The CRTC has a new website created to obtain from the public, their opinions on how/what to do about this “Fee for carriage” issue. The website is: http://television.askingcanadians.com/ .

I have added my two cents worth on the topic of Affordability of local TV. They are asking for responces to the following two ideas on the subject:

1. Thinking about the importance of local TV to you, how would you react, and why, if you were asked to pay for local TV on top of what you already pay for your cable and satellite services?
2. In your view, what measures, if any, could be taken to support local television?

My comments:

The cost of “basic” cable/satellite service, in my understanding, since the providers have to provide such channels should be there to support the local channels as part of that cost. I don’t know how, nor do I care how such funds are distributed, all I know is if they’re not being distributed, then the providers should be forced to fork over a percentage of the basic fee to support the local channels being provided. I also think that the providers should be “forced” to provide the local channels in all markets. Currently such providers as Shaw, does not, for example provide a local Global affiliate for the Atlantic region. They used to, but when all of this “fee for carriage” started, they dropped it from their lineup. I now do not subscribe to Shaw’s satellite service because of that.
Local TV is important, but I do not think I should have to pay extra for it because I believe I am already paying for it in the “basic” service costs, therefore I shouldn’t have to pay for it again.
In my opinion, the basic cable fees should be regulated, somehow, and the fees paid for this service should be broken down as to how much goes to the provider for their service and how much goes towards a “local channel” programming fund, whereby all local channels derive a percentage.
If I am forced to pay extra for local programming, I will cancel my cable/satellite service outright, and get what TV programming I desire directly from the internet and rely on public radio for “local” information.

Get on there, post your opinion. It could help!

May the spirit of celebrating shelter dogs stay in our hearts and actions… to keep saving dogs from the doom of the pound. With each day passes closer to Christmas may we think of providing a dog a special gift - a home.

” He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe to him to be worthy of such devotion.” – Unknown-

To ‘assume’ anything simply makes an ass out of you and me.  He was right.

Tip of the day:  If you’ve sent an important email/fax/letter/invitation out, follow it up with a phone call.  You know the kind, ‘this is a courtesy call, I’m phoning to ensure you received my…’. It’s a cheap and effective way of keeping the lines of communication open and clear.  The intended recipient, or their ‘officer’ as we say in the trade, will know you’re serious and will treat your ‘matter’ as such.

Never assume anything has been received. The post periodically goes walk-about; emails get sent directly to the ‘junk mail’ box; faxes get sent to the wrong fax numbers (we get a lot of faxes that belong to other businesses because someone has dialled incorrectly); and text messages have been known to go missing in the ethers.

There’s nothing more frustrating than sitting around waiting on answers that will never arrive because the question was never received.

Marian Keyes, Last Chance Saloon, Michael Joseph (1999)

The quality of this novel is mid-way between Marian Keyes’ earlier, popular novels, and the more insightful, more recent and mature novels.

The general theme is how two very different thirty-something year old women get a grip on the way they relate to the men in their lives, and learn to “seize the day”.

The plot is relatively light mais il tient la route: it describes the lives and love-lives of a group of three best friends from Knockavoy, Ireland, and how they have grown to be who they are. When Fintan undergoes chemotherapy, he asks his two best friends, Tara and Katherine, to act upon their disastrous love-lives. Each character has a relatively well-defined, individual personality.

If you’re looking for an easy-read, then this novel is perfect. Marian is good at what she does, without the pretence of intellectual literature. It’s the kind of book that you read on the bus, on the way to work (ahem), and i’s quite a fun read. Not very much introspection, but some good bouts of sarcasm at the ridiculous Lorcan Larkin (a couple of amusing pages on how the love-god views himself). Nevertheless, the irony is often a little O.T.T, and the insight remains slightly superficial.

On the whole, this novel paints a slightly ironic picture of the UK’s middle classes in their early thirties, with all the binge-drinking, one-night-stands, addiction to shopping and to ever-lasting lipstick. It is the kind of book that must be fun to write; but not much more.

