I did a search on Google earlier today for "Enterprise Portal comparisons". The 4th result that came back was "Mature Porn homemade videos". This was the only result in the top 10 that had absolutely nothing to do with Enterprise Portals, so I found it strange that this link came back. Then I was thinking that maybe the porn site is paying Google some money to "slip" in their link on unrelated search queries. Or maybe the porn site just has a lot of keywords on it that relate to Enterprise portals.

I just tried doing the same search on Google, but this time the Mature porn homemade video link didn't show up. It must have been a fluke, or maybe someone tricked Google and they caught on to it.

I have also included a relationship scale below that I came across today. We're not sure what "null set" means, but the scale seems pretty accurate other than that.

A Saturday night without a debate wouldn't be a good Saturday night. This weekend's debate was intiated by Thy Geoff Star at about 3AM Sunday morning while sitting around at my place.

The question is whether you think that Niagara Falls or Times Square is more well-known throughout the entire world. This includes 3rd world countries; including people who have never seen a TV before.

Geoff thinks that Times Square is better known throughout the world. My argument is that Niagara Falls is one of the natural wonders of the world, so I thought it would be better known; especially outside of the Western world.

I want to know what you all think, so please vote now!! Consider this the official poll. We will tally the votes and either Geoff or I will come out victorious.

(Please vote for Niagara Falls if you know what's good for ya!)

A lot of corporations talk about work life balance; but I find most of the time it's all talk and no action. While working for a large corporation for over 5 years, I recall them talking to us on an annual basis about work life balance. It always seemed to be on the agenda simply because managers were told by their bosses to talk about it. It was always the same old routine and it always lacked sincerity.

Instead of looking at the root cause of why the employees are giving up their entire personal lives for the corporation, they simply told their employees to take their vacations and spend more time with their families, but telling people to do something that in reality they can't do is pointless. I remember an Executive VP once telling everyone to make sure to make time for their families, but it was completely opposite of the reality where people were told they can't take vacations because there were too many issues to deal with.

Project resources were so poorly allocated and people were required to "fight the fire" on many different projects at the same time. This was the root cause of people working 70+ hours a week. It wasn't that the specific projects were poorly managed; it was the fact that resources were shared across many different projects, sometimes you'd be working on 6 or more projects at the same time. So every time a project starts to slip, people have to work insane hours to try to keep the project on time. Nobody could focus because they were pulled in too many different directions and everyone was working at night just to try to accomplish something for the day. It was frustrating to never have any closure; and rarely feeling like anything was accomplished without having to work 12+ hours in a day.

I think one of the major problems was the segregation of duties and the implementation of controls as a result of the Enron and related scandals. Corporations had new procedures to follow, but nobody realized the impact these procedures have to productivity. VPs had a certain amount of work they expected to get done by their business unit; and even after the implementation of new controls, they were still expecting the same productivity from their employees. The end result is that the employees are less productive because they are spending most of their time on procedural tasks, but since they were still expected to produce the same results, they were working crazy hours in order to maintain their "expected" output. This was only part of the whole problem of work life balance, but I went through the changes that were implemented in the years after Enron collapsed and I do think this was a major contributing factor to the productivity and work life balance issues.

Another problem I see with my former employer was the fact that working crazy hours is actually encouraged. Almost every person who received an award had received it on the pretext that they had worked "very hard on the project", they worked "many nights and weekends", they were "always available", etc. This led to the implicit understanding that giving up your personal life leads to corporate success.

My current employer has a different mentality than my former employer. When it comes down to it, we work very hard at certain times on the project. We work hard because we want to do a good job and deliver quality work. If a project goes over its predicted budget, we do an analysis to explain why we went over. Did we underestimate? Did we not understand the requirements properly? We determine what we did wrong so that we can do a better job next time. People are promoted because of their quality of work, not because of how hard they work. This is a much better model than what I was used to; I came out of a company where people were constantly running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It was a never-ending ordeal and you just feel like you're constantly walking up an escalator that's heading down.

Stress can greatly affects productivity; in a negative or positive way, depending on the level of stress. But unnecessary stress and lack of the feeling of accomplishment cannot help establish a good work life balance.

I haven't posted any quotes in a while, so I figured I'd add some humour to my normally dry website. So I decided to quote my favourite TV character, Borat. He's F-ing hilarious! If you haven't seen him, here's the Best of Borat on YouTube.

Here are my favourites:

"In Kazakhstan we have many hobbies: disco dancing, archery, rape, and table tennis."

"There are many job opportunities in the US and of A. For men, construction worker, taxi driver or accountant. For woman, prostitute."

"You think maybe Blair is a man who take off his clothes and let his khram go hard and put in a man's bottom?"

"But if she cheat on me, I will crush her!"

