Mike DeWolfe : The Daily Edition

What if obesity in some people was the result of a virus-- in the same way that ulcers were caused by a bacteria. Read on .

I used to love shopping at Eaton's; Woodwards; The Bay; even Marks and Spencers. They each had their flavor. Eaton's had an excellent toy department. Woodward's food floor couldn't be beat. The Bay's restaurant was always good for quick meal. Then the 1990s were unkind to big retail and we saw an extinction like the end of the dinosaurs. Between 1990 and 2000, Canada lost : K-Mart, Woolco (with Woolworths), Woodwards and Eatons from the retailer landscape. In their place more Zeller's stores and big box stores and the scourge... Walmart. The day and age where you could walk into a department store and come out with anything was gone. First they started to lop off departments like gangrenious extremities: food floors, hardware departments, pet departments. Before Eaton's went under, they dumped almost everything; leaving their stores as fashion / softline outlets. The descent of diversity is understandable. Here's what it looks like: Is it hard to use? D...

I have always wanted to go into Wendy's and order 20 patties on a burger just to do it (and get 40 day calorie alotment). This guy went further . He went into an "In'n'Out" in the US and ordered 100 patties. Mmm.... do you want fries with that? How about just a strip search then? tags: beef , fast food , yummy

Krazydad have put out this totally cool app that ties Flash and Flickr together via XML. Choose a color and several matching photos will appear. Using images from the Color Fields group on Flickr, JBum has created a beautiful and efficient Experimental Color Picker. Just click on a color, use the slider to adjust lightness and darkness, and it will show you photos with that color. If you are trying to source images that match a predominant shade, this is an excellent tool. Choose the color. find the photo that you want, go to Flickr and see if the image has rights that allow your reuse. tags: KrazyDad , Flash , Flickr , REST , XML

A couple of weeks ago, I made a prediction: Liberals 115 Conservatives 96 Bloc Quebecois 76 NDP 17 Green Party 0 Independant 2 Total seats: 306 Here's what it looks like (as of this moment): Conservatives 125 Liberals 102 Bloc Quebecois 51 NDP 29 Green Party 0 Independant 1 Total seats: 308 Where did I go wrong? I figured that the Liberals would have done better at fear-mongering. Well, Paul Martin was an excellent finance minister and a lousy, bumbling Prime Minister and a lousy leader going into a national campaign. Steve Harper's handlers hid him from the light scrutiny. Jack Layton successfully played the "hold your nose and vote" game. The Greens did as well as expected. The Bloc-- the Bloc didn't have a message. Gilles Duceppe said he wouldn't reopen the gay marriag...

Exhibit A : Paris Hilton's publicists are trying to silence a Hawaiian taxi driver who claims the socialite urinated in his cab. Harden Jamison tells the National Enquirer the hotel heiress was too drunk to notice that she pissed on herself when he picked her and boyfriend Stavros Niarchos up after a party in Maui. The understandably disgusted cab driver claimes he mopped up the mess with a towel and plans to use Hilton's own DNA as evidence against her. Exhibit B : When asked if she knew the last name of a companion on the night in question: " It is like a weird Greek name. Like Douglas. " Later Paris explained she often has trouble with names: "I meet so many people. I don't even know some of my friends' names." Hilton was asked if she knew that the slanderous article had been republished in various newspapers. Hilton had this exchange with attornies: Paul Berra - "Were there U.K. publications?" Paris Hilton - " No... there is ...

I have a big problem with 24: Keifer should spend time stuff in traffic, or stuck on the phone talking to Sprint customer service. With that said, here's an episode of my personal 24: 08:00-15:55 - Frantically working on code to get a project out this weekend. 16:05-16:06 - Driving up Johnson Street past the replacement for the Open Door I look over to see three people rolling around on the sidewalk duking it out. Ah... People's fears for the soup kitchen's relocation were obviously unfounded. After the media did a spate of feel good pieces about the place, they've retreated to the safety of their newsrooms. 17:00-18:30 - Dinner and family sundries. The president called to say that I had to diffuse a nuclear tipped orca that beached down by the walkway near our house (see: that's my 24 moment :) ). 18:30 - 21:00 - More code and toil. 23:30-06:30 - Doing My Shelly Winters impersonation in the comfort of my bed. 06:31-07:30 - Watching our local A-Channel news in...

After Christmas, everyone bemoans the credit card bills. My wife and I usually spend out all of our free cash on Christmas but rarely dip into our credit cards. I know a lot of people who go right over the top and get their debt out of control. So, in honor of that special time in a debtor's life (January), I have posted a new section on my site : Debt and How Get Out of It The Killer of High Interest - Debt isn't your problem: it's interest. How Your Debt Ceiling Can Come Crashing Down - You can't fix your debt if it looks like you owe too much. tags: debt loan interest

Now there's heat coming down on Jack Layton over using a private clinic for a hernia operation. That's a pickle because the NDP is diametrically opposed to private-for-profit medicine. Gimme a break. The only place you see not-for-profit medicine is on a military base. The richest working people I know are doctors. I watched a friend move here from Calgary to set up a practice. He had to set-up an office, hire staff, get all of his billing in order. At the end of his day do his profits flow back into the health care system? No. He gets to take home the $120K+/yr. With minimum wage paying $16,000/year, that extra $100K seems like profit to me. The Soviets and the Red Chinese and the NDP never figured this out: everyone is born as a propeitorship. We're born capitalists. When your prosper in life, it's like a profitable business. The only difference between a person and a corporation is that the corporation has a life of its own. If the NDP want to keep out for-profit me...