L’s book-rating criteria

Characterisation: 17/20

Credibility: 16/20

Plot: 15/20

Feel-good factor: 15/20

My subjective opinion: 14/20

Total: 77 %

(to be improved & finished)

Submitted by: Tom-Erik J. via Submit a Kludge!

Favorite Comment: Fixer Husabob says, “Cirque de Plasterers. I’ve seen them in Vegas. Never use a safety net. Their rhinestone leotards must be at the cleaners.”

As in… ‘dump it’, ‘chuck it out’, ‘throw it away’, ‘recycle it’… by this time we have to be on the same wave-length!

The question has to be asked… why are you keeping things that:

1. take up space
2. you’ll never look at or need again
3. you wouldn’t know where to find if you did need/want them.

I’ll keep it simple today and talk only about paper. Mmm…

Over the years I’ve worked with and for people who’ve had very different ideas about paper and the management thereof.  Being an avid ‘people watcher’ it’s always been a source of great fascination to me.  Do you know that some people hoard paper compulsively?  They can’t bear to part with it. Seriously!

Never assume anything from a person’s appearance!  I once worked in an advertising agency where the very hip and laid back MD instructed me to file every single piece of advertising matter (aka junk mail) that crossed my desk.  You should have seen the filing room!  Bank after bank of filing drawers filled to overflowing with ‘junk’ that never got to see the light of day again.   I think of him each and every time I give the go ahead to have advertising ‘matter’ printed!  He could be trusted to read and file everything.

By comparison, the VP of a very large stationery supplier I worked for didn’t want to so much as see a piece of paper that wasn’t of some serious consequence.  Most of her post went directly into File 13.  Chalk and cheese!

Then there are the myriads of people who let their filing grow into mountains of paper that tower over them as they sit at their desks. I’ve watched in fascination as someone’s paper tower grew and grew over a period of three years.  What is with that?  Deal with it!  File it or ditch it!  It’s not going to go away until you do. That’s what the paper recycling bin is for!

Shred the important stuff and bin the rest.  Shredded paper makes excellent hamper bedding.  Yes, I am serious.

The same goes for old magazines and books.  Read them, sell them, share them, pass them onto some wonderful organisation that can sell them for some good cause, or just ditch them. I am told that the reason local libraries in NSW don’t accept (very good) second-hand books is because they don’t want to go to the trouble and expense of categorising them.  Or is this just an urban myth?

Tip of the day:  Open your mail over file 13!  Be ruthless.  Ditch the junk!  Life is too short to spend time handling it twice (never mind filing it!!!).

Put receipts and paperwork for filing into a ‘to be filed’ tray.  Do your filing once a week, at the same time, on the same day.  One piece, ten pieces… it doesn’t matter, get it filed.  Who wants to deal with a mountain of filing once a year at tax time?

If you’re still receiving paper bills for payment, put them into your ‘to do’ tray.  ‘Do it’ once a week, same time, same day – then file it away.

All of a sudden you’ll know where everything is again (well, that’s assuming you have a good filing system, but that’s a subject for another day) and you won’t be cowering under paper mountains anymore.

Just for the record… I have an intense ‘love/hate’ relationship with my filing.  I hate doing it, but I do it and I do it regularly because I love the blissful feeling that comes over me once it’s done!  I can only liken the sensation to that of taking off a freezing cold, sodden, heavy, old overcoat next to a great big fire.  It’s a relief to be done with it!

Right, I promise. No more harping on this subject after this post!

Yesterday, I promised I’d give you a tip on a great way to send each other HUGE attachments. All you need is internet access, and if you’re doing it from work I suggest you clear it with IT first!

So, here goes.

Tip of the day: I use YouSendIt. You can compare their plans and start using their service immediately.  There are quite a few other sites that provide similar services, but I know this one works and can be relied upon so I’ve stuck with it. Let me know what you think of it once you’ve tried it out.