"My wife, she make very much noise when she do a toilet."

"In Kazakhstan we say man who has never killed a man is like man with no khram."

"Democracy is differnet in America. For example: women can vote but horse can not"

Detroit has always been an intriguing city to me; for as long as I can remember downtown Detroit has always been crappy and no matter what they do, it will probably always stay that way. One problem I find with a lot of American cities is how money gets poured into the suburbs and they become beautiful places to live, but living downtown is often unheard of in many American cities for many middle class citizens because of the high poverty and high crime that downtown areas often see.

The other day I came across a statistic that asked why Detroit has only 6 Starbucks coffee shops. After a Google search, I came across this Detroit News article that describes how at the time there were one fewer Starbucks in Detroit than there were in the Detroit Metropolitan Airport and 41 fewer than San Jose, California which is about the same size as Detroit.

To put this more into perspective I looked up the number of Starbucks there are in Toronto and found there are 63 Starbucks in Toronto. The population of the core Toronto area is somewhere around 2 million, so it is over double the size of Detroit's 900,000, but it's still staggering how few Starbucks there are in Detroit. I also looked up Pittsburgh Pennsylvania which seems to be a blue collared city, and found that in this city of ~340,000, there are 20 Starbucks.

After doing a couple more searches, I came across a blog posting and I found this reader comment to be interesting:

"Detroit can be proud to be a blue collar town that caters to the disenfranchised and adopts very liberal social policies. It can be proud it is not filled with Latte-sipping yuppies in black turtlenecks tapping on their overpriced Apple laptops and patting themselves on the back for buying "fair trade" beans as they glow in their privileged sense of entitlement. It can be proud it is a town that actually produces things, that sweats and lifts and ends its days with beer and starts them with black sludge in a thermos."

Another thing I found interesting while I was at the Detroit airport earlier this year is that they seem to have 2 languages on all the signs and on the speaker system; English and Chinese. I found that interesting. At first I thought maybe there were a lot of Chinese people moving to Detroit, but after realizing that this makes no sense at all, I came to realize that there are lots of international flight connections going through Detroit; especially flights heading to Asia. So I believe this is the reason for the Chinese signs although I was too lazy or disinterested tonight to actually try to look this up to confirm this.

Everyone has already heard about the Montreal shooting at Dawson College in Quebec in which one person has died so far. Since everybody has already heard the details, I won't discuss the details of the events that took place, but instead I'll discuss other similar shootings and also how much worse it could have been.

First of all, this is a reminder of the École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal in 1989 in which 14 female students were killed and 13 people were injured by Marc Lépine. He was apparently an anti-feminist, and allegedly ordered all males to leave the classroom before opening fire on the females. This also happened on a Wednesday. I'm not sure if there is any significance to this similarity or not, but I don't believe the press has identified this in any reports. (Maybe I'm speculating too much).

Secondly, some reports had indicated that the shooter from today's shooting was wearing a trench coat, which is a reminder of the Columbine massacre in 1999 in which 13 innocent people were killed.

When comparing the statistics, today's shooting could have been much worse. His automatic weapon apparently had a low caliber, and the number of deaths versus the number of injuries is substantially low compared to Columbine and the École Polytechnique massacre. Had he used a higher caliber gun, the fatalities could have been much worse. I'm thankful that this wasn't the case, and I'm thankful that the police handled the situation very professionally. In my mind, these officers are heroes for putting themselves in the line of fire and saving innocent people's lives before they were able to take the shooter out. I don't want to get into a discussion comparing Canada's gun laws vs. the USA because if someone really wants a powerful gun, I think they can obtain that weapon whether they are in the USA or in Canada. I can't speculate on whether our gun laws made any difference in today's shooting or not.

Here are some quick stats regarding other infamous school massacres:
Bath School disaster - 45 deaths and 58 injured
École Polytechnique massacre - 14 killed and 13 injured
Columbine massacre - 13 killed, 24 injured
Dawson College Shooting - 1 killed, 20 injured

Tomorrow is the 5th anniversary of the horrific September 11th attacks. Every person in North America and many other places around the world remember what they were doing at the exact time they found out about the commercial airliner attacks on the World Trade Center.

As a 21-year student working in a large office building in downtown Toronto at the time, the news hit me very hard. Growing up in a safe country free from any kind of war, a potential attack of such massive scale was previously unimaginable.

I was working in the 3rd tallest tower in downtown Toronto at the time of the attacks. CNN had indicated that all U.S. flights were being diverted to land at the Toronto airport. One thought going through my mind was what might happen if those planes that were diverted were hijacked. My first instinct was to get out of that office building, walk away and try to sort through the thousands of thoughts going through my head.

