It seems that there are places in Canada where there is no harsh winter weather. Nanaimo, B.C. claims to be the city with the mildest climate in Canada.It seems that Environment Canada record data for Nanaimo does back this up. You can also see a more detailed chart with record temperatures, snowfall, rainfall, ... etc.

Last week on Friday on November 18, we had our first snow fall, blanketing everything in white. It did not last long, and all melted the next day.Yesterday, we have a winter snow storm in earnest, with snow squalls, slippery roads, and snow plows on the road. The amount of snow is not that much compared to other storms in Southern Ontario, but the winds are very strong and the snow is blowing all around.According to The Weather Channel forecast on Thursday, South Western Ontario got off easy compared to the area east of Toronto, where the bulk of the storm was supposed to hit.  However, when I check it today, it says 1 cm of snow in Toronto, and 5 cm here.

I ran into The Daily WTF web site by chance. Programmers send the web site maintainer coding mistakes they have seen by colleagues. Some submissions indeed have a high WTF factor, for example, this overly verbose way of negating a number.

I did some Drupal consulting work for www.telecentre.org, a grassroots community technology initiative co-funded by Canada's IDRC. That included some more consulting for wsis.telecentre.org which is about the World Summit on Information Society.

I was recently approached by a client who wanted a custom Drupal module.The module was supposed to be a clone of Drupal's "Who's New" and "Who's Online" modules, but with user defined input. The specifications were that would be an admin defined list of users, and the module will select some of them at random. There would also be a user defined list of how many users to show online at a certain time (how many registered users, and how many guests). In other words, it would give a fake sense of the site being a very busy one.I politely told the person who requested this module that this amounts to deception. Their answer was it was like the opening day of a restaurant when it is packed with guests, but all of them are really relatives and friends of the owner who invited them for the opening night.

Last month, there were clashes between Copts and Muslims in Alexandria, Egypt. It started when someone leaked a CD of a theatrical play performed inside a church said to be disdainful of Islam. Three were killed in the clashes. The government was quick to blame a conspiracy by "external entities", or the religious parties (Muslim Brotherhood), for the soon to be held parliamentary elections. The problem is that someone to blame is always sought, whether internal or external.

The World Summit on Information Society has started in Tunisia.Watching Tunisia's Satellite TV on Telstar5, coverage is almost exclusive on this event. No wonder since it is good publicity for the country and tourism. I did some consulting work for telecentre.org, who also have a dedicated web site for WSIS. The official beta launch for Telecentre will be at the summit on Thursday.

I have been use a Dell Optiplex GX270 at work for almost 2 years now. This has been a very stable machine, powered on 24x7.

Last week, the machine just shut itself off by itself. After powering it on, the colors on the monitor were off (no greens nor yellows). I notice that if you wiggle the monitor cable the colors will change, although the green/yellow will never reappear. The machine has an nVidia video card with DVI output, and a connector for DVI to VGA.

After calling Dell, they said they are going to send the video card and "cable". Overnight, the machine powered itself again. And then again every night afterwards. Then it would only stay powered to the login screen only, then power off.

Here is another scam example. It is not a classic 419 scam, but still an advance fee fraud scheme.It says that I won the lottery. Thing is, I never bought a ticket? How can I win.

From:  The director of the Prize Award Department Reference number: EG/38807886091/05 Batch number: 340/1608/RDL Att: The Owner of this Email Address Re: Award Notification Of Final Notice We are pleased to inform you of the release on the 10th of Nov 2005 of the result of the GRAPHICS FORTUNE LOTTO brits sweepstakes lottery International promotion UK programmes held on the 30th of October Your email address attached to the ticket number 033-1146993-750 with serial number 13-15-16-21-34-36, which consequently won the lottery in the 2nd category. You have therefore been awarded the lump sum of £1.5 million(One Million Five Hundred Thousand British Pounds Sterling) in cash credited to file number EG/38807886091/05.This is from the total cash prize off £150,000,000,00(One Hundred And Fifty Million British Pounds Sterling) which is being shared among ten international lucky winners in this categ ory! Your funds are deposited with a security company, which will be insured in your name once you contact us. Due to a mix up of some names and numbers, we strongly recommend that you keep this award a top secret from the public notice until your claims have been processed and the money remitted to your account.This is a part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming and unwanted scams of this program by other participants. All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 25,000 email addresses from  all over the world as a part of our international promotional program, which we conduct twice annually. We hope that with a part of your prize, you will take part in our end of year high stake 3bn lottery. To avoid fraud and scams, and to begin your claim, please contact only your assigned agent, Mr James Ink; foreign service manager of GRAPHICS LOTTERY ORG via email on graphics-lottery@mail.com for processing and remittance of your money to a designated account of your choice. All prize money must be claimed not later than 14days from the date of this notice, as after this date, all funds will be returned to GRAPHICS-LOTTERY INTERNATIONAL as unclaimed. In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, please quote your reference and batch number in every correspondence with us, or your agent. Furthermore, if you have changed your email address, do contact your agent, notifying him of the change. Congratulations once more for and on behalf of all members of my staff and thank you for being a part of our promotions program. Thanks Mr James Ink Tel: 0044 703 184 8477 International:+44 703 184 8477 Fax:0044-20-7900-3621 Email:graphics-lottery@mail.com Email:claims_agent@post.com For Further Assistant please call your international directory in your country (GRAPHICS FORTUNE LOTTO)