Remember to ‘keep it green’ by not printing out anything you don’t really need a physical copy of and please, please re-cycle!  It’s so easy today that it’s unbelievable that some businesses are so lax about doing their bit for our children’s future.

Well the day before Thanksgiving, and we are running around packing, or preparing for guest, in the kitchen. I wanted to share…what I am thankful for. I am thankful my boys will be home for Christmas, my brother in Canada is having F>U>N FUN ; ) and I have good friends and neighbors. My folks are well and active.

My wish for you…have a safe Holiday – day and weekend.

Remember I am still pondering the next Dog in my life and Yes The DOG will come from a rescue program/shelter.

Some kind soul sent me an absolutely HUGE attachment by email today.  It wasn’t a problem for me as I have a fast cable connection, but I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if I’d still been using dial-up.

Tip of the day:  Zip it!  No, I’m not being rude.  Microsoft Office allows you to zip your attachment.  Or, if you prefer… compress them for emailing.

It’s a simple process.  Right click on your document/spreadsheet/photo/whatever… a drop down menu will appear… see the ’send to’ box?  It points to another drop down menu… select ‘compressed (zipped) folder’.  Try emailing that next time.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you how to send truly large attachments without holding/blocking up the works.

If you dislike shopping and crowds (not necessarily in that order mind) as much as I do now you’ll understand why I’m not quite as fond of this time of year as what I used to be.  Somehow, the ‘zing’ has packed its cases and gone AWOL.

Going shopping on Christmas eve as an act of desperation does nothing for me.  It’s not a money thing, it’s the atmosphere!  Fighting for a car space? Why?  That’s one of the beauties of the internet!  We never, ever have to fight over a car space again.  No long queues to leave the car park either… I have to share this with you because it made me so aware of the true Christmas Spirit that prevails today, so excuse me if I bore you…

Last year, I had to pop into the shops to pick up milk.  It was late.  I’d been to a meeting and was on my way home.  Without thinking, I turned into the Warringah Mall car park and found a parking easily.  Excellent!  I picked up my milk and was back in my car and ready to go home within 15 minutes.  It was the last Thursday evening before Christmas and I’d been surprised at how easily I’d got off!  What I hadn’t realised was that the shops were all closing for the night and people had poured out of the mall and were now trying to get out of the car park.

The Warringah Mall management had elected to keep the pay booths open that night!  Why not cash in on the fact that people were over-staying their ‘free parking’ time by hours because they were arriving with the entire family, doing their shopping and eating a meal?  Given that the booms are usually left open in the evenings I was struck by their mean mindedness!  Sure, if you produced all your dockets or movie tickets you’d be given a discount or let off paying, but it all takes time to sort out.

It took just over an hour for me to get through the booms and I was totally unimpressed!  So much so that I’m writing about it almost a year later.  They have to win the ‘Scrooge Of The Year’ award.  A major thumbs down guys! These people were keeping your tenants in business!

Tip of the year:  Asides from making sure you don’t run out of milk at the last moment…

1. Set up your internet shopping lists on your favourite grocery sites (I’m sorry guys… there is no way I am going to do any advertising for any of these businesses, I spend enough money there already!).  They’ll deliver for a small fee.  I’ve been impressed with their service.
2. Buy your meat and poultry from one of the gourmet butchery sites. If you choose wisely you’ll be most impressed with the quality… AND they deliver to your door.  Bonus!!
3. There are some great fruit and vegetable sites now too.
4. Do your present shopping online too.  Remember to leave plenty of time for delivery/customs clearing etc.
5. You can even buy your flowers online and they’ll deliver too.

There are very, very few things you cannot buy online now (actually, I can’t think of any…).  All you need to do is spend some time doing your research.  You don’t even need a credit card anymore as you can pay for most things via your FREE PayPal account.

Akhir-akhir ini di kantor lagi ada kampanye untuk berpakaian yang rapi (baca: pake seragamnya yang bener). Nah sebagian besar cewe berjilbab warga R&D nih, pada males pake jilbab perusahaan. Kenapa? Bikin pusing and nggak modis.