I have just finished an article that I posted on my site: " Making A Discreet Introduction ". This about an alternative technique to AJAX. A process, I've dubbed "Discreet Introduction Mechanism" or DIM . Here's a quickie example of DIM in action . tags: AJAX JavaScript applications web

Service? · Reliability? · Integrity? Tonight, I was waiting for my wife to get off of the bus. She had to cross the street at the intersection. So she crosses with the walk signal at the crosswalk. Vroom! An idiot in a Commissionaires car (BC License# 508 AAN - Car #38) almost wipes out my wife. Where was he going? He was on his way to something VERY important. He parks a half block later at the Harris Green London Drugs and goes into the store. Where does he park? He parks in the handicapped spot. So after nearly making a cripple out of my wife; he takes up the spot of another crippled person in front of a drug store. So, I phone the number on his car (250-727-7755). When I called the duty manager to complain; he got all indignant and said he wasn't going to do anything if I didn't give him my name and personal details. I told him that I would give this information to the police in a report and if they saw fit, they could relate it to him. tags: Victoria tourism Commissiona...

This from Rogers Cadenhead , The Star and Missasauga News : American fighter jets intercepted a Air Transat plane flying from Toronto to Ixtapa, Mexico, on Thursday because a passenger appears on the U.S. no-fly list. Now, the US is intercepting planes going from anywhere to anywhere if they can get to them. Canadian citizen Sami Kahil, 38, was denied entry to Mexico and detained one night in jail, then sent home in the company of Royal Canadian Mounted Police: U.S. fighter jets shadowed Kahil's flight after American officials declared the plane was not cleared to travel over the U.S. with Kahil on board. While his wife and sons were sent home on the next flight to Toronto, Kahil was told he could not board the flight because U.S. authorities would not let him fly over U.S. airspace. Kahil, a shoe store owner in Ontario, was vacationing with his wife and two young sons. He has not been charged with any crime related to the incident. During the flight to Mexico, which did ...

Bad News for Shriner Clowns Good News for people plagued by excess clowns tags: photos Shriners Victoria Christmas

The one thing I liked about the Green party was their concept of proportional representation. Of course they like proportional representation. Without it, the Greens will never ever get a seat. I have problems with the nature of elections: you elect someone and have your say once until the next election. The ruling part is either a dictatorship or its weak and doomed. With three to 10 candidates running in each of the ridings, very few seats will get a majority winner. Basically: we're hoping that greatest minorities reflect the national voting trends. If 60% of the country votes Liberal, they'll get 60% of the seats. That never happens. In Mulroney's first election , his PCs got the most popular votes of any party in any election: 50%. Half of the people would rather not have had him in charge. So, with half of the voters not wanting the PCs in, they managed to 211 out of 282 seats: 75% of the seats for 50.03% of the vote. That isn't right. The Green's in BC tried ...

According to this article , the Heim Theory could reveal an interdimensional hyperspace drive capable of getting us to Mars in three hours and to other star systems in as little as 80 days. Research won't yield a practical experiment for at least five years. We could be five years away from hyperdrive. Likely it'll be 500, but this is wild nonethless. For me: I am going to visit the people on IRS 46

Everytime the election is called, we get politicians showing up at all sorts of public events begging for your vote. As I write this, UVic (the University of Victoria) is in chaos: it's the first day of classes for the winter session: students are trying to get their photos; they're trying to get textbooks; they're looking for parking and some are trying to get to class. In amongst all of this chaos: Paul Martin, his entourage of siccophants, the throngs of media and one or two real voters looking on. He's here to make an announcement. The problem: he's so detached from reality that he didn't stop to question if this was the right time or place to hold his announcement. Politicians don't understand that they aren't wanted. They represent government and government has grown out of control. Whenever I hear about taxes, I hear officials saying that they are only going to raise taxes a small amount. They don't understand: if the dollar amount of income r...

Just before Christmas, we were picking through the remnants of discounted Christmas ornaments at a local store. A little girl was there with her Mom. The girl squealed, "Ooh! Breast Cancer!" in a voice reserved in former generations for Batman and Superman ornaments. The girl was oggling some breast cancer-themed Christmas ornament. When the hell did breast cancer get its own action figure? Don't get me wrong. Cancer is bad. Breast cancer is bad. I lost an aunt to breast cancer. But everywhere you turn there are these pink ribbons. Before every movie, the ushers would stand up at the front of the theatre and try to talk me into donating to breast cancer. So, I paid $10 for a ticket; the concession stand has a bunch of cancer causing items for sale-- all of which cost $4+ each. While waiting for the movie, I am bombarded with ads. But they interupt those ads for a breast cancer plea. GIVE ME A BREAK! Breast cancer has been so amplified that you can't go to an even...