. Every drummer that goes wild on the drums during a performance owes that style to Buddy Rich. I just hate the way time and history have a way of corrupting the truth.....




Goodnight.....





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ug_fes1fEI&feature=share
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2018 11:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A late one today.....


I have finished going through all the slides and photos and I only found two more photos of my Oma:





That is a photo at some harvest event. I am even older that the two before and trying to work a rotor tiller it looks like. These slides are Kodachrome and look great! The Ectachrome all turned red but Kodachrome - man! 55 years later and still rock'in! The one below is me talking to Oma about something. And that is it. There are tons - literally tons of slides to go through but these have my Oma and me. I will check back at my dad's place and maybe I will get lucky. But that is what I did this morning.





In other news, things progress. I am taking next week off with oral surgery for Monday so the few days of swollen jaw won't impact anything I do anyway. That is the plan.




Later.....





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSm9M4rDNTM&feature=share
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Sat May 26, 2018 2:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A really late one today as I am taking it easy for the next week.....


You never are really on a vacation in my world; you just don't work as hard. For the week I have oral surgery on Monday and then I may actually renovate one of my bathrooms. The shower and tub are done and the toilet is now a TOTO and the sink and facet were redone. All I have to do is replace the floor tiles and repaint and we are good to go! Plus deal with the squirrels in the attic before they have kids. Then more work on the advocacy front. I am also working on the AI threat (artificial intelligence) and I will scour those slides to see if dear old dad was involved in any way with the "tar sands". After they gave up on the idea of exploding nuclear bombs under the earth to liquefy the oil and allow it to be pumped out (yes that was actually an idea - so much fail there) - they had to figure out other ways. And that is when dad arrived in Edmonton on a scholarship he never wanted (they just offered it - or made an offer he could not refuse). The tar sands had big money behind it and they wanted the best minds and had all sorts of folk working on the thing. So dad did research on soils in northern Alberta (Humm....) and did that for his Master's degree. But I just want to make sure I don't have any of that global warming stuff on my hands through my dad's possible involvement.


Like I sad many times before, dad quit the civil engineering thing after he got his Masters and taught business and computer science at N.A.I.T. (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology). Computers were the big thing then and everyone involved were pioneers. I gathered in front of the TV set in the morning when I was about nine with my mother to watch dad on this morning TV show and they asked him about computers. Then the big question: "Could these computers eventually pose a threat and take over the world!" He asked the question just like that! Of course my dad sort of chuckled and said that computers would never be able to think like humans..... Well "hardy har har" and welcome to 2018! That was 50 years ago. Half a century! Now quantum bit computers have the potential capacity to think like humans. Again I was there when the idea was floated back in the mid-1980s. It was dinner talk at Thanksgiving Dinner and Christmas Dinner between my dad and a family friend in the industry. Qubits and M.I.T. was the talk back then. And I was in on those conversations never, ever, thinking it would lead to this! So AI "blood" will be on my hands if that threat ever happens. At least I am in a position to present things and discuss it at places like the UN. But who would have ever thought.....



A 20 Qubit computer at IBM! And I have permission to use it!


So like Artificial Intelligence, I will check to make sure that tar sands "blood" is not on my hands (the tar sands are a huge contributor to global warming) also and then just prepare for things. I hated computers, failed my dad's computer course at Ryerson back in the day. I didn't fail it for trying. I just took all the punch cards (yes punch cards) and threw then down the sewer in front of the statue of old man Ryerson and never went to another class! But even though I eschewed computers; I grew up in the shadow of their creation and so this is on me like a few other people. The sins of the father are visited upon his children or something like that. Dad is in his mid-eighties, so I have to be the one to help clean up that mess.....


Anyway - later.....





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mg7qKstnPk&feature=share
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Sun May 27, 2018 11:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am still processing slides but it looks like dear old dad was involved in the tar sands especially in the early days just prior to production.....