While walking away from the downtown district, I couldn't help but imagine working quietly at my desk and looking out the window to see a commercial airplane heading straight toward me. I would probably have had a very brief heart attack preceding my imminent death. I also wondered how helpless and afraid I would feel if I had to make the decision between burning to death or jumping out of the burning building. I also have extreme sadness for the hundreds of people who were in the offices on top of the point of impact not having anywhere to go and probably knowing that they weren't going to survive. Some people had a chance to have heartwarming last goodbyes to their loved ones before they perished.

I have a friend whom I met through work who was working across the road from the World Trade Center on September 11th. When he describes to me his experience that day and how he had friends who perished, it really puts it into perspective. This is not something that these people asked for. They were not in the armed forces serving for their country; they did not make a choice to risk their life. They were just ordinary people like you and me who were working in the wrong office tower at the wrong time.

The whole attack was an eye opener for me. The criminals who conducted this act wanted the world to know what their people had gone through as a result of wars at the hand of the world's superpower. They wanted to exact revenge for all of the innocent lives that were lost in their countries at the hand of the military machine. They succeeded in getting their message out, they succeeded in exacting revenge, but the result only created more hatred in the world. Now the last 5 years has seen revenge for these actions with even more hatred being born. This vicious cycle of violence has made the world very unstable, and I'm not sure what the future holds.

Imagine Oprah Winfrey becoming the forty fourth President of the United States. Who can really have hatred for a country run by an amazing person like Oprah Winfrey? She has real feelings for others and she's very good at listening to other people's problems. Her attitude is what more world leaders need. They need to listen to others instead of dictating their own agenda. Have a heart, but also be firm.

John Lennon had a dream, and he's not the only one:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

I've finally completed my Summer 2006 video. I spent about 8 hours in total on producing this video (although that may not be apparent while watching it). This year's music selection was a little less sappy than last year's video; probably as a result of me being happier this year. This year it's more of a summer-ending type song, rather than a sappy "missing something" song.

I must forewarn you that there is a lot of movement on the camera, especially since most of the footage is "action" footage recorded on my "amateur" digital camera.

Watch video on YouTube or (Download) (High bandwith) Windows Media format (320x240)

The story of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard is an intriguing one: A phony life full of scandal and controversy and a religion that worships him to this very day. L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986) was a science fiction writer and the founder of the religion "Scientology" when he announced it in 1952 and developed the philosophy of Scientology over 30 years time. Scientology is a "self-help" therapy. It is based on the premise that by "recalling negative experiences or "engrams", a person can free himself from repressed feelings that cripple his life."

After reading information from supporters and critics alike, my opinion is that this religion is nothing more than an institution that uses exploitation purely to enrich and promote itself. Although it is widely believed that the philosophy of L. Ron Hubbard is a mixture of many philosophical sources, the Church of Scientology credits it as his original work.

First I'll discuss 2 quotes I've read on the Church of Scientology's website.

1. "It is borne out in the sheer scope of his worldwide impact: with 70 million philosophic works regularly read in virtually every country on Earth, no philosopher in history even approaches his popularity."

Here they attempt to credit Hubbard as being the most popular philosopher in all of history.

2. "Another crucial milestone in this venture was his study of engineering, mathematics and nuclear physics at George Washington University — all disciplines that would serve him well through later philosophic inquiry: point of fact, L. Ron Hubbard was the first to rigorously employ Western scientific methods to the study of spiritual matters."

It should be known that although he did attend George Washington University, his grades were consistently poor, university records show that he attended for only two years, he was on academic probation, failed in physics, and dropped out without a degree. Click here for one of his transcripts. He did get an A in Physical Education.

L. Ron Hubbard Jr. paints his father as an abusive man and says he started the religion as a business proposition to enrich himself. He describes his father as being "only interested in money, sex, booze, and drugs." Read this Penthouse magazine interview with L. Ron Hubbard in 1983. Hubbard Sr. even published a letter dated April 10, 1953 where he says "calling Scientology a religion solves "a problem of practical business", and status as a religion achieves something "more equitable...with what we've got to sell".

One of the Church of Scientology's promotion tactics is to attempt to recruit celebrities into the church. A list of controversial events took place over the years where celebrities appeared to be bribed by the church for their backing of the religion.

Some celebrities who took the bait from this "cult" include John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Beck, Isaac Hayes, Tom Cruise and just recently Katie Holmes. The Church apparently arranged a divorce for Tom Cruise and also helped arrange the marriage between Lisa Marie Presley and Michael Jackson in an attempt to recruit Michael J.

In addition to the topics I have discussed, there is a lengthy list of other controversial and bizarre events that took place around Scientology and Hubbard's life that I won't be discussing; but I think most of us can agree that this cult-like organization is extremely bizarre and questionable, and I won't soon be stepping foot anywhere near this church.