Sebenernya, kenapa sih R&D harus pake seragam. Semua itu sih katanya hanya untuk menghilangkan perbedaan antara staff dan operator. Para operator harus menggunakan seragam karena mereka kerjanya berhubungan dengan listrik statis. Jadi ya…nggak bisa sembarangan pake baju kalo nggak mau kesetrum.

Dan ini membuat sebagian besar orang-yang -seharusnya-nggak-perlu-pake-seragam mengeluh. Kenapa sih harus pake seragam? Dan dimulailah pemberontakan yang diprakarsai oleh cewe berjilbab warga R&D. Dengan nggak pake jilbab perusahaan. Yeah! Kami berjaya!! *ekekekkee…apa sseeehh…*. Dari mulai pake jilbab bebas tapi sewarna, sampe warna warni semau gw. What a beautiful moments..

Hal itu, seperti yang sudah bisa diduga, ngebuat para operator gerah (baca: iri), dan mereka komplain ke HRD. Kenapa warga R&D boleh pake jilbab bebas. Cape deeeeeeeehhhhhh….. Dikomplain loh!!

Akhirnya, dimulailah kampanye berpakaian yang rapih. Urusannya jadi panjang. Nggak sekedar jilbab doang. Ini nih email yang disebarkan ke karyawan sehubungan dengan kampanye tersebut.

Selamat Pagi,

Sehubungan dengan adanya kampanye disiplin kerja (9~23 November 2009) untuk peningkatan disiplin di area PT. S**N, diharapkan kepada setiap karyawan agar dapat berpartisipasi dan memperhatikan hal-hal berikut :

1. BERPAKAIAN rapi dan benar. Mengenakan seragam kerja dengan benar, celana satu warna dan tidak banyak kantong, jilbab standard perusahaan.
2. Mengenakan ID CARD (tanda pengenal) dengan benar.
3. Berpenampilan rapi sesua etika kerja.Rambut rapi dan pendek (pria), tidak mengenakan sandal.
4. Tidak membawa masuk JAKET dan TAS ke area PT. S**N.
5. Tidak mengenakan SEPATU KERJA di luar tempat kerja.
6. Menggunakan JAM KERJA dengan baik. Datang tepat waktu, istirahat pada waktu yang telah ditentukan.

Demikianlah pemberitahuan ini disampaikan untuk menjadi perhatian kita bersama, Mari kita tingkatkan DISIPLIN KERJA di PT. S**N.

Hormat kami,

HRD

Liat tuh email di atas. Apa-apaan coba… *geleng-geleng* But then again, ada 1001 cara untuk melanggar peraturan tersebut

Tapi selama masa2 kampanye dan sesudahnya, tanpa ada persetujuaan baik secara lisan maupun tertulis, beberapa cewe berjilbab warga R&D, mulai menggunakan jilbab perusahaan lagi. Yah walau agak-agak pusing, at least we try

Dan inilah foto-fotonya:

Aya, Mpit, Aku, Dina, Uul, Titie

Dan lucunya, hari ini, aku dan mpit pake baju daleman dengan warna yang sama. Orange ^^

Aku & Mpit

Well anyway, dengan semua hal-peraturan-dan-tetek-bengeknya-yang-menyebalkan yang ada, we’ll try to enjoy it.

With the Holidays coming ever so quickly. Many families think about a family gift. For the little girl a pony, or for the boy a dog. Before you go and buy. Seek advice… sometimes 2 weeks at a horse camp would be safer and more fun. For the boy and his dog… read Darby’s Story for guidence. This delightful children/family book helps you/the family look at your home life style, the house and the safety concerns of space in the back yard to how close the house is the road.

I would like your feedback concerning animal gifts for your family. This will be the topic of discussion for a bit.

Nope, I’m not going to break into song or anything like that.  I am going to tell you about this wonderfully talented person called Jacqui Lawson who has a website where you can buy a subscription (at a very reasonable price) to her musical, animated e-cards.   Not only are they clever, the service Jacqui provides is wonderful and we’ve never had ‘failure to launch’ problems.  Take a look when next you have time. There’s something for every occasion.