Dad


I offer you some slides that he took, and all of them are his photography. Note that the whole process up to production is there. It looks like his job was to scout out sites and plan them according to yield and ease of transport to the refineries. I would posit he probably designed all those small bridges from the sites to the main roads as he loved to engineer bridges. So it all starts with just evaluating the site in its natural habitat.



Then you start to look at the soil and determine its viability.




Next is a proper drilling operation with mobile drill equipment.





Building of bridges and roadways.





Then the remote site starts to be set up.




The beginnings of excavation.




Then some base refinement.





Then off to the refinery.





The base for this was probably Fort McMurray some 40 miles north of Edmonton where we lived. There is no doubt this is tar sands work. As the top of his undergraduate class and most likely top of the field in Canada (which he reminded me yesterday) my guess is that he was tasked with this reconnaissance and selection of sites for refinement. I suspected some of this but the slides dramatically confirm it.

So now I own it, more blood on my hands.....


I have to be careful here and not blame. Global warming hadn't happened yet and that was a later form of processing. At this time period it was just simple surface excavation. I checked and it seems no indigenous people were relocated. But there was, of course some impact on the areas that were excavated, but real production had not started yet. Plus, dad got out of that quick and never went back into civil engineering. I will leave those reasons for speculation - but you can speculate all you want.....


So the tar sands and global warming now also get placed on the table as issues I have a personal interest in. I did go with dad on a couple of trips to underground sites. I even went down underground on those simple belt cycled lifts that would never let a kid on these days. But that is how it was back then. We have the value of hind sight some fifty years later but they didn't. Plus my dad was in his late 20s or early thirties and not pushing 60 like I am now. But it nevertheless is disquieting to see your family having a disproportionate amount of influence in the third largest oil reserve on earth!


He was in on the thing from the very start and photographed it all. Odd to see a brown guy overseeing this whole process he started. Or in the wilds the racial inequities don't seem to really apply. They had a job to do and big bucks at stake and time pressure. They just went and did it! So dad may have soured on raping the landscape for oil, but he did enjoy building bridges and some office buildings. We always took detours to drive over a bridge of his when we could.


But like I said he left all that and headed a department in computer science - or egg-head central - as it looks from the photos, and that lead to other problems I have to advocate on in the future.


That is it for now. Later.....
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Mon May 28, 2018 1:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok, this will be a short one as I need a few hours sleep and then it is off to the gum doctor for some work.....





I hope that little slide show was at least a bit educational as to how the tar sands started. All that work started before actual production. That was how all of that actually started. So I have a connection and will advocate as best I can for the good of all involved. Overall I am saddened that the tar sands now seem to be almost wholly owned by foreigners who seemingly reap the benefits but their nations do not incur the environmental damage that Canada does - but that is for another time..... Now as a postscript, dear old dad did leave that line of work and went into the new field of computer science. Take a look at his department (at N.A.I.T.) above. Those women for the most part are not secretaries but programmers and instructors. In fact that picture always smacks of "egg head central" to me. If you were a woman or minority back in the late sixties to early seventies - computer science was open to you. I think he was far happier in this field and stayed in it for the rest of his life. The unintended consequences - like the tar sands - are always there in hind sight but we have to remember that computers were the crudest things back then. Only a philosopher and visionary - or sci-fi writer - could possibly envision the threat we now face today. Back then you would be looked at as a little strange, but strangely you would also have some support among the uneducated. Of course the ultimate irony is that the uneducated turned out to be right in the end. Sometimes the obvious can be so obvious intellectuals simply are blind to it. As a side note I did find one of those bridges my dad had a hand in. He photographed it of course, and then we drove on it every chance we got.





Anyway my positive mandate addresses all of this in the end. We'll see what happens there.....




Goodnight.....
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Tue May 29, 2018 2:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A really late one today.....


Nothing major happened but a family friend ended up in the hospital so we all want to check things out. So now I'm playing catch up while being on so-called vacation. Anyway, things are humming long. We got another new member from Germany again and he posted an article about a major power failure in there and the ramifications that went with it:


http://iaij.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=961


Of course we had one that went for days after 911 during the summer and then another one during the ice storm that also lasted days or even up to a week for some. We take power for granted and we all ended up looking for companies with power generators to plug in our phones and laptops and anti-freeze in the toilets.


