So the summer is drawing to a close, tomorrow I start my last week of work before going back to school for another 8 months. I am looking forward to the last long weekend of the summer coming up, but I’ll most likely be working through most of it. The summer started off pretty slowly but the last month has been awesome even though I didn’t go to a cottage or pop a tent in the woods a single time.

Every summer I seem to go through some kind of change but I feel like this years has been the steepest. I still act the same, I am the same Ben[ny] but my outlook on life is different and my priorities have shifted.

I am excited that this might be my last year of school and that I could be doing such super-fantastic things as buying a new car or looking for a place to stay this time next year.

I am probably getting excited about this because I am trying to distract myself from the fact that my two closest friends are packing up and going back to school soon. Oh well, we all have our own things to do and we can’t always follow the same paths. I hope to do a few visits by train this year. Sure the train is almost twice as expensive as it would cost me in gas to visit them but the train is hassle free and I can relax and watch a movie on my laptop.

Back to my distractions: I’ve also thought about trying to get a job in another city after I graduate so I can experience more of my fair country on my own. But do I really want to leave my city? I am just now getting used to the area. I’d probably still want to stay in Ontario so I can come by here often and still see my friends. Ottawa is a pretty cool place, and that’s where Raph will probably live for a couple of years, including the summers. Maybe I should just move to the other side of the region? Yeah. That’s a little more sensible.

Home is where the heart is.

Re: post below this.

Because im such a prolific poster when I am about!! Ass.

If you’re wondering why Bulk hasn’t been posting, worry no more. Bulk is on vacation and will return on thursday of this week.

If you’re interested in linking to our site I have some buttons you can use.

Thursday, August 14, 2003

8:57 PM EST

I am sitting here in the dark with my laptop running on its batteries. Some of you may have heard what has happened on the news already, as I type this I am listening to George Bush talk about this blackout on my portable radio.

At about 4:15 EST this afternoon the power went off for a couple of seconds while I was at work, I didn’t think much of it until people got calls from family members and friends in the area saying that a large part of the city was out of power. I thought our power had come back on but we were actually running on backup power generators, computers and all.

At 4:30 I left with Raph to go home. I had not even thought about what the drive home would be like with all the traffic lights out. It took me about half an hour just to get 1 km away from my office, it was complete chaos in the streets. People were just going through the intersections without any kind of pattern. Intersections further down my route had traffic officers directing traffic and cars were moving through much quicker. I still had no idea about had actually happened. I eventually decided to stop listening to my new Travis cd and start listening to the radio. I tuned into a news station and I got the end of a sentence that went something like this “...new york, new jersey, detroit and most of the eastern states have also been affected by the blackout along with the Toronto and Ottawa areas.” The first thought that popped into my head was that there was another terrorist attack, this time targeting the power grid. But it was just a malfunction apparently. No one still knows but apparently a power plant in New York state had a problem and it caused a domino effect shutting down all the power in north-eastern USA and most of Ontario in Canada.

As soon as I got home I checked to make sure my beer was still cold so that I could atleast enjoy myself during this blackout, it was chilled but not ice cold. My brother had left a cooler in the backyard he used for a BBQ last week, I filled it up with whatever ice I had left in the freezer, almost 10 ice packs, frozen fruit, frozen “Hot Pockets”, and lots of cold water. I then loaded the cooler up with beer, root beer, and milk. I am set for the night!

The power has been out for most of Ontario and most of North-Eastern US since yesterday afternoon. Power has been restored in some places, like my work. My home is still dark without power so I am posting this from work. My trusty powerbook has been keeping up and I’ve kept a log of last night. I’ll post it as soon as power gets restored in my city. Apparently it could take up to 48 hours to get the rest of the province powered again, I hope my city isn’t one of the last!

Cnn News Story.
BBC News Story.

A couple of recent announcements by Microsoft have really got me thinking: their browser monopoly is almost over.

A couple of weeks or months ago Microsoft stated that they will no longer release standalone browsers, new browser will only be released with new Operating Systems. What does this mean? It means there will be no updates (other then hole plugging) to IE until the next version of Windows, which is not due out for about two years. Even then people will be using previous versions of windows for years to come. I still know many people using windows 95. Many alternative browsers are already years ahead of IE in terms of functionality but some lack in speed. Mozilla’s speed should be solved once it changes to be like Mozilla Firebird.

This alone isn’t quite enough to topple IE though. But what might push it over the edge is this: Microsoft announced today that they will cease making new versions of Outlook Express, instead they will focus on improving Hotmail. Many people will want to move away from the aging Outlook Express to something better and there’s a good chance they will stumble on the Mozilla Mail (soon to be separated from the Mozilla Browser, death to application suites) or Eudora.

The number of people infected with viruses will surely go down, as Outlook is the main source of infection.

Here’s to a possible future where the Internet is not dominated by proprietary software.

Cheers.