Tip of the day:  Visit Widgitbucks for some truly fabulous Christmas widgits and icons that ‘glow’ and some very interesting reading!

I’m currently in the process of adopting Hibernate as my ORM tool for all my upcoming projects, and the first thing I’m trying to resolve is the DAO implementation.

DAO Pattern

According to Wikipedia a DAO is “…an object that provides an abstract interface to some type of database or persistence mechanism, providing some specific operations without exposing details of the database”

If you look around a bit you will notice that the most publicized advantage of the DAO pattern is that it separates the persistence model from the domain mechanism, so you can change the persistence mechanism without affecting the domain logic. But sincerely, how often we are going to change the persistence mechanism? So I rather point to the abstraction advantage – the separation of persistence logic and business logic (DAO – it’s not about Layering, it’s about Abstraction!)

I got inspiration from Don’t repeat the DAO!. You should take a look at it – it has some serious stuff inside!

But I decided to take things slower, choosing a light-weight approach to the proposed model. Here is my simplified version

Simplified model

As I said early I will be using Hibernate to take care of the database. I will skip all the Hibernate configuration details – there are a lot of sources available for this. So we are jumping right into the stuff that brought us here.

First I get rid of the GenericDao interface and then I made the GenericHibernateDao abstract. A Session instance variable is also added. In this we are following the advice to avoid any session/connection handling inside the DAO (no close, no commit or rollback here)

import java.io.Serializable;
import org.hibernate.Session;

public abstract class GenericDaoHibernate  {
    private Class type;
    private Session session;

    public GenericDaoHibernate(Class type) {
        this.type = type;
    }

    public PK save(T o) {
        return (PK) getSession().save(o);
    }

    public T read(PK id) {
        return (T) getSession().get(type, id);
    }

    public void update(T o) {
        getSession().update(o);
    }

    public void delete(T o) {
        getSession().delete(o);
    }

    public void setSession(Session session) {
       this.session = session;
    }

    public Session getSession() {
       return session;
    }
}

We already have our Hibernate environment set to handle a couple of different objects – Cardcontrol among them

public class Cardcontrol implements java.io.Serializable {
   private String prefix;
   private Byte batch;
   private Integer available;

   public Cardcontrol() {
   }

   public Cardcontrol(String prefix) {
      this.prefix = prefix;
   }

   public Cardcontrol(String prefix, Byte batch, Integer available) {
      this.prefix = prefix;
      this.batch = batch;
      this.available = available;
   }

   public String getPrefix() {
      return this.prefix;
   }

   public void setPrefix(String prefix) {
      this.prefix = prefix;
   }

   public Byte getBatch() {
      return this.batch;
   }

   public void setBatch(Byte batch) {
      this.batch = batch;
   }

   public Integer getAvailable() {
      return this.available;
   }

   public void setAvailable(Integer available) {
      this.available = available;
   }

   @Override
   public String toString() {
      StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
      sb.append("Cardcontrol:(");
      sb.append(this.getPrefix());
      sb.append(", ");
      sb.append(this.getBatch());
      sb.append(", ");
      sb.append(this.getAvailable());
      sb.append(")");
      return sb.toString();
   }
}

Now, the DAO implementation for this class is…

public class CardcontrolDao extends GenericDaoHibernate {
   public CardcontrolDao() {
      super(Cardcontrol.class);
   }
}

and we have create, read, update and delete solved!