But I digress.....






We still are taking it slow with the positive mandate advocacy. I want to get this right. I don't want any second guessing as it is that important to me. So we wait it out and then do what comes next. The fact is that positive mandate is the perfect umbrella mandate that if agreed upon by a majority of member nations at the United Nations, would drastically shorten times for implementing programs and initiatives that fell under its umbrella since we would not have to ask the question of whether it fell within the UN mandate, and an organizational structure would already be in place to deal with the issues. This drastic shortening of time could be the difference between success or failure as I have seen policy making at the UN in person now. And that is beside the fact the mandate is beautiful in so many ways apart from pragmatic issues like time. I would even state that the global popular vote where everyone with a cell phone or computer access could vote on global issues important for all - is on a similar level of importance. Participation in such a vote would make implantation of an initiative that much more effective in the general public because they would have voted as a global community and endorsed it that way. Together the UN would have a powerful set of tools to handle any emergency that could possibly happen outside of the current mandates.




Worldwide Vote Cellphone App


There is so much more there that you can't tell it all in a few paragraphs, which is why I need some time to fully present the ideas. We just need the opportunity to present the ideas. Our first duty is the dissemination of ideas, but now we feel confident to try and go a bit further. Whatever happens, it is all good, as the idea will be out there and if it has merit, sooner or later if will be embraced. Of course I would like it sooner rather than later and so I advocate myself now. And that I what is currently going on.....




Later.....





http://humandestiny.org


http://worldwidevote.org
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Wed May 30, 2018 1:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Another late one today.....


I am deliberately trying to turn this into a mini vacation now. I had some oral surgery on Monday and was drinking and eating through straws and sleeping into the afternoon. Then Tuesday with the hospital stuff and finally feeling like venturing into some soft food. I am starting some reno work now by fixing some old taps or valves where the washing machine sink used to be. Tomorrow if things work out I may continue looking for a vanity to replace the old one in the main bathroom upstairs. Then the floors on both bathrooms and then paint. I've done this before many times but kept putting it off. Really, it is when this real estate agent offered me 850,000 on the spot for the house it got me thinking I should renovate the thing (I didn't take her offer as the guy across the road got 950,000). Plus I have to add a second downspout outside due to the increased water we get these days due to global warming.



This is how I found all those slides!


So that is a nut shell is the rest of the week. I still have work at the orgs to finish. And I still have to put away all those slides! Except now I have a broken projector screen and a projector that does not work to hide away somewhere! Well I asked for that but the slides were worth it.....




Later......
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Thu May 31, 2018 10:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well the renos are on hold as I can't find a replacement lighted cabinet to replace the old one. And I'm not going to use those flat mirrors and work around it hiding all the shelves in a cupboard. So I may have to order the thing. That means at best a re-flooring. So I take it easy. I can just barely eat small piece of toast now so progress there. I did hop out for some air and took off to Walmart where I got an idea. I decided to look for the cheapest and worst looking DVD I could find and try to watch that.


I found it!






It's called Epicenter and includes seven bonus movies for a total of eight movies for 5 dollars! But you can guess as to what kind of movies. Some actually have a known cast like Tracy Lords (former porn star) In Epicenter, Mark Hamill (should be of interest to Star Wars fans) in Slipstream. And Kevin Sorbo (Hercules/Andromeda) in Fire From Below. I checked the reviews and they are horrible!


Epicenter: "Is it just me, or were some other people experiencing a touch of deja vu during some scenes of this movie.... From what i saw there were at least 3 scenes used from other movies, the falling elevator (speed), the train flipping in the tunnel (money train) and the street car/car chase scene (metro), and these were not recreated scenes, they were the actual scenes from those 3 movies. Those scenes alone could have saved this movie, if it wasn't for dodgy looking sets, bad acting, a ridiculous plot and horrible dialogue."


