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Do you ever wonder why the clerk at checkout counters in department stores ask you for your phone number / postal code? I usually just give it out freely without much thought.

Seeing this picture makes me think though (especially the first line about adding to their mailing list). Maybe next time I won’t be so generous with my answer to those questions.

Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 295 user reviews.

I was recently trying to send a big file to a friend of mine through MSN Messenger, and found it to be really slow. So I was just thinking of putting it up on my site so he can go grab it through FTP.

But today I stumbled upon Dropsend, which allows people to send large file attachments to an email recipient through their site, as well as act as an online storage facility. The free version only allows 5 sent files a month and 250 Mb storage, but it was a perfect solution for what I needed to do.

The recipient will see a link in their email which will allow download of the file once they click on it, which is very nice since they won’t need to have their email client download the whole file when trying to view the message.

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 167 user reviews.

During the past boxing day, 7 people were shot in the Yonge St. area, and a teenager was killed. Apparently two groups of idiots decided started a gun battle in the middle of a very crowded area. Some of the alleged perpetrators were arrested thereafter and police are still hunting for the rest of these cowards.

Another life loss to senseless violence, and some leaders are trying to shift the blame elsewhere. I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the idiocy of trying to blame the US for exporting guns to Canada for all these gun violence.

Since the beginning of the year, when the shootings in Toronto began to rise dramatically compared to last year, lots of the answers that I’ve heard from our leaders seem to say: “It’s the US’ fault since they’re the ones exporting guns here”. Do they really think that people in this city and country for that matter are really that dumb? Everybody knows that it’s not the US who’s pulling gun triggers, firing bullets, building gangs, distributing drugs around the country. It’s actual people in Canada who are doing these things. If these so called leaders are trying to shift the blame from themselves, can’t they actually think of something better to say than this? Blame the education system, blame the support systems, blame divorce rates, blame parents, blame anything but blaming the US. It just sounds so ridiculous and a simplistic view of things.

I’m not a pro or anti US person, but just looking at how these politicians can’t even think straight and find a solution just drives me crazy. Please stop running around the bush blabbering nonsense; just do something already. Instead of blaming things on everybody but yourselves, shut your mouth, take it like a good leader, and do what you guys are supposed to do: find a solution, work for the good of the citizens.

Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 217 user reviews.

I’ve been lazy about updating my blogs the last few weeks, and as such have decided to make it one of my resolutions to post at least once a day both in The Cooler Zone as well as DR’s Corner .

Anything related to me personally will be posted in DR’s Corner, while anything not related to me will be posted in The Cooler Zone, until I decide otherwise or change the rules

Average Rating: 4.9 out of 5 based on 283 user reviews.

I’ve been lazy about updating my blogs the last few weeks, and as such have decided to make it one of my resolutions to post at least once a day both in The Cooler Zone as well as DR’s Corner.

Anything related to me personally will be posted in DR’s Corner, while anything not related to me will be posted in The Cooler Zone, until I decide otherwise or change the rules

Average Rating: 4.7 out of 5 based on 179 user reviews.

I was walking around The World’s Biggest Bookstore with a friend yesterday, and was browsing the business section, when I noticed this book called Blog Marketing. I quickly pointed out to my friend that the guy who wrote that book was my former IT Manager

It was quite an interesting feeling, knowing that one person you know has a book published. Even though I knew that Jeremy already had that book published for a few weeks, seeing it on the shelf of a bookstore just was an experience in itself. Somehow in my mind, if a person has a book released, he/she’s a celebrity; and the best part? The knowledge that that person is an acquaintance of yours

Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 277 user reviews.

Within the last few years, I’ve seen a debate going on about the greeting “Merry Christmas”. It seems that certain groups feel offended by the phrase. They want it to be politically correct and changed to “Happy Holidays” or something similar that excludes the word “Christmas”. This Christmas, I’ve seen more and more people get away from the “Merry Christmas” greeting, and instead just say “happy holidays”.

I find this quite ridiculous. With other religions/beliefs, you can find people being congratulated on celebrating their beliefs, Hanukkah, Ramadhan, etc. Nobody seems to be raising a stink about this at all? Why is it that when Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ into this world, people suddenly act defensive and weird? Trying to take out the word “Christ” from Christmas just seems like a stupid thing to do. This is a holiday that has to do with faith and belief in Christ, so why take that out from the greeting?

Personally, I don’t really care what the politically correct phrase is. For me, it’s still wishing everyone a “Merry Christmas” and a happy new year !

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 194 user reviews.

Conversation in the car coming home from Church this morning:

My 3 year old son: “I’m hungry, can we buy donut dad? I be good boy”

Me and my wife : “You had your lunch, let’s wait till we get home”

Me : “Where are we going to buy donuts anyway?”

My son: “Tim Horton’s !!!”

Me and wife:

So we ended up buying him a chocolate dip donut from Tim Horton just because of his antiques. Just amazes me how he learns where we go to buy stuff without us ever telling him.

Average Rating: 5 out of 5 based on 259 user reviews.

Yesterday was quite an interesting day for me. In the morning trip to the GO station, while riding in the usual shuttle bus provided by our building, we got rear ended by some car. We were stopped at a red light, ready to turn left when suddenly came a loud screeching sound behind us, followed by a loud bang.

I was just starting to think that someone behind us got hit, when suddenly our van was bumped forward with quite a force (not too hard though). It turned out, the car behind the one behind us smashed the car behind us, which in turn bumped us.

Everybody got off the van and surveyed the damage. Our van was not damaged too badly (bumper a bit dinged), but the car behind us was totally wrecked. I could only imagine that that person would have a pretty badly hurt back and neck after the whiplash from the force.

Anyway, after making sure everything was ok, we proceeded to run to try catch the last GO train (it was still about a 5 – 10 minute walk away, and we only had less than 5 minutes). Man, it was cold and I’m rather out of shape; that run really took my breath away quite literally

In the evening, I talked to our shuttle bus driver, and she told me that the person who caused the whole accident was charged by the police for reckless and dangerous driving and fined for not having insurance ($5000). I assume he’d also have to pay for a new car for the person behind us since he didn’t have insurance.

Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 156 user reviews.

I installed Firefox 1.5 at home yesterday and everything worked fine. This morning, I tried doing the same thing to my computer at work, and lo and behold, it showed up with about 25% of the lower area below the statusbar greyed out. Nothing could be done to this area, and the only thing it contained was a red ^ on the left hand side of it.

It was quite frustrating trying to solve this thing, and I spent a good couple of hours browsing forums and the web for a solution. Some of the suggestions people gave:

- Un-install and Re-install the browser

- Un-install all themes and extensions

- Run in safe mode

- Create a new profile

In the end, after trying all those steps above with no luck, I decided to wipe out anything related to Mozilla Firefox (including the hidden Mozilla folder under Drive:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data) on my PC and start from scratch; and voila, what do you know it works fine now

Average Rating: 5 out of 5 based on 286 user reviews.