An Exercise In Futility

Data, Encrypted,
Through the tunnel flows, But then –
Dropped. Link Lost, AGAIN.

When was my last climbing update? Eons ago i expect. Working towards a goal of leading 5.12 in the gym by xmas. Been feeling quite good on the wall recently, climbing 5.11+ without much difficulty, and working those 5.11 leads a lot. Have not hit a 5.12 in a while, i think tonight should be the night! :> I will also try that sustained 5.10something that traverses the roof. I am stoked!

I have had this insane problem for over a year where youtube would not work in Internet Explorer or Firefox on one particular machine. In both browsers, the youtube website looked like crap (as though CSS was not rendering) and it whenever i tried to play a video, a message appeared indicating that I had to install flash player or enable javascript. Based on things i had seen mentioned in many posts on the interweb, I fiddled with all sorts of settings, updated Java, updated Flash player, updated Shockwave player, uninstalled Quicktime… nothing seemed to help. Something else i saw mentioned a lot was that Norton, or some firewall system, or some ad blocker, or some popup blocker, was blocking ytimg.com. Well, i knew for a fact i had no firewall software running on that box, no ad blocking, no Norton anything.

Then today i had a brainstorm — What else could cause ytimg.com to be blocked? a hosts file entry to deliberately redirect requests, perhaps? YES, sure enough, i had pointed s.ytimg.com at an unreachable local private IP address, a very long time ago, and had completely forgotten about it.

On May 12, BC voters will be asked to choose between two voting systems: The current Single Member Plurality (SMP) system, or Single Transferable Vote (STV). This referendum was also conducted last election, with almost 60% in favour of a change to STV (the government decided this was sufficient support to hold the referendum again).

Last time around, i flip flopped on this since i did not fully understand the issues and i was swayed by people who i believed DID understand the issues. By referendum time i was mostly against STV, and in the end i did not even vote on it.

This year i have done more research into it and have solidified my stance: STV is not the best alternative to SMP, but it is a good alternative that will benefit most British Columbians. In fact, the only people who will ’suffer’ from a change to STV are those who feel that fringe or independent parties should not have an opportunity to win seats.

Very simply put: BC-STV is a system that provides better proportional representation in the legislature than the current SMP system.

Under SMP, a candidate will win the seat in their riding with anything more than 50% of the vote, which means that up to 49.x percent of the constituency would have no local representation at all. By having larger electorate deciding multiple seats, there is more opportunity to elect someone who represents you and your ideals. Which is better: having an MLA (who you would not vote for) who is “accountable to you” because you can drive to their office, or having an MLA sitting in the legislature who you DID vote for?

The choice is clear: Vote YES for BC-STV.

i almost feel like i ought to dump the content of the blog to hardcopy and be done with it. Twitter is more than sufficient for telling people about how much coffee i drank or what colour the pavement is today.