Slipstream: (1 out of 5 on Rotten Tomatoes) "but perhaps strangest of all, the Slipstream itself seems to have little, if any, presence in the film, except in the one storm with the wind people. You'd think they'd put more effort into this Slipshod - er, Slipstream idea, seeing as they named the movie after it."


Militia: "Actually I was puzzled as to whether these militia men were white supremacists or if they were just playing army, one thing is for sure the movie is completely hopeless. How bad is Militia? So bad it rips off stock footage from Terminator 2 (!), American Ninja 2 (!!) and Delta Force 2 (!!!) and somehow manages to be a disgrace to all three films. Militia is along the lines of borrowed action and the lengths they go to disguise the stock footage as their own action is truly hysterical. Indeed had they put as much attention in concealing their stock footage, into making a good movie, this movie still would've sucked. All in all a terrible movie."


But I will probably check out the single black and white movie from 1958 called: "The Day The Sky Exploded: which reminds me of the old "B" movies on TV on the weekends I would watch when I was supposed to be studying for final exams. Anyways I will give them a shot as I fear our own TV series may suffer the same fate. So they will get more than a sympathetic view from another of their brethren"..



So I will do that and just live another day. I'm also doing the usual stuff at the orgs. But that cabinet has me really irked.....


Later.....





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBhI0B2YeFs&feature=share
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 7:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well my week off is almost done and what did we accomplish?


The big one was me undervaluing my house by 150,000 at least. I knew I lived in one of the better neighborhoods but that was a pleasant surprise!


The main one from the beginning was the periodontal work. I knew my mouth needed a little bit of work and sooner rather than later as these are elective and can be put off. The lump on the lip forced the issue but now it is done! It is a bitch though as I still have these plastic dressings in my mouth which make eating a real adventure! I was at Johnny's again and had to just eat the patty and not the bun because the crust was too crusty and could damage the dressing. The fries were dripping in gravy so that was OK..... I really extended my stomach after that meal but it tasted so good! Now back to exercise and the usual. The dressings (or what is left of it as they tend to break apart now) and the stitches come out Monday morning.


Watching those - not even "B" movies - emboldened me to continue to push the TV series for broadcast. Our stuff at least has a story. Some of those movies had no story, The only one I watched end to end was the black and white one from 1958 called "The Day The Sky Exploded". Man tests a super nuclear device in a rocket that goes out of control, blows up asteroids and sends that back to earth. Turns out the moon catches most of the asteroids but the Americans and Russians have to expend all their nuclear bombs to blow up the rest from hitting the earth. World peace has a chance again. They even had a rudimentary computer (they called it a calculator - that was at the start and cool to see it in a 1950s movie) for missile calculations that was temperature sensitive (very true) and was sabotaged by breaking the air conditioner. They even explained away how the radiation would not affect the earth with all those bombs being launched into space. The funniest part was that they only had hours to do all of this (change target and fuel) but the fact the Russians and Americans had bombs pointed at each other ready to go made the plan workable with only hours left - too funny and funny commentary on the arms race as each side bragged about how fast they could launch the missiles to save earth! That one had a story and message"..


The reno work was a bust. I did fix a valve and started looking for fixtures but I will have to order the stuff in.

Then there is the personal stuff like family friends still in the hospital and all the rest. It just never ends. You just keep pushing ahead.....


Goodnight.....
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
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Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Sat Jun 02, 2018 9:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well the week of is almost done, and in the end it was probably a good thing to do absolutely nothing!


Well the only thing I had done was my gums. But now that is out of the way. Things are good to go. Even the lump of death thing a few months ago gave me a bit more impetus to check my basic health and so far so good. So I am ready on all fronts for whatever happens to the TV stuff and the advocacy.