Sharing the session/connection

Of course we will have more than one class to persist in our model, so lets see how to do it. Lets add another class

import java.util.Date;

/**
 * NotificacionesM generated by hbm2java
 */
public class NotificacionesM implements java.io.Serializable {
   private int idNotificacion;
   private Date fechaenvio;
   private String origen;
   private String destino;
   private String prioridad;
   private String textonota;
   private String estatusenvio;

   public NotificacionesM() {
   }

   public NotificacionesM(int idNotificacion, Date fechaenvio, String origen, String destino, String prioridad, String textonota, String estatusenvio) {
      setIdNotificacion(idNotificacion);
      setFechaenvio(fechaenvio);
      setOrigen(origen);
      setDestino(destino);
      setPrioridad(prioridad);
      setTextonota(textonota);
      setEstatusenvio(estatusenvio);
   }

   public int getIdNotificacion() {
      return this.idNotificacion;
   }

   public void setIdNotificacion(int idNotificacion) {
      this.idNotificacion = idNotificacion;
   }

   public Date getFechaenvio() {
      return this.fechaenvio;
   }

   public void setFechaenvio(Date fechaenvio) {
      this.fechaenvio = fechaenvio;
   }

   public String getOrigen() {
      return this.origen;
   }

   public void setOrigen(String origen) {
      this.origen = origen;
   }

   public String getDestino() {
      return this.destino;
   }

   public void setDestino(String destino) {
      this.destino = destino;
   }

   public String getPrioridad() {
      return this.prioridad;
   }

   public void setPrioridad(String prioridad) {
      this.prioridad = prioridad;
   }

   public String getTextonota() {
      return this.textonota;
   }

   public void setTextonota(String textonota) {
      this.textonota = textonota;
   }

   public String getEstatusenvio() {
      return this.estatusenvio;
   }

   public void setEstatusenvio(String estatusenvio) {
      this.estatusenvio = estatusenvio;
   }

   @Override
   public String toString() {
      StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
      sb.append("NotificacionesM:(");
      sb.append(this.getIdNotificacion());
      sb.append(", ");
      sb.append(this.getFechaenvio());
      sb.append(", ");
      sb.append(this.getOrigen());
      sb.append(", ");
      sb.append(this.getDestino());
      sb.append(", ");
      sb.append(this.getPrioridad());
      sb.append(", ");
      sb.append(this.getEstatusenvio());
      sb.append(")");
      return sb.toString();
   }
}

and it’s DAO

public class NotificacionesMDao extends GenericDaoHibernate {
   public NotificacionesMDao() {
      super(NotificacionesM.class);
   }
}

For demonstration purpose only we will see how to handle this in a main, you of course will implement this inside your domain logic classes

public class Main {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      NotificacionesM n1;
      Cardcontrol cc1;

      Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession();
      Transaction tx = session.beginTransaction();

      NotificacionesMDao nDao = new NotificacionesMDao();
      CardcontrolDao ccDao = new CardcontrolDao();
      nDao.setSession(session);
      ccDao.setSession(session);

      n1 = nDao.read(1);
      System.out.println(n1);

      cc1 = ccDao.read("52218801");
      System.out.println(cc1);

      session.close();
   }
}

We are not altering the persistence status, so no commit or rollback is needed. In case you need reflect/discard changes all that is required is a tx.commit() or a tx.rollback().

This code exposes some things we may like to hide: the process to obtain a Hibernate session and the transaction scope delimitation. This we will discuss in the next post.

Udah dua kali ini aku ke kantor di hari minggu. Rasanya? Huuumm.. Pengen merem di kasur…..

Anyway, karena udah di kantor, daripada meratapi nasib mending aku berusaha menghibur diriku sendiri. Caranya? Pake baju bebas ke kantor, pake sendal, pake tas yang nggak transparan trus foto-foto deh. Seru! Hati juga jadi terhibur ^^

update 22/12/1/2009 4.05 pm:

tadi dapet pizza dari mr cho nih juga susu n sari kacang ijo. heheheh.

food

Booksigning for Darby’s Darby at Wild About Books on Olympic Ave. Clearlake Ca. 3pm.

Here is the quote for the day. From Just Goldens by Tom Davis, ‘Puppies and mud go together like Astaire and Rogers,… This goes a long way toward explaining why puppies and carpets are usually a bad mix.’

I hope everyone has a great day : )