I got lucky on several fronts though. The family friend in the hospital gets our today so that is good news. Turns out my gum work is covered under my dental plan - or most of it - so that was good news on Friday. The houses going for more than expected really is welcome news as I thought the market retracted in Toronto. And that is how it went. I got to relive a few memories with the slides and all early on. Doing reno work with your mouth all buggered up probably was not the best idea, but at least I got things started. Even the movie watching was a change as I weaned myself of it a bit after all those HMV stores closed last year.


So it turned into a real vacation anyway. It still bugs me that I didn't accomplish anything big but that was the point - to not push it this week. That is just my sort of type "A" personality there. Scale back and decompress, it can only do you some good. Friday night I went to my local "cars and coffee" and people were there. Some car nuts actually circled their cars and sat in lawn chairs in the middle. I went over with a coffee to check out some cars on the lot and two guys came back doing the same thing. I asked one guy if there was anything interesting and he said: "nah", and he was right. So on the way home this guy starts gunning his engine and pushing past me regularly but I'm not into that now. So I flashed past him rev matching a downshift beside his car and he got the message and him and his girlfriend took off with the girlfriend waving goodbye to me which as nice. And that was the week.


The weekend is just more of the same. I will clean up the house and that will be it. Monday is business as usual though.


Goodnight.....
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Maurice Ali



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Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 12:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A late one but stuff is getting done!


I finally, finally got some seat covers for those kitchen Ikea seats. The covers are only 10 bucks each and fit perfectly. I should iron the things but I think just stretching them in a bit and "Ass Power" will flatten down the fold marks in short order. While I was at Ikea I also found my light bar! So now all I have to do is get the mirror cabinet and I am good to go. The set up I have now is three mirrors in the cabinet so you literally can see the back of your head when you work all three mirrors and a light bar integrated into the whole thing. I can't find anything that works as good as this cabinet and that is a pity because it all works well.




The new cover is the dark one and still has to be tightened up and screwed in!



Anyway, if you are a single man you will find women at Ikea. Or get some casual talk going with some girl you are into and invite her to Ikea to help you sort out your hovel. Trust me that will work but the opportunity passed me by for today anyway.....


In other news I saw a really good movie on that elcheapo DVD from Walmart called Chain Reaction. Made by the same people that brought you the Mad Max movies with even the same actors. Delivered to me in glorious SD, like the B&W one, the old movies are better than the new ones. This look into indie films has given me a new appreciation for what we have and enthusiasm for getting out there and asking for distribution!



Later.....
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Maurice Ali



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PostPosted: Mon Jun 04, 2018 9:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The vacation is over - at last!


Just back from the gum doctor and so far so good. The funny thing about last week is the convenient way I keep forgetting my family's involvement in the Tar Sands in Alberta. The worst part is that our involvement goes right back to the planning of it - before actual start of production in 1967. I was there even as a kid. I remember things of that time. There is an obligation on me no matter how you spin it. Similarly for AI. The field of computer science didn't even exist when my dad got involved. And I remember those early days. Heck I was programming COBOL at 17 in the 1970s! While at N.A.I.T. in the early 1970s they showed us a film of what life would be like 40 years from now. Pretty much all that happened including video everywhere and big screen TVs. Computers were there but not like what we have now. Our computers are way more powerful and on the verge of another quantum leap in processes. Those pioneers are all dead or very old like my dad. Who talks for those back then that started all this into motion? Well, unfortunately for me it is those like me. I even went further and completely walked away from the computer for like 20 years as I saw them as evil. But whatever, they can put me on trial if it comes to that. But I will say in my defense that I did come up with an answer or a way of co-existing with the new AI threat sure to develop in the future. That positive mandate and the programs that can expand on those principles under that mandate. I can live with myself and defend myself as I did not just sit back.



Some of my own handiwork back in the late 1970s!


The Tar Sands is a harder thing to remedy. There are more slides than I posted. Beautiful landscapes with moose roaming around, probably now all excavated and poisoned and not reclaimed. I fear a similar fate to the beautiful Orinoco Belt (in Venezuela) which has the second largest deposits of oil with Saudi Arabia being the largest (the Tar Sands are third). But I am in a position to advocate for things. Certainly reclamation on land already wasted. There are many ways to redemption. At the end of the day you can't walk away from the things you have done. And time can't indemnify the children of those who meddled beyond their means, the children who lived and played at the very sites and times when these things were conceived. The children whose food and clothing and such were paid for by the tar sands and money being poured into computer science.


So there is an obligation and I am owning up to mine. I guess that is the big thing that happened on this week off.




Later.....





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zkjQVh5KmQ&feature=share
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 7:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A dreary day and getting things started and back on track.




Paro Taktsang in Bhutan



First thing is to get started on our second UN member nation to approach and that is Bhutan. A predominantly Buddhist nation was another pick to be one of the first to approach regarding advocacy for our positive mandate. While we wait for any type of response for the Vatican, we will prepare the usual pamphlets and documents and send them off to the powers that be in Bhutan and ask for an audience. Some think all of this to be futile - but - what more can I do? I am in a rare position to actually bring this up at the UN, having a very broad base of advocacy being a journalist org. If I don't try who will? You've heard that rant before so I won't repeat it but I will keep to the program and make the play. I just hope that in the future I can show the young people that pushing past your apathy, boredom, expectations and so on - actually can work out in surprising ways.


But time will tell.....


We should put out another version of The Fortress and so I have that on the agenda. I also need to make sure we are up to date on things at IAIJ. At FOF it is mostly just managerial things, internal stuff. Everyone just needs to get their heads in a business orientation, that is all.


Personally, I will do one last check out of mirrors for the bathroom and just pull the trigger on a new cabinet. This means going to one more big box hardware store and measuring things. That light bar at Ikea is 23.5 inches wide and not 24 inch wide like everyone else. So if I buy the light bat I am married to the mirror cabinet that compliments it. Always screwed up like that!


All that projection equipment goes back to my dad today except for the slides.




My Mustang with my sister's kid posing beside it!



Other things: I constantly wish I could get my dream cars like a new Corvette. I did stretch for the Mustang, the base model, and that gives me just enough to satiate things. It got me back into cars again that I loved at one time. Strangely this pony car met all my requirements of what I wanted in a true sports car back in the day. That meant some aluminum body panels, rear wheel drive and independent suspension and a top speed over the magical 150mph. So this car gave me all of that and is a legitimate sports car. Not the best or fastest and I believe it was the cheapest sports car I could find. Anything but a Hyundai Elantra! But me and the car are comfortable. Truly reliable and meets every need. If I didn't have the advocacy I would have gone "large" for sure and bought an expensive two seater, but this provides reliable transport and also got me back into being a bit of a gear head. What I am getting at with all that is that you sacrifice for the advocacy, and there are no guarantees, and I'm getting old. The advocacy is the right thing to do and I want all in. There is no turning back, but you still think about it as I am now. The carrot in all this is that you could hit it big at any moment. But this place is the only thing I have truly created. So everything is a compromise for that.


If all this is more of the same, then so be it. This blog of sorts is so that so I can go back and see what I was like back them. Things are getting boring and quieter right now and I am surprised this place still has active viewers. Anyway, that is what was inside my head right now.....



Goodnight.....
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Wed Jun 06, 2018 8:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Things are getting busy again.


Just running things gets a bit hectic but whatever. I am preparing the kit for Bhutan, the happiest nation on earth! I am really getting curious as to how they will respond to me. Anyway that will all be revealed shortly when the stuff gets sent. I just have to select the right department and person and sent it over and see what happens. Then I start knocking on those broadcasters we sent stuff to at the end of last yearend start of this year. That is always a harrowing experience for me but this is how you get stuff on the air!






Actually I changed my mind about coming here to check things out. The Bhutan and Vatican stuff is interesting enough. The TV stuff certainly is. I guess there is something to see here even if it ends up a big train wreck.....


This is an adventure after all. And adventures are dangerous but potentially rewarding. You need skill and luck and help from all sorts of people. It is what it is and I'm in it 100 percent.....



Goodnight.....





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6nN-GlghAc&feature=share
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